All Over the Place :: June 17

My head is spinning in so many directions tonight. This post might be all over the place. 

It’s Father’s Day. Another holiday celebrated in this storm. Another holiday made harder by this experience… Another holiday reminding me how grateful I am. Happy Father’s Day to my incredible husband. You love as Jesus loves. You lead by amazing example. You tirelessly give the best of yourself. Thank you for choosing us every day, even when it’s hard. We are so grateful. And Happy Father’s Day to my Dad. I am so grateful for you. Grateful you love me like Jesus loves all of us. Grateful you don’t care about DNA and instead you love me better than I could ever earn it. Grateful you CHOSE me and Mom. You, choosing to be a part of my and Mom’s life, changed the trajectory of our lives and I am forever grateful for that. From the depths of my soul, I am grateful. 

Everything is temporary. Chris and I went out on a date tonight. And had a heart to heart. We don’t have a whole lot of time in this crazy life to really do that, but tonight we did and I am so thankful. He shared his heart. He was real. He was raw. And he heard mine, too. I was reminded, while we were talking and getting overwhelmed by the bigness of….well….everything, that it truly is a blessing to be right where our feet are. I started crying thinking of the days and nights during the first 6 rounds of chemo where I would pray to just get to the next five minutes because I didn’t even have the capacity to imagine making it to 20. 

The deepest part of my gut. I said it out loud tonight. And it was the hardest thing to say. The same deepest part of my gut that knew I had cancer before I was diagnosed is the same deepest part of my gut that is saying this upcoming surgery won’t work. It’s the same part that is telling me I’ll have to use prosthetics for the rest of my life. It’s the same part that is imagining the scars and the flatness and the devastation of cancer. Oh how I pray that it’s wrong.

The basement. A structural engineer is coming to the house tomorrow to meet with Chris to hopefully give us an idea of what the crap is going on under our house and offer suggestions on how to fix it. From there we can figure out what comes next. We just keep hearing things that are hard to hear, that set us back, that hurt our souls, that challenge our well-being. We keep hearing things that could break us. Thank God for resilience. And for hope. 

Envy. Just envy. I don’t want to hurt anymore.

Managing expectations. I wrote early on in this journey about the fact that there will always be something… The takeaway from it all is that if I expect life to be hard then the hard stuff won’t take me by surprise and I can remain grateful in the disasters. 

Chemo tomorrow. Number 13 of 18. I hate chemo. I hate cancer.

Surgery in a week. A week from now will be an interesting night. I’ll have a bag packed for a several-day hospital stay. I’ll have my alarm set for 4am. I’ll probably struggle sleeping. I’ll experience anxiety and excitement and everything in between. I’ll be mindful of the joy of sleeping in my bed next to my hubby as it will be the last time for many many nights. I’ll probably have memories of the night before my mastectomy. I’ll pray. I’ll listen. And tonight as I write that, I’m hopeful that this is what it will actually look like in a week because…

I feel sick. My throat hurts. I’m congested. I can’t tell if this is allergies or a bad cold or strep or something else. Really? Yes. Really. My only hope is that if I am indeed sick, that it runs its course and gets the hell out of my system so that I can show up next Monday at 5:30 in the morning. 

As my head is spinning on all of these things, the unknowns monstrous………

…………Lord Jesus, please just get us to the next 5 minutes. 

Thirteen of Eighteen :: June 18

This was my social media post today:

“I remember at the beginning of all of this, my traumatic mastectomy was fresh on my mind and we were on the countdown for getting through the first 6 rounds of chemo as they would be the hardest to survive. Today is the first of the last 6 rounds and in about an hour it will officially be 5. And a week from today, the surgery that will be putting me back together will be underway. What an interesting place to sit… Thankful to have travelled so far. Hopeful to get to next week and get one more thing behind me. Prayerful as there is still much ahead.”

As I wind down my day, I am holding grief and joy in the same open arms. 

And I can count on ONE hand (instead of 4), how many chemo infusions I have left. 

I Can Do Hard Things:: June 17

I can do hard things. 

I can do hard things. 

I can do hard things. 

I can do hard things. 

I can do hard things. 

I can do hard things. 

I can do hard things. 

I can do hard things. 

I can do hard things. 

I can do hard things. 

The Magic :: June 18

1. I had a conversation today with a client that again, will stick with me for forever. When she could have flipped off another driver, she waved instead. What a metaphor for life……..

2. I saw Dr. Chris today for another post-op appointment. Knowing that radiation has been difficult for him to work with, he was happy with the progress we have made. He told me that due to my patience and willingness to keep fat grafting, the skin that was radiated looks amazing and he’s thrilled with how my body has healed itself. He also gave me the go-ahead to get my mastectomy tattoo whenever I want and was in full support of it. And I’ll see him again in August to determine if we are going to have one final revision surgery in October or November. 

3. I was driving home tonight and I was feeling so sad. Tears ran down my cheeks and blurred my vision. But I couldn’t put my finger on why. I mean, sure, I carry a heavy load every day. I battle, I parent, I wife, I work, I friend… My output is enormous. My spirit is weary. My body is weak. But while on my way home, there wasn’t anything specific that was bringing on the tears. I guess that is what med-induced depression is like…just teary with no known specific reason. I’m grateful to be alive and living this full full life with some hands-down-incredible people and at the same time, a deep emotion is constant in my soul. 

4. I’m sitting here wondering where God is taking me and what we are going to do with this story of mine. And then I’m reminded that these 5 minutes that I’m sitting in are where we are going and what we are doing. I am reminded that I need not be so focused on the ‘where am I headed’ and instead be mindful of the right-now. That I can live my story out wherever I am. That I have arrived…not to say I have it all perfectly together, but that I’m right where I am and fast-forwarding to some elusive ‘what’s next’ means I’ll miss the purpose of the present. If I’m so focused on touching the end of the rainbow, I’ll miss the scenery around me. While I was driving home from my tattoo consultation a couple of weeks ago, a massive thunderstorm literally dropped out of the sky. An amazing rainbow arched over the highway and it felt as if I was driving right under and through it. I actually even saw the ‘end of the rainbow’…I could see where the colors touched the ground. Interestingly enough, as it seemed that I got closer to the rainbow, the rainbow (and the end of it) always stayed ‘just out of reach’. I thought about that while I was driving – would I have been able to pull off the side of the road and touch it? Or would it have disappeared because I was ‘in’ it. Would I have lost the perspective I needed to see the beauty of the rainbow because I was ‘too’ close? Is that why the end of the rainbow is never able to be truly found? I don’t think magic lives at the end of the rainbow…it lives in the light that makes the rainbow exist altogether.