“Nobody is too busy, it’s just a matter of priorities.”
?
Cancer teaches one MUCH about time; what’s more…about the value of it.
“The greatest gift you can give someone is your time. When you give your time, you are giving a portion of your life that you will never get back.”
?
This Day in 2018:
The not-quite-there-yet
The not-quite-there-yet is rough.
With the beginning of this being intensely hard, and the dog days of treatment taking me to a whole new level of hell, and the unknown difficulties that would come out of nowhere along the way, I am finding that this place…this ‘almost-there-but-not-quite-there’ place…is way harder than I anticipated.
My hair is in a really annoying stage. What the crap do I do with it? I loved it long and I even liked it buzzed… The not-quite-there-yet is rough.
My eyebrows are there, but faint. Not all gone…not all back. The not-quite-there-yet is rough.
My eyelashes can finally be seen but they grow at a snail’s pace… The not-quite-there-yet is rough.
My treatment is “easier” but I still have my port, I still have infusions, I still get chemo, I am still months from completion of that… The not-quite-there-yet is rough.
My body is in a holding pattern. A really hard and painful one. And I have hundreds of miles to go before reconstruction is truly completed… The not-quite-there-yet is rough.
There are days where it feels like “the end” is so far away.
But as I type that, it makes me wonder if “the end” actually exists anyways. Because at the “end” of everything I’ve been through so far, there has always been another thing getting started or another thing already well underway.
And even when cancer is “over,” (again, is that even a thing?) life still occurs….and the things of life still come up…and the experience of human existence on earth will inevitably bring more storms.
Therefore, just today. Just the present moments in the present day.
I guess this is the same concept of ‘be where your feet are’….I’m just understanding it with a new clarity… I’m applying it to more than surviving cancer….
This Day in 2019:
At present, an illusion…
I’m 10 days away from a giganticly(that’s not a word but I’m still gonna use it)-important, really-expensive, career-defining, imperative-I-pass, 200-item National Counselors Exam. And I have to take it with chemo-brain.
And actually, I was supposed to take this exam in October of 2017.
From the start of 2017, I was gaining momentum and speed down a hill that I had oppositely and painstakingly trudged up. I had to work really hard and I had to jump through near-impossible hoops to make it to that October, to make it to this test………And then I hit a hard dead-end and crashed and burned with “Amber, I’m sorry to tell you that you do, in fact, have cancer.”
Blind sighted and obliterated, I looked up and saw only a mountain. A mountain so big that nothing else existed in my world. A mountain so big that my only option was to trudge up one dreadful, scary, traumatic step at a time. And a mountain so big that, one-by-one, those dreadful, scary, traumatic steps were the only things I could see.
You’d think that since the intense, kill-cancer, treatment is behind me, so is the mountain. But actually, this mountain is my new reality and I will continue to navigate and learn the ins and outs of the terrain for the rest of my earthly life. Sure, at times it is light and clear enough where I can see the sun or the glistening stars peeking through the trees, where I can see a few steps ahead of where I am, where I can enjoy the view even if it is treacherously rough under my feet…but there are also times that I feel suffocated by the blackness, so dense and impenetrable, that I only know my hand exists because I can feel it touch my face.
So now, as I carefully tread on the treacherous ground under my feet (because I’ve learned that solid, smooth ground just doesn’t exist), I find myself on one of those clearer days where I can see just beyond my current footing. This test and the opportunities it makes possible are not too far away and I can start to see an image forming, an image of hope and change and purpose…but it’s just enough out of reach that I must acknowledge that nothing is sure, nothing is guaranteed, and this image is merely an illusion at this present moment.
With that, I’m asking for help because, well, I need all the help I can get…pray, send good thoughts and hold hope for me and with me that this image can change from an illusion to an experience that I actually get to live through.
My test is on Thursday, July 18 from 8am-12pm. Bring it on, mountain. I can do hard things.
This Day in 2020:
My Playlist
I close my eyes tonight and in my ears is a playlist that I played over.and.over.and.over as I sat (and slept) in my chair, recovering from my mastectomies, chemotherapy, radiation, reconstruction… the playlist I listened to as I sat in the black unknown of the “later that day” because I wasn’t sure I’d even make it there… the playlist I anchored to as I navigated the first part of the stormiest storm of my life. I don’t often play this playlist…it’s sometimes just too hard, but as I near my 3-year anniversary of the call that forever altered my life, I find my heart heavy in memory.
Some may not agree that living in memory is a special place. And right now I’m not talking about the good memories. Those are special, yes, but I’m talking about the hard memories…because those are special, too. Odd sentiment, maybe, but I choose to hold those close to my heart. I choose to close my eyes and remember. I choose to let the same tears run down my cheeks even 3 years later.
For me, cancer isn’t a chapter to close and move on from. While I may not be in the pain of mastectomy recovery anymore, I lay my hands on my fake and reconstructed self and remember vividly the day I felt the tumor and the sinking feeling in my gut of what I knew without knowing…”knowing” that deep loss was just a few steps ahead of me but not fully knowing just what all I was about to lose. I run my fingers through my hair and remember vividly the feeling of holding chunks of hair in my hands as chemo killed everything good along with the bad…the feeling of the razor shaving off what was left…and then the feeling of a bald scalp as the patchy buzzed hair breathed its last. I go to scratch an itch that I feel under my skin on my torso and am reminded, as I feel no relief and I feel no sensation of touch, that the feeling in a large majority of my body doesn’t exist because of the destruction of reconstruction. I shift my weight in bed as I write and my joints scream at me, the achy-ness of a life-long left-over of chemo. My empty, constantly-crampy, always-uncomfortable abdomen and the instant fire-under-my-skin of yet another hot flash keeping the reality of just about everything distinctly woman being taken from me oh so very present. And my heart currently racing as I remember these hard memories, being very mindful of the way a free-fall feels.
These memories are special because they coexist with radical transformation. And if I want to continue living changed, I have to remain close to what changed me.
My Playlist:
It Is Well :: Kristene DiMarco and Bethel Music
The More I Seek You :: Rafael Oliveira
You Make Me Brave :: Amanda Cook and Bethel Music
Mention of Your Name :: Jenn Johnson and Bethel Music
Make A Way :: Travis Greene
Yahweh :: Elevation Worship
For Your Glory :: Trey McLaughlin
Hidden :: Will Reagan and United Pursuit
YHWH :: wwwmovement
Fill Me Up :: Tasha Cobbs
Broken Vessels :: Hillsong Worship
The King Is Among Us :: Elevation Worship
There Is A Cloud :: Elevation Worship
Here As In Heaven :: Elevation Worship
Lay It All Down :: Will Reagan and United Pursuit
Gracious Tempest :: Hillsong Young & Free
Even When It Hurts :: Hillsong UNITED Live
Give Me Faith :: Elevation Worship
Be Still :: Hillsong Worship