beat it.

After the guy staged my cancer (3B, as it turned out), he sent me downstairs to get some blood taken for a work-up. I sat where I was told, and stuck my arm out.  Fifty percent.  That's the chance he gave me to make it five years.  Five years, I thought.  In five years, I'd be 31.  Will I ever be 31?  

The woman across the room from me was wearing a tee-shirt that said "Cancer Sucks."  

I have cancer, I thought to myself.  And then I started crying.  Just like that.  Her tee shirt--how did this tee-shirt come to mean anything at all to me, anything more than something that other people say, that other people care about?  But it did.  In that moment, that tee-shirt wasn't just anything, it was everything.  I hated that shirt and I hated her for wearing it and I hated that I hated it.  Because I had to care about it, now.  

So I cried. 

It's good for me to remember these things, because life is stressful.  And some days, when I'm staring down a pile of paperwork, wondering if I'll ever be doing work I really love, and annoyed that everyone in the world just doesn't do exactly what I want them to do, wishing that weight was a little easier to lose, money a little easier to make, faith a little easier to claim...some days, I need to remember something really simple:

Cancer sucks.  But I beat it.  And I will beat all the rest of those things as well, but even if I never do, I beat the cancer.  I am alive.

I am alive.  I am alive.  I am alive.  

(Side bar: that tee-shirt was ugly, and she should throw it away.)

if then

I'll tell you the absolute best part of my job.  

I work with homeless people, and in particular, quite a few young women.  Most of them were raised without fathers, by mothers embittered by the world, unable to give anything good to their daughters.  Some of my girls have been shouted at, called names, hit, kicked, neglected, raped and molested by the very people they depended on to protect and nurture them--moms, aunts, uncles, family friends, dads.  

So they turn to the streets.  They take up with men who treat them the same.  And then they somehow cross my path.  

Which means that at least once a week, I get to look one of these women in the eyes, and say this: "You are valuable.  You are worthy of love, and care, and investment.  You are more than your past.  You're  more than what those people have told you that you are.  You are wildly valuable and precious, and I believe without a single doubt that you can be more, and do more, than this.  So let's do it."  

No lie, some times I want to walk away from them.  They hold on to bad patterns, and old, useless mindsets-- things that served them well in the past, I'm sure, but are now hindrances, shackles.  I want to tell them to friggin' knock it off.  Stop going back to that abusive boyfriend.  Show up for your appointments.  no more excuses.  You're getting this amazing chance at a new beginning, I want to tell them.  You are literally being lifted from the streets.  

But then I don't make an important phone call.  I neglect a promise.  I ignore an opportunity.  

As I move on from cancer, I'm realizing that the motivational potency of "if only I live, then I'll do this..." is kind of a myth.  People are people, and I'm a person.  We do what we know.  And yet, I don't want to waste what I now know.  No more excuses...

His and His alone: remix

Today is Day 8 of the wait for my most recent test, a six-month check-up to make sure that I am still cancer-free.  I am 3 years and 2 months away from being a five-year survivor, a point at which I've imagined some of the awful fear of cancer will dissipate.

In the mean time, I'm trying to remember, and to emulate the girl who wrote this (way back in January in 2012, about 3-weeks post-diagnosis, titled "His and His alone"):

At times over the past three weeks, I've felt so awful, I've prayed that God would take me. Then, knowing that the worst is really yet to come, I feel even more resolved. "Father," I've prayed, "I cannot take my own life, but would You protect me from the treatments, the pain, the restlessness, the sleeplessness, the fear? Would You take me now, before it really starts?" 

I'm alive. Apparently--there's purpose. 

Whatever anything is, it ought to be honest. So I'm giving you the real deal. 

About three weeks ago, I found out that at 26, and with no risk factors, I have a cancer that gives me a 50-60% chance of life at the 5-year mark. 

Immediately, I knew that I wanted to live this thing for God. Right at this moment, I know that strongly. But in between--I've lived a decade in only days. 

I've been angry at God, doubled over in tears in the shower, shouting silently at Him about pain and promises. I've been ecstatic with Him, thanking Him over and again for the opportunity to praise Him in that same pain. I've fallen asleep on the bathroom floor, too nauseous to get to bed. I've cried openly as the nurse tries to find a vein, struggling to tell her that I just found out, I'm just so scared. I've learned that each person I know deals differently, and because each is so precious to me, it's worth it to figure out how to deal together. 

I've been hopeless. And today, hope-filled. I've been humbled by the sheer number and force of the prayers storming heaven on my behalf. I've known, somewhere, that this is a powerful testimony if only I can keep faith. And I've felt, just as gently, that He'll keep my faith, as He keeps everything, so that in the end the final testimony is His and His alone. 

It's easy to imagine that you love God when the first call comes. The oncologist says, "You have cancer," and you say, "God will give me peace." And then, you're violently throwing up a saltine cracker and a couple sips of ginger ale, thinking, "Jesus, some peace would be great right about now." 

The truth is that if I praise Him, I do it because He rallies within me, and if I show strength, it's really His you're seeing, and if I seem at all courageous, Jesus is working a miracle. But I'll tell you something--if that's what this life of faith is about, if that's the secret to the incredible joy I see in the lives of life-long Christians, if that's what causes them to go out and give extravagantly, and live dangerously, and love courageously--this cancer is worth it.

What hard things in your life have been worth it?  

the God who is faithful

I write to work through.  Usually I do that somewhat privately.  Today, I'm inviting you all into that.  

If you're reading this, you're a friend of mine, and you know the basics-- that I'm 28, and engaged to be married in a few weeks, a Christian, a lover of Lifetime movies, and once best friend to Rory Gilmore.  I just moved to Pittsburgh, and because they're winning, am becoming a Buccos fan though I look absolutely atrocious in black and yellow.  

I'm starting this blog, though, for more than the basics.  Writing helps me think.  In putting words to paper, I can make sense of what happens to me.  And by sharing it, I believe that I am bringing you all into that process.  I like that.  

So, to start, I'm thinking about this.  I wrote it about a week after I was diagnosed with cancer in 2011, and entitled it "the call": 

A week ago yesterday morning, I found out that I have cancer. 

When I stopped the crying, and the phone calls, I felt a truth rise in me. 

I don't want to miss this opportunity. I don't want to just get through this. I've prayed too often for wisdom, and courage, and for closeness with God, to let this pass. I don't believe that God is causing this cancer, but I know that He's allowing it, and friends--I don't want to be victorious, I don't want to be the picture of someone stronger for the wear, or a proud cancer survivor. I want to be the one weakened by reliance on our powerful God. I want to be humbled by a greater understanding of His glory, and His grace. 

I've learned over the past week that it's much easier to say those things in the moments when I'm not having terrible stomach cramping, or vomiting, or fear. So my greatest prayers are for the worst moments. The moments when I know that God is with me, but when I start to wonder why He allows the pain. 

The truth is that I don't need to know. I believe that nothing is lost in the economy of God. 

I don't know what's ahead. My appointment with the oncologist is tomorrow, and I might not even know then what all of this means. Will treatment be straightforward, or complicated? Will it be taken care of once and for all, leaving me to a normal life? Will I live with scars? Will I die? 

I don't know. 

I do know that I serve a loving, and a gracious God who has plans both for my life, and for my death, as He does for you, and that if His strength is made perfect in my weakness, then I am not in such a terrible place.

I've been re-reading things like this, things I wrote early on in my struggle with cancer, to begin to piece together what has happened to me over the last two years, and how I want to move forward with both a deep appreciation for the past, and optimism about the future (both challenging things after a life-threatening diagnosis).  

But for now... praise be to the God who is faithful.  So faithful.  

My fiance, Jon, is really much better at eliciting the thoughts and responses of readers, but I'll take a stab at it -- how has God been faithful in your life?  Some of you don't believe in God, so tell me how you pieced together your life after something difficult?  Where and how did you find meaning from the pain?  Have you ever faced death?