Category: cancer

When My Best Isn’t Good Enough

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Another co-worker got promoted today.

When I read the news, my immediate instinct was to walk away from my computer screen. I went to the kitchen and mindlessly opened a can of cat food for the kitties. My fingers were cold and tingly as I grabbed their food bowls off the dish rack.

My colleague is a great worker, young and smart and hard-working, and the promotion is deserved. But it’s yet another painful reminder, as others surpass me in speed and status, how stuck I am despite my best effort.

I tend to think people should be rewarded in proportion to the amount of effort they give to their work. Hard workers deserve more than the lazies. Greater sacrifice deserves greater reward. It’s one of the reasons I’m prone to working myself to the bone – I’ve so often been enticed by status and recognition; to hear the words, “you’re great,” “there’s no one like you,” “you’re indispensable.”

But oh, how dispensable I am. Even on my hardest-working, near-bone-breaking, days.

Going through cancer and its aftermath, I’ve thought often about disability and how the playing field will never be level for those of us who have this cross to bear. No matter how hard we try or how much we sacrifice, the simple truth is that our disability diminishes our capacity, and we are physically and/or mentally unable to do the same amount of quality work in the same amount of time as those who do not have to carry these burdens.

Life isn’t fair.

I wish I could be a better person and celebrate those who are recognized for their unhindered, disability-free achievements.. I have hope that someday I will. But for now, I mostly hurt.

Because my best isn’t good enough.

I filled the cats’ food dishes and walked them over to their feeding spot, the kitties leading the way with cheerfully upright tails. As I watched them lap up their lunch and purr in contentment, I dug deeper into the pain I was feeling about my best not being good enough, and those words kept repeating in my head.

Not good enough. Not good enough. Not good enough.

Good enough, for who?

Can my best be good enough for me? Because I know in my heart of hearts that my best is not for the approval of man, but for the glory of God.

Though my colleagues and bosses cannot appreciate my best efforts and more often than not cannot even see my sacrificial efforts to go beyond my call of duty – God sees. And when I work for him, striving for excellence for his glory only and in obedience to what he has given me to do in this season, with the strength and provision he provides me, I trust he is pleased. Even though my best only amounts to filthy rags in his holiness and perfection, he accepts my works of obedience with pleasure.

And that should be – will be – more than good enough for me.

10 is where

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10 is where we stand at the precipice of some big unknown.

I expected this while traversing through the land of nine, through which I marched alert and ready – noting every time he reached for my hand before crossing a street, the teetering ratio of “mom” to “mommy;” tracking the fading interest in trains and fast cars and the growing intrigue for computers and mechanics.

10 is where cancer came back to meet mommy for the fourth time. 10 is where he starts wondering out loud what it means that it keeps coming back, and when, if ever, it will stay away for good.

10 is where we began to discuss death, the frailty of humanity. All living things will one day die – nothing on this earth, including us, will live on forever.

10 is where we learned about the birds and the bees, sitting on the couch one Tuesday afternoon when he couldn’t understand how an unwed woman could possibly become pregnant.

10 is also where he began asking big questions about his birth and adoption stories and wondering – out loud – what his birth mom might have looked like.

10 is where a sweet ignorance gives way to a little more reality.

10 is where innocence gives way to a deeper understanding of this fallen world.

This is the Beginning.

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They’ve come to cut her down, my beloved Japanese Maple, rooted strong and proud in our front yard. We tried for years to save her, but her roots are decaying and her upper branches stopped pushing out those beautiful star-shaped leaves for too many consecutive springs. She tried so hard to make it, awkwardly shooting out bushels of baby leaves up and down her trunk to catch as much sunshine as she could to stay alive, because she knew her roots were dying. It was all she could do – but it was not enough.

There comes a point when your everything is not enough, and it’s clear it’s time to call it. So today, they are here to cut her down. Today, I am choking, struggling to say goodbye because – I love her. Call me crazy, but my Maple gave me so much joy. She was magnificently beautiful, especially in the fall when her green turned golden red like bright fire. It was pure magic when her fiery dress, like a twenties flapper’s, shimmered in the breeze. Fall was her season, and mine.

We had talked about planting another tree to take her place. “A new beginning,” he said, as if it would comfort me. It didn’t. How could I replace her?

I watch through my window as they take their loud electric tools of death to her limbs and trunk, and I cry. I turn my gaze to the suitcases sitting next to our door, holding two weeks’ worth of clothes and toiletries we will take across the country tomorrow to see the specialists.

Because the cancer is back, again.

I’m sobbing now, because I feel like my beloved Maple is me – trying so hard all these years to stay alive, losing hair and body and mind to try to catch as much luck as I could. I stare out at her stump, then suitcase; stump, suitcase. And I wonder if my time to go is around the corner, too. These feels so much like an end – but. I will choose to believe.

This is the beginning.

Green Balloon

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What’s bursting out of me today is that I’m really tired.
(Does tired “burst”?
Maybe oozing or seeping might be better –
like a balloon’s slow deflate, sink-floating, never to return back to the heights it once knew.)

They’ve cut five tumors out of me already. By this time tomorrow, it will be seven.
More hope, energy, dollar bills seeping from each slice;
I ooze, I bleed, I deflate.

BUT. I stay afloat.
I have not touched the ground yet, my string still dancing in the wind, pivoting around the mountains and through the forest tress that always wave hello…. I ride the wind, the gust, the storms that blow through and once in a while raise me back to the heights of my youth again.

Now I know, grief is green.

Green like the Hulk,
it sometimes rages and smashes.

Other times, it is almost delicate,
a baby reed bending and blowing with its sisters.

It is green with envy when they have what you never will,
or green like the benjamins spent on kayak or amazon to
fill the holes you can’t stop feeling.

Grief is green bananas with no sweet
and green gators with sharp teeth.

Grief isn’t always angry.
It is sometimes gentle, like a mother
and soft, like moss.

And every once in a while, like a green deflating balloon,
it floats.

The beginning

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My first 24 hours here in Germany have come and gone, and the themes thus far have definitely been:

  • Eat lots
  • Sleep lots
  • Potty lots
  • Needles and pills (lots)

Due to COVId protocols, I’ll be in quarantine for the first week I’m here. Meals and jars of drinking water are left outside my door. Machines and IV drips are wheeled in and out of my room by nurses covered from head to toe. The hours go by slowly in between, and I lay in my bed in my small, tidy room to read a book or write an email or watch the clouds outside my window only to fall asleep, over and over again.

There is a dominant narrative playing out in this Round 3 in which I am utterly dependent on everything and everyone but myself. I have zero control over my schedule, the cruddy internet connection, my diet, the bills, the hives on my ankles and legs. I can’t ask J to grab some aloe vera gel at Target for me, or step outside for a cooling evening walk around the block, or go to the kitchen and make some scrambled eggs for breakfast, or order a yoga mat from Amazon with 2-day Prime delivery, or work a few hours during my downtime. But!–I can eat, potty, sleep, repeat.

I feel like a baby, vulnerable and utterly helpless.

And in so many way, it feels appropriate: that God would strip me of everything I’ve ever had control of (or thought I had control of) in my life and the toxic self-sufficiently that comes with it all, to re-birth me from that humble heap of rubble. It is appropriate that God would remind me in his gentle fatherly manner what my priority is right now and where I must look to for my needs to be met. In my nakedness and hunger, like a typical baby whose only demands are ever to be held and fed, I look to my Abba Father and know he alone always will.

And this reminder is how I will sleep like a baby tonight.

These are the things I remember

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We decided on Monday that we would live out our two days of oblivion to the fullest. No fears or worries, no what-ifs, no planning. We would laugh and enjoy the hours as if nothing in our world had changed, because aside from a bandage and some bruises, nothing had changed. For now.

We binged the Olympics and Korean dramas. We stayed up and slept in. We let the kid go wild with friends and video games. I’m not sure I ever brushed my teeth.

I woke up on Wednesday fully alert, aware that our oblivion-fest was over. The clock was reset, and now we would wait.

We went about our morning routine, but it felt different. I threw on some clothes and put my hair up in a bun. J and I grabbed our morning drinks and we went out the door for our daily morning walk, leaving S sprawled out on the couch with his blanket and PBS cartoons. We made it past our driveway in silence. Our conversation was awkward, lacking its familiar flow that matched the cadence of our steps.

“It’s such a perfect morning.”
“Yeah, it already feels a bit like fall.”
“I mean, it really could be nothing.”
“Totally. Even Dr. H said it might just be scar tissue.”
“Yeah.”

Permeating our awkward chit-chat was a weighty understanding that our world might change today. And it did. At 11:37AM, we received news that the cancer has returned.

—

Fear can have so much power over our minds. It deceives us into believing lies. I know truth extinguishes fear, and truth is what I choose to cling to in the darkness.

These are the things I remember:

  • God is with my family – he will help us and strengthen us; he will uphold us with his right hand. (Isaiah 41:10)
  • God will never leave us or forsake us. (Deut.31:6)
  • God is our refuge and strength; our very present help in trouble. (Psalm 46:1-3)
  • His peace will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus as we present our requests to him in prayer and thanksgiving. (Phil 4:6-7)
  • God will give us wisdom when we ask him in faith. (James 1:5-8)
  • He tests our faith through trials to bless us with steadfastness. (James 1:2-4)
  • God is working all things for our good and his glory. (Rom.8:28)

Cancer is a mighty beast. But God is mightier. God is love; he is unchanging; he is true. And God has everything moving according to his good and perfect plan.

Threads of hope

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Dear God,

You were with us this afternoon, in that cramped, cold patient room that’s become too familiar, when we heard my oncologist say the words “no evidence of cancer.” Oh—what bright hope that’s held in this delicate string of four little words! Thank you for weaving this soft, warm, sparkling thread into my humble story. It is so precious.

You are with me tonight, displaying in front of me this tapestry that is my life. We inspect it together. It’s taking a long time. I come up close, my finger grazing the fibers as I try counting all the non-pretty threads, brown and gray and fraying. There are so many. Honestly, Father, I would have chosen a whole different color palate for my life story. I kind of wish you would have invited me on a Michael’s shopping spree so I could pick out all my colors myself….

You let me linger here, but not for long. You draw me back. And from this distance, I see—it is beautiful. The odd mix of colors, the intricate pattern, the fraying edges all come together, masterfully woven to spell one word: hesed.

My life’s tapestry tells the magnificent story of your loyal, steadfast love.

Those muddy grays and browns tell of cancer’s pits and valleys into which the enemy threw me, and it was in those dark, lonely places that I saw your face clearer than I ever had, even from the brightest blue of the tallest mountaintops. Alone in the pit of deepest fear, you lifted my head and pointed my gaze heavenward, filling my heart to the brim with hope and a longing for eternity by your side.

I see all the times I doubted you, forgot you, did not praise you; the many nights I lie awake without enough peace to drift into sleep. I was foolish, putting more trust in my research and knowledge and plans than in your omniscience. Yet you did not condemn or abandon me; you gently wrapped your arms around my shivering figure, never leaving this arrogant sinner’s side. Hesed.

You are always with me and for me, and the grays and browns of this tapestry testify to this. In a deep, sincere way that only you will understand, I cherish them more than I do the sparkly thread of hope you added in today. For every thread that you’ve chosen for me, I trust you, and I thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

In Jesus’ precious name I pray,

Amen.

New words

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It is morning.

Night’s current spits me onto morning’s shore, and I wake twisted in black seaweed that is my hair. Dead hair abounds: limp, black squiggles across my white pillowcase, between my fingers, strung on my sleeves.

It’s wet and gray outside my window and I note how my insides feel the same. I try brushing myself free from the hair, judging each strand for betraying me like this, then make my way slowly to the bathroom. At the sink, the water running, there is an image that stares back at me of a girl I know of but do not recognize, like a character in a good novel whose story soaks your heart but whose face remains a blur.

My scalp is clearly visible through my hair. I feel like an alien.

The hair that’s still on my head, though sparse, provides me a sense of normalcy through cancer treatment. How merciful such a simple, superficial thing as the appearance of normalcy can be in the quest for survival, bobbling one’s head to the surface here and there for air.

Please, Lord, let my hair hang on. These are the words I’ve muttered daily, half a prayer, half a pep-talk to the sad little strands. But today, as I stare at the face in my bathroom mirror as the strands float into the sink like silent fall leaves, I find myself whispering new words.  Words I never dreamed of uttering before.

If losing all my hair would bring you more glory, Lord, have your way with me.

Bob Ross’ endorphins

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There’s a difference between the thought of mortality and the thought of life being fleeting. At least in my mind space, there is. Mortality is darker.

Most days, I don’t think about mortality. But it snuck into my mind last night–like a dark, eerie fog–while we were watching Bob Ross paint his happy trees on screen. We invite him into our room almost every night, lights dimmed, watching him do his magic as he lulls us to sleep with his sweeping strokes, soothing voice.

J handed me my melatonin pills, which I chased down with warm water, and I tucked myself into bed. Bob was painting a mountain scene tonight, a darker color palate than his usual but his face was as smiley as ever. I just love the joy that radiates from his eyes.

I wondered what it would be like to hang out with him for a day. A hipster-ish coffee shop and a squirrel came together in my mind. And his calming smile.

“Bob is still alive, right?” I floated the question into the air, to no one in particular.

“I don’t think so…I think he passed away a while ago from cancer.”

My eyes moved from the screen to J, who was getting ready to climb into bed. I couldn’t tell if he was just guessing, or if the comment came from a place of knowledge. I sat up in bed.

“What? But he’s not even that old! How old was he?” My face felt a little warm.

“In his 50’s, I think?”

I sunk back down under the covers. The room started fading to dark.

Will I live to see 50?

The thought took over my headspace and filled my veins before I even had a chance, a moment, to contain it. I closed my eyes. My mind instantly flickering images of my widowed husband, my motherless child.

No, no, nonono NO.  But–Bob’s so happy! Why didn’t his endorphins help keep cancer at bay? He of all people shouldn’t have died from cancer. What does this mean for me?

It’s a ridiculous thought, I know, that whole endorphins thing. But my mind kept rolling with the crazy and the nonsense and fear was now racing through my veins.

There’s this thing my therapist had taught me at our last session, where I picture my fears floating on leaves down a quiet river to watch them drift gently away from me, creating mental distance between my fears and my reality. He taught me this technique to use in situations like this, where I become paralyzed by the Big Dark Things my mind dreams up.

Lying in bed with my eyes still shut and now wet, I float my mortality leaf down the Eno River of my mind. I speak slowly into my mind space and my quivering heart.

“Death by cancer” is just a thought.

It is not my present reality.

Float away, fear.

I watch my fear–a blackish blob on a little green leaf–float down the river until out of view. I leave the riverbank and walk my mortal legs to the throne of my Savior, falling at His feet with no words, only tears.

Mortal legs, immortal spirit. Cling, cling to Him.

Float those fears to Jesus.