Cancer Support Community and my friends there are such a blessing. They gave me an opportunity to share a little of my story. Read it here: https://www.cancersupportcommunity.org/blog

Here is a quote from my Q&A:

“We are often cornered by the “either-or,” but cancer has been teaching me to choose the “both+and” instead. One example: As deep as my pain goes, so does my gratitude, not one replacing the other, but both existing together.”

@AmberHavekost @ThePurposedSailor

Take some time to challenge your own “either-ors.” Then name your own “both+ands.”
Let the hope that comes from this activity enlighten you, inspire you and grow you.

And thank you Kathy, Kim, Marcia, Jeanne and CSC. I love you guys.

---

This day in 2018:

Sow Into That

Trauma brings about interesting tensions. I have written about tensions quite a bit through this time. Finding myself anywhere on the spectrum between such opposites is enlightening, exhausting, frustrating, hopeful… Even in THAT space, there are interesting opposites. Good heavens one can get lost in that. It almost feels like that movie, Inception… Going deeper into the deep and figuring out more of the puzzle within the puzzle, the story within the story, the tensions within the tensions… 

I’m so grateful for a community of incredible people around me. ::: I’m so annoyed that I need so much help. 

I’m so grateful for an amazing medical team and plastic surgeons that are experts at what they do. ::: I’m so devastated that so far, I’m not happy with what I see and that I have to accept the fact that no matter how good they are, I have several more procedures ahead of me and nothing is guaranteed. 

I’m so grateful I have a post-op appointment tomorrow – I’ll get some questions answered, I’ll get a timeline on the next steps, I’ll likely get these drains out. ::: I am also dreading tomorrow because I will have to be naked in front of more people again…more naked pictures taken…more massive vulnerabilities…more pain…more having to manage expectations…more knowing that tomorrow is just the beginning of more of all of that.

I’m so grateful to have so much behind me. ::: I’m so overwhelmed by all that still is ahead. There is so much.

I’m so glad time moves fast. ::: I’m so weary that time moves so slow.

I’m so grateful to be alive and have a positive prognosis…for resilience. ::: I’m so vainly saddened by what I see – I hate my short hair. I hate that I don’t have eyelashes. I hate that my eyebrows are so thin and faint. I hate that I’ve had to lose so much. I hate that it takes sooooo loooooong to get those things back. ::: But I’m grateful they will come back.

I’m so grateful that I can live life in this midst of this story…a story within a story. ::: I’m exhausted at the thought of having to live this story in the midst of the story. Raising daughters. Being a wife. Working. Managing schedules and learning how to trust a 16-year-old on the road. 

I’m grateful that I have grown deeper in my faith and strengthened in my trust in a Big God. ::: I find myself scared of what the rest of my life holds…I got a lot of life left to live and I can’t imagine this will be the last hard thing I have to endure. ::: But I have a lot of life left to live.

I’m grateful for the incredible, intense, inside-out-upside-down perspective-shifting changes that have come with this story. ::: I’m exhausted from enduring so much change and I wish, somedays, for easy. 

I was laying here the other night, in my chair (that I want to burn when this is all over), when I couldn’t sleep because the itchiness of this rash (that I could have totally done without), thinking about “what is this all for anyways?” The Lord said to me – as eternal as all of this [insert every single word above here] feels, it is not eternal. What all of this is for, is for eternal things. Sow into that. Eternal identity, not temporary, earthly identity. Eternal glory to Me, not temporary relief from earthly pain. Eternal relationship with Me, not temporary earthly insecurities.

But crap. That’s hard. ::: And hopeful. Seemingly impossible. ::: And possible. Exhausting. ::: And worth it. 

---

This Day in 2019:

Infused

Surviving cancer at a young age is really hard. I have a lot of life left to live that will be colored by cancer. 

That’s bad. And that’s good.

Today was extra rough with how I was feeling and it’s just a brutal reminder that cancer (and its impact) is infused into every moment I live. And in the same heart that I hold that brutal reminder, I also hold the fact that the amazing transformation is also, in fact, infused into every moment. 

---

No post for 7/2/20

---