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6/06/2016

Silencing lies, Quenching my anger

I am angry.
I am not gonna sugarcoat it or lie about it.
I am angry. Really, really angry!
Don't think me any different.
Don't think me any braver.
I do want to climb a mountain so I can scream at the top of my lungs "WHY!!!!!! Why me? Why now? Why cancer?"
I am angry. I am angry at other breast cancer patients.
I've had two ladies survivors of breast cancer visit me. They thought that being breast cancer survivors I could relate to them.
I don't relate to them. They just make me angrier.
My cancer came in 20 years earlier, theirs didn't. My children are not fully grown and I am not a grandma, they are. My cancer is not estrogen positive with better prognosis, theirs is. I am not menopausical, they are. And I am angry they think we are on the same boat, we are NOT.

I think of Kara, and I think maybe we are on the same boat.
But I get angry at the differences in our situations. She was 36 at diagnosis, I was 30. Her youngest was older than my eldest. She was married for 16 years, a DECADE more than I have.
As I write this, I see the pettiness in my thinking. It's a good thing to write one's thoughts down. You put them in a different light and see them as they are: LIES!
Name your thoughts by their true name.

Here are a few of the lies I've lived with:
Cancer is my constant companion. LIE!
My mind, that runs away with me, is my worst, constant companion. LIE!
Jesus is my constant companion. There you go!
Silence your lies with truth, His truth.
Isaiah 41:13
For I, the Lord your God, will hold your right hand,
Saying to you, ‘Fear not, I will help you.’

This past two days have been a battle with my lies and my anger. I want to scream INJUSTICE for getting a cancer women get in their 50s or older. And as I was screaming inside my head "injustice, injustice" I pondered on how the injustice is not to me. 

The injustice is to my mother. My mother might burry her child. My mother has to see her child suffer pain, disheartedness, discomfort, loss. No parent should have to witness that ever, no matter what age. She has been putting a front seeming strong and happy, when I know she is aching but can't show it. And who will she lean on? Who will she bear her soul to? She's been waking up at night to tend to the girls, massage my legs when I wake up in pain, wake up early to tend some more to the girls, coax me into eating and taking my meds, giving me my shots as I cringe in fear of needles, trying to get me to talk and walk and exercise when I shut her down and just want to lie in bed in self wallowing. Thank God for my mother. She knows when it's me talking and when it's the cancer. She is looking for her daughter hoping her daughter, the real one, can pull through, wishing she could do more to help her pull through, feeling powerless and useless when she is doing more than she thinks. I am just glad the girls can lift her spirit and make this time worthwhile. Yesterday Emmalee asked her why she was crying. She wasn't but she felt it was Emma's way of asking "Why are you sad?". She erupted in tears and Emmalee just padded her on the back with a "there, there." That munchkin is so special. 

The injustice is to my girls. My girls who are at such critical age in their develpment and learning are feeling my pain. I was moaning in bed from bone pain and Kaylee came running to my bedside with her barely intelligeble "Que pasha, mami? Que pasha?" (what's happening, mommy?). I told you on a previous post how she didn't let anyone other than me console her at nights. She finally lets grandma Linda console her, but demands she does it in the rocking chair. Emmalee comes into my room against protests that "Mommy is sleeping" from everyone. "It's ok, I just want to lie with her" she replies, comes into the bed and lies silently there with me sometimes caressing my bald head. How is she capable of that at three years of age? I had planned to start homeschooling in May. I had a schedule with sports on Monday, arts and crafts on Tuesday, numbers and letters on Wednesday, science and fun on Thursday, and reading and imagination on Friday. May is gone and all I can think of is all they're missing out. I haven't even been able to finish their cardboard playhouse and the rain already damaged it. 

The injustice is to my husband. My husband has no idea what to do with himself. I had to ask, for the tenth time, for him to quit his job. His job, which took him 14 months to get, was finally giving us some financial stability and growth in his curriculum, even though it meant we saw each other only twice a month. I begged him; "I can't survive this without you." He is scared. He is scared he can't provide. He is scared he doesn't know how to care for me, how to talk to me. He is scared he is doing everything wrong. How is that man who doesn't even have sisters will know how to raise two girls on his own? And just like my mother, who is he leaning on? Who is he talking to? I fear they are so alone in their own pain, too occupied with my pain to tend to theirs. 

The injustice is to my family. It's to my sister who called me yesterday to tell me she got a raise in her job and will be able to send me more money. She cried with me as she told me she is mortified of losing her sister, of living in world without me and all she can do to help is send money, so she rejoiced she could send more. I just forget how others are suffering, including my dad who comes by just to see me for a few seconds so he can carry on with his day, even though he is becoming less skilled at hiding the sadness behind his eyes.

All that sadness and struggle is born out of love. 
I don't know if my fate will be Kara's fate. Even if I had the extra 8 years she did, I would still not want to go and neither did she. I mourn her everyday without having met her because I walked in her shoes, even if I feel my shoes are less lucky. My shoes could be luckier and I could beat cancer. Or my shoes could be luckier and I could not beat cancer but walk this journey better because I had Kara's example in my life. I had her, and that makes my shoes luckier already.  

It isn't injustice. Our days were numbered from the day we were born. 
Suffering, as Kara passionately advocated, showed even more strongly the goodness of God. 
This life is not the end game.
1 Peter 1:3-9
3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, 5 who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. 6 In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. 7 These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. 8 Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, 9 for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls. 

Yes, it's hard to endure, but I have the Cross. I can always go back to the Cross. 

2 Corinthians 4:7-14
7 But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. 8 We are hard pressed on every side,but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; 9 persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. 10 We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. 11 For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. 12 So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.
13 It is written: “I believed; therefore I have spoken.”Since we have that same spirit of faith, we also believe and therefore speak,14 because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you to himself.

Jesus could have cried out "INJUSTICE" and He would have been right. Furthermore, Jesus had the power to stop the true injustice and could have refused to lay down His life. He didn't. For me. For you. For those who love me and because of their love for me are suffering. Please don't only pray for me. Pray for them. Give them a shoulder to cry on or someone to talk to. And to those suffering alongside me, remember the Cross. It's not a matter of just not forgetting the Cross, but of intentionally remembering it everyday. Quench your anger with it. Silence your lies with it. Find true joy and peace with it. It is so beautiful and powerful, and no earthly pain will make me forget, as my friend Benjie always says. 

What do I have to be angry for with such a God?
Praise God for cancer survivors.
Praise God for women getting cancer later in life.
Praise God for my cancer, someone's always worse than you.
Praise God for Kara, living her legacy past her earth-life.

And so, I picked myself out of this bed and put my sneakers on. I did 45 minutes on the walker, which seemed like a miracle. I was filled with energy and took the girls out for a walk. Tomorrow, I might find the strength to bake some blackberry muffins. God is good with every breath. 

1 comment:

  1. Crying myself at work. I'm not a cancer patient, or a cancer survivor but I'm a cancer suffering niece. My beloved aunt had cancer and she's in recession now but now her husband, my uncle, my mother's brother has cancer. Not only we had to suffer last year for my aunt we have now my uncle suffering that awful disease. He's going through A LOT right now but he always keep that GIANT smile on his face, a smile that I'm deeply in love with and hope I never get to lose it.

    You're strong Linda, even if you don't think you are. You are not only suffering this disease you're learning to bear it and praise God every single moment and that's something we all could learn.

    I grieve for nonsense sometimes (like every other person does), but knowing there's someone out there struggling and still thanking God for this makes me realize that I should start to.

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