Cancer Post #2- The 'It's Probably Nothing' Summer

I just kind of knew.  It’s easy to say that now, knowing what I know as I live the day in and out of this empty life called cancer.  I had felt a lump in May as we were packing up our things in Atlanta, about to send them off to WI as we ventured out on a 2 month Summer Sabbatical.  It was supposed to be a time of rest and joy as we remembered what was behind and looked ahead with anticipation of what was to come, but, in the pit of my stomach, I just kind of knew it might be cancer.  I couldn’t shake the thought and I battled with it each and every day.  At night as I was falling asleep I would beg God to take the lump from me only to awake each morning and find that it was still there.

The first thing Google tells you when you enter your symptoms is: “Do not panic.  It is probably nothing!”  Over and over again the internet reminded me that it was likely a cyst and was just a part of aging. I was advised to give it a few months as it likely would dissolve and if not, see my Dr.  After all, the odds were in my favor as 2 out of 10 women are diagnosed with breast cancer in a lifetime and I hadn’t even lived half of my life yet.  

The thing you should know about me is I am your classic Enneagram 6 which means worry and anxiety run high on the regular.  I am a worst case scenario person, always.  I imagine the worst of the worst with hopeful anticipation of the day it will NOT come true and I can roll my eyes at myself yet again and carry on with life.  “Hope for the best, but plan for the worst.”  That has been my life’s motto and up to this point it has served me well until the ‘worst’ actually happened.  

And so, as we traveled this summer and dreamed of our “best years yet” a heaviness hung over me that I had to continually push aside.  I kept thinking” maybe God is giving us this beautiful summer because it will be my last.”  I sobbed through a few date nights on our family trip to Puerto Rico because of all the ‘what if’s.’ and at one point I reached out to a few of my praying friends and asked them to pray. 

In the middle of summer we bought and moved into a small character home we had always dreamed of.  Our house is also a block from a beautiful cemetery, so naturally, all I could think about was death.  Doesn’t being a 6 sound lovely?

The summer along with the lump continued into late summer and while hiking across Spain I remember one night while editing some pictures I had the sudden urge to use my ‘erase’ feature.  I decided to edit the hair off my head to indeed confirm that I would look hideous bald.  Certainly if I did something THAT ridiculous and paranoid, it would guarantee it wouldn't come true. 

As I think back to those moments it feels like our sabbatical summer seems to have gotten lost.  However, I really am so grateful that it even happened at all.  We feel like God protected us from “knowing” too soon which would have put an end to all of our plans.  How my tumor mimicked symptoms of a harmless cyst so we carried on as though it was.  

We are grateful for the provision of a house in a market that was said to be impossible to buy in so that I have a place to be sick surrounded by people who love us, even if I can see the graveyard out the window.  We are thankful for the beautiful opportunity we had as a family to “live”, as my kids say, in Puerto Rico for 2 weeks as we were in between addresses.  We are also still in awe that we got to hike the Camino in Spain which was our highest of highs so far as a couple and opened us up to some new Spiritual realities.  (For more on the Camino, check out my Camino Blog Post Series Here)  

We wrapped up the summer with our family at a beautiful WI cabin on a lake, our last bit of normal before the hammer fell. And then, on the first day our health insurance was active, the diagnosis came and man oh man, are we grateful for insurance!  

It’s good to remind myself the ways in which God’s hand was in this summer because that means He is in our terrible-awful-no good-very bad days as well.  Although I don’t really understand any of what is happening to me and would have chosen a million other ways if I could, I do still choose to believe that His ways truly are higher than mine simply because I can look behind and see His Hand.

This Thanksgiving season, when it doesn’t feel fair to ask myself to be thankful, a part of me actually can be because although I'm not promised tomorrow, I can look behind at the beautiful things He has done and beam with gratitude, and this time, I only have to look back as far as the summer.  

Isaiah 55:8-9  “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,”

declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts”.