“And perhaps what made her beautiful was not her appearance or what she achieved, but in her love, and in her courage, and in her audacity to believe: no matter the shadows around her, Light ran wild within her, and that was the way she came alive and it showed up in everything.”
@MorganHarperNichols

It’s hard to feel beautiful in breast cancer. So…beauty has to be redefined.

*Post 928

Causal? Correlative? Consequential? :: 10/19/17 :: Post 52

I’ve got some interesting things going on in my head tonight. Things that won’t come with answers anytime soon. And that feels hard. But I suppose I could look at it as freedom, too.

“Purpose.”

Things don’t just happen in life. Or do they? I’ve never looked at life through a lens where everything is happenstance, where things don’t have a reason for being. I’ve always seen things as purposeful…that they have a “why” to them. It’s how I’ve been able to make sense of life and the other crisis and trauma in my story. So why am I wrestling today? Because I’m tired. Searching for purpose and why takes effort. It involves intentionality. It necessitates perseverance. It requires patience.

I just want to know NOW why I must endure THIS. Then it would make sense. Then it would be easier to navigate the next unknown. So………does that mean, then, that my search for purpose is so that I can feel better about the awful experience? Because there will be redemption for the pain? Because there is answer for why?

But what if there is no purpose in it? Or if the purpose is not for me to know. Or if the purpose is just so supernaturally understood that me in my human capacity will just never get it this side of heaven. Or is the purpose in the experience and there will be no causal or correlative or consequential whys.

I could easily say that I think the purpose for all of this is by me going through this crisis, I may know better how to walk with someone else through crisis…but something about this doesn’t sit all that well with me – it feels limited or underdeveloped. It feels incomplete or “off.” Yet, as I write that, maybe it is for this reason that I am walking this journey – if God is a God of relationship (which I believe He is), He may have each of us live the lives we live so that we may walk with others in theirs. And maybe, even more so, purpose revolves around relationship with Him. …since He is a God of relationship and His desire is for me walk with Him, this is a way for me to practice faith and trust and surrender…to engage in deeper relationship with my Creator…to seek and search for more of Him.

I dunno….All I know is that I want this to make sense. I want there to be a reason for this. I want to understand the why. If I have committed to not wasting this, then why does it have to be such a mystery? Inherent in my desire to not waste this is that I want to glorify God through it…so why must I sit in the dark and not know? Oh, so many questions. So much mystery. Such limited human understanding.

(PS. I keep using “this” as a qualifier for what I clearly mean to be ”cancer”….yet I intentionally use “this” as it is so inclusive to all crisis and hard experiences. It’s a collective thing for me as, well, things in life don’t.just.happen.)

The Fight is Brutal :: 10/19/18 :: Post 401

This reconstructive process is every bit of dreadfully hard. I’m in such pain. Even with meds.

The internal war that is going on…the external battleground….the scars that prove the fight is brutal. Every.bit.of.dreadfully.hard.

What I find most difficult after these reconstructive surgeries is that I am in such significant pain but I struggle with whether or not it’s worth it because the result is not desired or completed. There is more work to be done. There is more pain ahead.

It’s also very hard not to be able to actually see what I’m working with for several days post-op considering I’m instructed not to shower or take off this full body compression suit. So, while I sit here in pain, wondering what I actually look like, managing expectations is nearly impossible.

I find myself vacillating between a myriad of emotions… Sometimes I just sit here and cry because I think when I finally get to look at the results from this most recent surgery, it’s going to look awful. Sometimes I sit here angry because, well, cancer has beaten the crap out of me. Sometimes I sit here apathetic and uncaring because of pure exhaustion. Sometimes I sit here, still in denial that this is all happening.

I got something in the mail today from my nurse navigator, Marina. It was a whole packet on survivorship. It was a strange feeling as I was reading a summary of all that I’ve been through. It is odd to think that I am to keep that document and take it with me to all future appointments so that other physicians can read through it. It was incredibly validating, too, that I read a whole bunch of pages on how after-cancer-treatment has many difficulties and that cancer is never really over.

Ugh. I’m grateful to be alive. But the cost has been astronomical.

October 19 of 31 :: 10/19/19 :: Post 764

After a long day working, it was so good for my soul to spend time with some of my dearest friends tonight. It’s a wonderful thing to have counselors as friends…the listening, the asking questions, the relating and empathizing… I love these women so so much.

And then I came home to my whole family so happy to see me. My kids fighting over who got to hug me first…and then each taking turns to talk to me one-on-one and telling me about their days and what was on their hearts. And now they are laying in my bed with me cuddling and being silly. 

I am blessed.

As I battle, day in and day out, with my body and the destruction of cancer, these are the things that make me resilient. These are the things that keep me battling.

Breast Cancer Awareness Month…

…Day nineteen – Making life altering decisions in the depths of the unknown is one of the hardest and scariest things ever.