Cancer's Paradoxes

"Brace yourself for hard news.” When the radiologist looked into my eyes and altered my course, I recognized immediately the first paradox of cancer.   In an instant, I knew myself to be both a weakling and a warrior. 

Membership in this club calls me to both accept and fight, surrender and draw my weapons.  I’m afraid and I’m crazy strong.  I’m grateful and I’m angry.

The word malignant makes me want to exercise all day long and nap all day long.  I feel the need to both ban sugar and order a double scoop of Rocky Road.  I want to both sip carrot and kale juice and chug jumbo, salted margaritas.  I want to eat only super foods and only bacon.  I want to protect, defend and fight, but I also want to live, live, and live.

 

There is researching and being still.  Knowing I'll be OK and fear that whispers maybe I won’t. It is great confusion and intense clarity.  It’s reading all the pamphlets and processing all the feelings, and then trashing those pamphlets and distracting myself with a solid Netflix binge. 

 

My faith is weighted with paradox too.  It is thanking the Lord and yelling at Him in the next breath.  It is believing God is good, though I’m annoyed by what He's allowed.  My nightstand is piled high with faith building books that I occasionally push aside for something irreverent.  But then, after a good laugh, it’s the pages with spiritual truth that I long to close the day with.  Because I feel both eternal perspective and fragile humanness, my faith is somehow both big and small.  My prayers have both all the words and none of them. 

 

And when I venture out, the big C makes me bold and it makes me shy.  I soak up attention and push it away.   I seem to either be talking about it when I don't feel like it or not talking about it when I do feel like it.  I make small talk when I feel like deep talk, and then I tell funny kid stories when someone wants to dip below the surface.  It’s an odd club to be in.

 

Mostly, I feel a level of bravery than I never fathomed. But even courage has its paradoxes.  I see it differently now.  Sometimes it roars and sometimes it whispers.  Sometimes it’s walking into the cancer center with my brave pants on and other times its staying home and letting friends be brave for me.  Sometimes it’s showing up where you know everyone will ask, and sometimes it’s trashing your plans and going for a pedicure.  Bravery attacks, but it also waits.  It studies and prepares, and then holds every thought captive.  It’s late night ugly cries and then belly laughs at highly inappropriate times.  It’s learning to receive care, but then standing strong on your own two feet in a hospital gown. 

Like so many other things in this wild and precious life, it is beautiful and it is messy.  Highs and lows.  Shards of glass and rays of the brightest light. 


The funny thing is, though I am not grateful for IT, IT has given me much to be grateful for. I’ve mined for treasure and found it in abundance. I’ve felt my heart pound hard and then felt peace fall like rain.  Moments of feeling alone don’t last long, because I feel the Lord so very near.  I can’t get stuck in a wallow because of my crazy band of cheerleading villagers.   I’ve been leaning in and listening, and there is a deep well of wisdom to scoop up.  There is so much to be grateful for that my cup spills over.  I am not happy with this, but I feel joy despite it.

 

I don't want to miss it. I don't want to pretend it's not real. I don’t want to call it a detour, or a bump in the road, and shut my eyes waiting for it all to be a survivor’s memory.  I expect God to do something IN it, so I surely don't want to tunnel under it or build a bridge over it, even when it really stinks.  So, I’ll keep my eyes wide open.

 

I’ll pray.   I’ll fight.  I’ll surrender.  I’ll cry.   I’ll laugh.   I’ll eat spinach.  I’ll eat cheeseburgers.  I’ll be still.  I’ll turn the volume up.  I’ll hike up mountains.  I’ll sit on the porch swing.  I’ll live every last moment of this life with all its paradoxes, both because of, and in spite of, the diagnosis. 

I’ll be simultaneously braver and weaker than ever before, and it’s a hard kind of good. 

Courage, dear heart.