One Thing After Another After Another

It has been a week of highs and lows and at the moment there is no end in sight although life experience tells me that normal will return in time. It just feels like a lot at the moment. Maybe because it is a lot. I wish I could write all the details but I can't. Good old search engines make me cautious.

One of my siblings had an outpatient procedure this week and ended up going back to the hospital in the ambulance to spend a few days getting sorted out again.

The same day one of DH's siblings was in a serious accident in another country and is still there in a medically induced coma.

My mom is having open heart surgery this coming week. I will fly there to spend a good part of the week at home.

The photo shoot for the breast cancer awareness project was incredible. I have felt lighter inside ever since. The photographer managed to capture exactly what I was feeling. DD said the photo I chose to go on social media challenges the viewer to accept my reality and dares them to look away. If you'd like to see the photo and aren't on my FB page email me at asongnotscoredforbreathingATyahooDOTca and I will send it to you. I don't know if that's grandiose of me to think other people will want to see the photo or not. It was a big deal for me to go through with it.

Last night we put on a supper for friends and family to celebrate DD's recent wedding. I think the new grandbaby stole the show which is just what a baby should do - I think! My goodness people, he is absolutely adorable and I cannot get enough of him. Actually I told someone this week that spending time with him is healing something in me and I am loving every minute of it. It's much harder to find fault with the world with a baby in my arms.

We showed our home this week in the hopes of making a sale. Did you know you can stash piles of clothes in all kinds of places if you're desperate? We will find out in the next few days if our place is sold and we can make plans to move to the city.

Prayers for all of the above appreciated.

When You Want To Be A Cheerleader

A year ago today I was in my surgeon's office for a postoperative visit after having had a lumpectomy a week previously. The last thing he told me when he left my hospital room, in fact he stopped, turned and looked at me sideways and said, "the pathology report won't  be back when I see you next week." The report came back much sooner than he expected. A year ago today he told me I did indeed have cancer.

Thank you for reading along side me while I have muddled through this past year. I so wanted to be a rah-rah happy go lucky cancer survivor. I so wasn't. And still am not. A few months ago I did a silent retreat and the single thing I took away from it happened in the blink of an eye when I thought I heard these words" "Accept who you are, as you are, where you are."

I have been open for several months now for some kind of ritual, some kind of happening, to mark my cancer journey. This week an opportunity presented itself to me in the form of a local professional photographer who fund raises for breast cancer awareness yearly. He does a photo shoot of women with pink ribbons tastefully covering their bare chests and every woman donates money in exchange for the photographs. Some friends of mine had their photos taken last week and they are beautiful.

I contacted him and will be photographed before the first anniversary of my mastectomy which is coming up later this month. I asked him when he photographed a woman who had had a mastectomy if they ever left that side of their body bare of ribbon. You know the photos are nice of women with both breasts intact but it feels a bit like playing dress up. If you want breast cancer awareness let's get to the nitty gritty of its reality. He told me he had been waiting for a woman to be brave enough to let her mastectomy scar be photographed. I guess that would be me.

He plans of having my photos complete so they can be shared on his social media page on the one year anniversary of losing my breast. I have many feelings about doing this but mostly I feel empowered.

Joy Full

In the space of 48 and a few hours we celebrated the birth of our grandson, the wedding of our daughter and had a house deal done and then fall through. We have yet to see our grandson because we were on our way to the wedding (8 hours away from him) when he was born. In a few hours I will get to hold him and I am full to the brim with joy at the thought. I cannot wait to touch my nose to his head and breathe in his new baby smell.

The wedding was wonderful. My daughter, full of grace and beauty, is a testament to the grace of God. All my fuck ups in her growing up years were not the end of the story. We so need that reminder, don't we? She was the most beautiful bride. Wish I could show you photos. If you're friends with me on social media there is an album on my page with a sneak peek at them. When I was leaving the venue after the dance, I stopped to thank one of the servers for her work that night. She said they'd never had such a respectful, responsible family and she found it refreshing. In the space of a few minutes we talked about sobriety and found we had that in common. It's a small and beautiful world.

The house deal. Well, we loved the house. Could picture ourselves there, evenings spent in front of the fireplace in the cosy living room. We were holding the deal with open and light hands though, because it hinged on someone else getting financing to buy our place. They got cold feet last night at the thought of all that debt and backed out. It was a very young person and Dearest One encouraged him to listen to his heart. Despite our disappointment, at the end of the day it is what it is. I'm grateful to be able to feel my feelings without being devastated that what I'd hoped for didn't materialize.

This week will mark a year since my first surgery that ultimately ended in the cancer diagnosis. That I am here to witness all these great things is something I am grateful for.

Wrestling

Yesterday I spent part of my day getting some computer training with a head honcho kind of guy. A guy who told me, when I answered the phone at work last week, "It is so good to hear your voice." I hadn't spoken to him since before my cancer diagnosis. I don't know him well at all but he said it with a warmth and sincerity that touched me.

When we were done work for the day he asked me how my energy was holding up and I knew he was meaning in light of what this past year has held for me. So we talked.

At one point, after sharing about the mistake that saved my life,  he said to me, 'You are blessed. Someone was watching out for you." I looked away from him and nodded feebly. I wasn't ready to have a conversation about my difficulty in hearing things like that.

I feel like I do a disservice to those I know who've died from cancer by saying, "why yes, God was looking out for me." and I feel like I do a disservice to God by not proclaiming it. Blech.

There's that part of me that says if it's Truth [with a capital T] then it has to be true for everyone or else it's just empty words. It's what makes me grimace when people talk flippantly about God stuff and I cannot help but think whether their statement holds true in a third world country or a refugee camp. If it doesn't, then what?

I came home late last night after Dearest One was asleep. He woke as I crawled into bed to tell me that the woman who took me to my first AA meeting over 25 years ago had phoned while I was out. She had told him of the death of a mutual friend of ours. He was diagnosed earlier this year with cancer and was gone in four months. He and his wife are a bit older than us but we met when our kids were babies. I lay in bed last night and thought about how next week Dearest One will walk Only Daughter down the aisle. And between now and then he will most likely hold his first grandbaby in his arms. Outloud I said, "Our friend is never going to walk his daughter down the aisle. The sun rose and set on that girl."

I don't want to wrestle with this stuff anymore.

Bizarre Dreams

I've had a week of bizarre dreams. The kind where you wake up because it's so scary/horrible. Waking up is a relief because then you know the dream is just that, a dream.

One little sane bit of a bizarre dream last night that included hundreds of people parading through my house was a conversation I had with a woman who had been praying to be able to stop blaming other people for her issues. (love  recognize with some dismay how a person can be all the characters in the dream) I told her that an answer to prayer looked more like catching herself when she was doing it or recognizing she had done it again and then apologizing for doing it. Little steps. I told her that we often think the prayer is only answered if the problem goes away 100% but answered prayer can look much different than that. She cried with relief and her mascara ran down her cheeks as I sat there and wondered where the heck those words came that popped out of my mouth.

Flimsy

Yesterday I was getting a stack of papers ready to file when I realized that I no longer find my worth attached to how efficient, organized, or on being on top of it all I am. I asked myself, "What am I here for then?" and then promptly wanted to burst into tears.

I had no idea that I had been building my esteem on such flimsiness. I don't even know if I can explain it. I still take pride in doing a good job but there is no frantic energy attached to the outcome. Does that make sense? My worth is not wrapped up in having done my work in record time so that an invisible they can pat me on the back.

Today I visited with a friend who has also had breast cancer. When I shared with her my new realization she reached across the counter, hugged me and affirmed just why I was in my job. They were all reasons that truly matter.

Pettiness

I returned to work this week after having the summer off. I made a commitment to myself that I would not belly ache to my co workers about our boss. We've gone through quite a tough change due to downsizing in the past few years and the atmosphere took a downward spiral as a result. It's never rebounded and honestly, rightly so in some ways. Our trust was completely shattered in the company by the way they brutally let a long term employee, close to retirement age, go. But I know that after all is said and done I get to choose my attitude and I just don't want to add to a negative atmosphere. There's nothing worse than going to work where no one wants to be there.

Every day this week I have caught myself ready to push back from my desk to go tell someone, anyone about the latest happening that makes my boss the bad guy. In those moments I've prayed this prayer. Embarrassingly, I've prayed it too many times to count. Often the surrender I feel while doing so makes my eyes sting with tears. It is worth it to give up my petty momentary bitchfest designed to make myself look better at someone else's expense.

I must confess though that I have sent Dearest One several text messages that warn him I will need to vent on the way home.  Thankfully he does not encourage me to think bad about people. You know how that can go? You belly ache about someone and then they join you in the cesspool and then it feels like you have guck stuck to your skin and can't get it off. I'm grateful he knows I am venting and then can let it go.

The week has been exhausting. I am in bed at the same time a toddler goes to bed. Well, considering how much whining I've been tempted to do this week, maybe that's not so surprising.

Words To Ponder

"Fairly late in the catastrophic phase of my illness, I began to understand three facts I'd known in theory since early childhood but had barely plumbed the reality of.  They're things familiar to most adults who've bothered to watch the visible world and have sorted their findings with normal intelligence,  but abstract knowledge tend to vanish in a crisis. And from where I've been, the three facts stand at the head of any advice I'd risk conveying to a friend confronted with grave illness or other physical and psychic trauma. 

1. You're in your present calamity alone, fars as this life goes. If you want a way out, then dig it yourself, if there turns out to be any trace of a way. Nobody - least of a doctor - can rescue you now, not from the deeps of your own mind, not once they've stitched your gaping wound. 

2. Generous people - true practical saints, some of them boring as root canals - are waiting to give you everything on Earth but your main want, which is simply the person you used to be. 

3. But you're not that person now. Who'll you be tomorrow? And who do you propose to be from here to the grave, which may be hours or decades down the road?" 

~ Reynolds Price in A Whole New Life

This was such a worthwhile read. This man lived a path that I wouldn't wish on my dearest enemy. Can't wait to read more of his stuff.

 

Jesus Wept

I love me some Brene Brown:

Jesus Wept

Blessed Relief

The Sacred Wound               Meditation 22 of 53

Pain teaches a most counterintuitive thing—that we must go down before we even know what up is. It is first an ordinary wound before it can become a sacred wound. Suffering of some sort seems to be the only thing strong enough to destabilize our arrogance and our ignorance. I would define suffering very simply as “whenever you are not in control.” All healthy religion shows you what to do with your pain. If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it. If your religion is not showing you how to transform your pain, it is junk religion. It is no surprise that a crucified man became the central symbol of Christianity. If we cannot find a way to make our wounds into sacred wounds, we invariably become negative or bitter—because we will be wounded. That is a given. All suffering is potentially redemptive, all wounds are potentially sacred wounds. It depends on what you do with them. Can you find God in them or not? If there isn't some way to find some deeper meaning to our suffering, to find that God is somehow in it, and can even use it for good, we will normally close up and close down, and the second half of our lives will, quite frankly, be small and silly. Adapted from Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality, p. 25

If you go to the link in the title of this meditation it will take you to a page where I receive these daily emails from.The one above, in light of all this past year has held, spoke to me this morning. I believe that my inability to find a way to make my wound into a sacred wound was what was leading me to bitterness. I don't know if I have found any deeper meaning to it all. 

One of the insights I gained last weekend during my silent retreat was that I was holding a grudge against the surgeon for my reaction to the way things went with the mixed up pathology report and everything that happened after that. I am grateful for that insight. 

Tonight at Mass I had a strong feeling of consolation. Blessed relief.

What I've Been Up To

I recently spent three days in silence and solitude. Well, I didn't quite last the full three days. I caved in about three hours before my 72 hours were up. For a first try I was happy with that. Much of the time I was content to be silent and alone. There were times when I just wanted to talk to someone and I felt antsy.

The worst was when I sent Dearest One a text late at night to come make sure the noise I was hearing outside was not a bear. He concluded - after hearing the same noises outside the house later - and because the hair on the back of his neck stood up when he stepped outside - that it was more likely a cougar than a bear. Gives me the shivers to think about it.

My dog stayed with me in the holiday trailer for company - well truthfully I had my dog along so he wouldn't drive Dearest One batty in the house looking for me for three days straight - but I knew if I started talking to the dog I wouldn't shut up, so I didn't.

I found it soothing to sit and look out over our pasture and watch the birds flit between the fence posts and barbed wire. The weather was lovely and warm. A touch of mugginess with plenty of heat. Sitting in my lawn chair reading a book or just sitting and doing nothing. I soaked it up. It felt like a beautifully simple few days.

Three weeks ago today I wrote in my journal, 'the despair has lifted." I am so relieved that it's still true and that I am generally happy these days. Hopeful. Thanks be to God.

Showing Up

"And may you always remember that obstacles in the path are not obstacles, they ARE the path." ~ Jane Catherine Lotter

Yesterday I had coffee with a good friend, the one who suggested I write a lament to God at that gathering we were both at. She said she'd been quite concerned about me after that get together because I seemed so different than I used to be. She gently asked me if anyone had suggested to me the idea of consolations and desolations to me.

Unexpectedly, tears rose within me as I nodded and managed to choke out, "I hope it doesn't last forever." When she commented that I'd been very honest with my feelings throughout this cancer journey I gulped and tried to swallow my tears. I took a few minutes to try and compose myself but was unsuccessful. Through tears I said to her, "It's the most courageous thing I've done."

Crying in a coffee shop is not my idea of a good time. Being with a friend who has no desire to fix me but simply bears witness to my journey is. Those tears were the most painful ones I've experienced in a while.

At my final appointment with a specialist yesterday we talked about amalgamating my experience of this past year into who I am now. He wryly observed that life changing circumstances are just that, life changing. It would be so much easier to accept if my life changing experience seemed to be bearing good fruit. Maybe I need to let go of what good fruit looks like, too.

I returned to the practice of Centering Prayer just over a month ago. It is an internal consent to God's presence and action in my life. This week I started a month long course in Welcoming Prayer. Showing up. That's what I feel like I am doing.

Yesterday showed me that this is where I am at. I trust it is part of a bigger picture. And that desolations do not last forever. This popped into my head as I typed that:

I have always loved this song.

Waning Days Of Summer

I woke in the night and saw stars in the sky. It's been months since it's been dark enough in the night to see stars. It's lovely and bittersweet because it means winter's coming. But not today.

Doing laundry is on my to do list. Earlier I thought of my grandma and how she noted in her diary every Monday how grateful she was for her washing machine. Her wringer washing machine. Mondays and laundry were synonymous in her world. I like the predictability of that.

My priest commented yesterday that he could tell I was feeling better because it showed in my face. It's always nice to have outside confirmation of what is going on inside. I feel better for the most part. No longer feeling depressed. Spiritually I still feel stuck sometimes and I am at a loss as to what to do about that. I am headed to Adoration this week. It is a refuge for me and a laying bare of the soul.

At a meeting the other day I listened to someone just out of treatment, be completely surrendered to their God in incredibly difficult circumstances. I had to ask myself if I was completely surrendered to mine. I feel like being completely surrendered will mean spouting off pat answers that are not based on reality and I have a gagging feeling in my throat at the thought. I will be so glad when I no longer have invisible walls go up in nanoseconds. I just don't know how to get there. I think I am past having walls go up and then someone says something - thanks Jesus for some random happening - and I shut down instantly. It's not how I want to feel.

Open. I want to be open.

Anniversaries

A year ago today I had the fine needle biopsy that led eventually to my cancer diagnosis. There are a bunch of little one year dates coming up. I'm trying not to run ahead of myself but I am looking forward to being on the other side of them.

By the time I am we will have celebrated the wedding of only daughter and the birth of our first grandchild (it's a boy!) I am incredibly grateful to be here to witness these milestones.

A Simple Human Act

This bit from this book caused an acute sob to rise from within me:

"We traveled to Boston to see a specialist, at the time the only person in North America who was doing research on my particular disease, and he terrified us by speculating - irresponsibly, it now seems to me - that my symptoms suggested that he cancer might already have caused amyloidosis in my heart:  a death sentence.

That was the cloud I was walking under early one bright winter morning, maybe a week after the exchange of emails with the preacher, when I heard my name. I turned around to see him half running down the street toward me as he tried to pull a flannel shirt on over his T-shirt, careful not to trip over his untied shoes. I was in no mood to chat, especially not to an enthusiastic preacher, and all my thoughts were hostile. But I stopped, we had a kind of introduction as he tied his shoes, and then he asked if he could walk me to the train station. Those days are a blur to me, but I remember two things from that morning very clearly. I remember Matt straining to find some language that would be true to his own faith and calling and at the same time adequate to the tragedy and faithlessness - the tragedy of faithlessness - that he perceived in me. And I remember when we parted there was an awkward moment when the severity of my situation and our unfamiliarity with each other left us with no words, and in a gesture that I'm sure was completely unconscious, he placed his hand over his heart for just a second as a flicker of empathetic anguish crossed his face. It sliced right through me. It cut through the cloud I was living in and let the plain day pour its balm upon me. It was, I am sure, one of those moments when we enact and reflect a mercy and mystery that are greater than we are, when the void of God and the love of God, incomprehensible pain and the peace that passeth understanding, come together in a simple human act. We stood for a minute in the aftermath, not talking, and then went our suddenly less separate ways."

 

Greater Than You

I have had this quote from this book taped to my wall for several years now:

``What makes for an authentic personal story is that the hero is not you; the heroes are the people who put up with or helped you or accompanied you along the way. The star of the story is not you; the star is something greater than you.``

Ouch.

 

The Ways We Comfort

More from this book:

"Part of the overall plan seems to be that no matter how sad, wounded, neurotic, or needy we are, that may be exactly what some other person needs us to be at that time. We don't know the ways we comfort and save each other, not only in spite of our wounds, but also in some cases, because of them.  No one is likely to be more sympathetic to an alcoholic than another alcoholic. No one is likely to have more compassion than the person, guided by love, who needs compassion him or herself. That is why we must never judge. That is why we must always look for the good in the other."

 

To Give Up Misery

From a recently read deeply compelling book who is quoting another author:

"To give up a misery....is to deprive the ego of one of its main sources of nourishment.....In order to feel meaningful, the old self must always be either dramatically weak and miserable, or dramatically strong and unselfish, busily helping the weak and miserable and deciding what is right for them...the "new self," on the other hand, will, when in misery, ask for help with simple acceptance and willingness to let go no matter how empty he may feel; or....he will give of himself without any sense of being thereby increased in significance." 

 

Grace

This past weekend one of the women from this conversation spied me at a community event and immediately came and sat beside me. The first thing out of her mouth was how she had mulled our last conversation over in her head and wanted to apologize to me. It was a very grace filled moment. We had a good conversation about pat answers and I was able to share honestly with her how difficult that conversation had been for me. She was a model of graciousness and humility to me. Her sincerity and generosity of spirit touched me. She had not one iota of defensiveness about her. It humbled me.

Then I listened as she shared with me how her Catholic raised son-in-law wasn't a Christian when he married into the family but was saved now, praise God. Oh, Lordy. I just listened and stayed quiet, finding the good in this young man's growing faith.

There is always so much to learn.

Give Time A Chance

I had a long talk with an old friend yesterday. Someone who has seen her share of sorrows. She told me sometimes there are no answers. No way to make sense of tragedies, of life's circumstances. Somehow I heard her, believed her and my resistance faded. Tonight I prayed one of Anne Lamott's prayers, "help me, help me, help me."

When I last saw my grief counsellor and was feeling angst about not knowing how this experience of cancer has changed me he said, "you are in the process of integrating that experience into who you are now. It takes time." My friend commented today that time itself was a cross. That to be able to give time a chance to do its work was hard.

I noticed when this long time friend commented that I seemed to be doing good and preceded her words with, 'don't get mad at me' that I still have some resistance to admitting it. It comes from feeling like I am being disloyal to or diminishing the journey to just be happy. But really, she's right, I am doing good.