From an article originally posted March 17, 2014…
In the agony of waiting, you do the next thing. Whatever it is, you simply go through the motion. You look for peace, name grace, and simply try to get through each day. This last season of tests was particularly hard as we had one result of positive cancer and had to wait on my brain to hear the next answer, and we were prepared for the last answer. We put food in front of our people, we read books, and we tried our best at each new thing.
From an article originally posted March 15, 2014…
I was so peaceful last week, unbelievably peaceful, but right before my appointment yesterday my anxiety flew off the charts. My sister called and I kind of shut down and told her I might not call her after my appointment. I felt overwhelmed with fear and this small control felt like something I could manage. I was tired of everyone hearing bad news, and I wanted to give everyone a chance to breathe if the news was discouraging. I was panicked. But I always call my sister after my appointment; I was simply overcome in that brief moment before we entered the small room with my doctor.
To my friends whose hearts feel cold, who feel like you can’t engage your emotions anymore, who are so tired that you don’t have an ounce of energy to spend examining your heart, who have cried enough tears for more than one lifetime and whose eyes are all dried up, who watch others cry at sad news and wonder why you feel nothing, who desperately want to experience the depths of joy others around you experience, who have intentionally built walls around your hearts to protect them from more damage, who have unintentionally built walls around your hearts because suffering through one more tragedy will push you over the edge, who lash out in anger because it’s the only emotion that remembers how to express itself, who wonder why this anger and exhaustion have become your closest companions.
From an article originally posted March 13, 2014…
There are moments, hours, segments of time where I think, This is all a mistake. I have passing thoughts that the part of me that lit up in the machine last week was an accident, or a product of an old virus that my lymphatic system couldn’t keep up with and indicated cancer falsely. Then I have moments were I know the machine is right, I know the aggressive nature of my cancer, and I sigh, and cry, and lose my breath.
From an article originally posted March 12, 2014…
If you asked what the hardest part of our journey has been, it would be waiting. Waiting is painful. Waiting causes your mind to jump into a thousand different scenarios. It’s painful, peace-stealing business. This time has been different. The waiting has been difficult, but peace has been present—unbelievable peace. We are humbled by it, we talk about it in wonder. It simply does not make sense, but then, it makes complete sense.
