Today I woke up covered in cold sweat. It has been a long time since I have felt the gut-wrenching pain of fearing for your life.
I lived 2017 fighting for a will to live. While 2016 was a real fight to live and I never had any need for will, I was the champion of fighting for the aggressiveness of my treatment, 2017 was the year of figuring out if the fight had been worth it.
My body showed no signs of cancer, but my body showed no signs of being healthy, contradicting my family's belief that beating cancer was the end of the road. The physical damage was not what made me lose my will. It was the emotional and spiritual damage that cancer had brought to my life. No one understood my sorrow and grief for Kinsley's death. She was not my daughter that I had lost. But most people don't understand suffering or pain or what it meant that we had walked the same path together. Her death felt like my soul had been split, leaving me with survivor's guilt and battling the depression stage of grief. In my depression, I forgot how to find joy in life, consciously rejecting it because it was "unfair" to live my life when another more deserving wasn't. Her death had left me doubting my relationship with God, Who in my head had refused to answer the prayer I begged Him on my knees every night until her death. I stopped spending my time in prayer, losing my best friend Who I refused to speak to in the process.
My husband was the most affected by my grief. He had lost his wife who sought gratitude in whatever situation came our way and was left with a defeatist wife who voluntarily sought to only focus on the bad in her life and live there. I had camped in pessimist town and was scared of letting him take me to be-happy-you're-alive city. This affected us so much we forgot how to be in love with each other and stopped actively showing love to one another.
I cried all morning on January 6, 2018, the anniversary of her death. But when my daughters woke up, I wiped my tears and spent the day with them. When my husband came back from doing errands, I went out on a date with him where we laughed like we hadn't laughed together in a long time. I would never forget her or stop wishing she was here, but I could finally reach acceptance stage of grief and move on while carrying her in my heart.
Why was I able to move on?
Gratitude was not the answer this time. No matter how I saw it, there was no way I could be grateful that Kinsley died. I could give thanks that she was no longer in pain and cancer-free; I could give thanks that she was in a better place being taken care of by the Lover of her soul. But I could not be grateful that she died. I would forever wish I could change that. And that was OK, but not enough to heal my heart.
I started looking for way to go back to God. Again, gratitude was a no go. Knowledge was a no go. I wanted the "Whys". No Bible reading will answer the "why". No logic or reasoning would satisfy the "why". But then I heard someone praying saying "Jesus, my beloved."
I pondered on those words: Jesus, my beloved.
Why was Jesus my beloved?
Why had I given my life to Him so many years ago?
Why had I given testimony that He was the true God?
Was it because He had promised me a good life, like most who quote Jeremiah 29:11 think?
Why did I love Him?
And I realized His promises, His answered prayer, were not something He was going to give me in the future; they were something He had already given me.
Romans 5:8
But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
John 15:13
Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
I lived 2017 fighting for a will to live. While 2016 was a real fight to live and I never had any need for will, I was the champion of fighting for the aggressiveness of my treatment, 2017 was the year of figuring out if the fight had been worth it.
My body showed no signs of cancer, but my body showed no signs of being healthy, contradicting my family's belief that beating cancer was the end of the road. The physical damage was not what made me lose my will. It was the emotional and spiritual damage that cancer had brought to my life. No one understood my sorrow and grief for Kinsley's death. She was not my daughter that I had lost. But most people don't understand suffering or pain or what it meant that we had walked the same path together. Her death felt like my soul had been split, leaving me with survivor's guilt and battling the depression stage of grief. In my depression, I forgot how to find joy in life, consciously rejecting it because it was "unfair" to live my life when another more deserving wasn't. Her death had left me doubting my relationship with God, Who in my head had refused to answer the prayer I begged Him on my knees every night until her death. I stopped spending my time in prayer, losing my best friend Who I refused to speak to in the process.
My husband was the most affected by my grief. He had lost his wife who sought gratitude in whatever situation came our way and was left with a defeatist wife who voluntarily sought to only focus on the bad in her life and live there. I had camped in pessimist town and was scared of letting him take me to be-happy-you're-alive city. This affected us so much we forgot how to be in love with each other and stopped actively showing love to one another.
I cried all morning on January 6, 2018, the anniversary of her death. But when my daughters woke up, I wiped my tears and spent the day with them. When my husband came back from doing errands, I went out on a date with him where we laughed like we hadn't laughed together in a long time. I would never forget her or stop wishing she was here, but I could finally reach acceptance stage of grief and move on while carrying her in my heart.
Why was I able to move on?
Gratitude was not the answer this time. No matter how I saw it, there was no way I could be grateful that Kinsley died. I could give thanks that she was no longer in pain and cancer-free; I could give thanks that she was in a better place being taken care of by the Lover of her soul. But I could not be grateful that she died. I would forever wish I could change that. And that was OK, but not enough to heal my heart.
I started looking for way to go back to God. Again, gratitude was a no go. Knowledge was a no go. I wanted the "Whys". No Bible reading will answer the "why". No logic or reasoning would satisfy the "why". But then I heard someone praying saying "Jesus, my beloved."
I pondered on those words: Jesus, my beloved.
Why was Jesus my beloved?
Why had I given my life to Him so many years ago?
Why had I given testimony that He was the true God?
Was it because He had promised me a good life, like most who quote Jeremiah 29:11 think?
Why did I love Him?
And I realized His promises, His answered prayer, were not something He was going to give me in the future; they were something He had already given me.
Romans 5:8
But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
John 15:13
Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
I John 4:9-10
9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
Ephesians 2:4-7
4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace,expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.
It is Jesus' love that had captured my heart and made me surrender all to Him. It is Jesus' love that gives me hope that goes beyond the grave.
I love Him because He had loved me.
I love Him because He was the greater love shown.
I love Him because He was the greater love shown.
Remember the cold sweat from the beginning?
I was watching a TV series that ended with the words: "in memory of..."
I googled the name and found out it was dedicated to a woman who had recently died of breast cancer. She had been diagnosed in 2011 and died in November 2016. Her friends and family didn't even know her cancer had returned because she looked so healthy. The recurrence claimed her life before it could even deteriorate her external look.
I was shivering in my bed begging God not to have to walk that path. This woman had been in remission for 5 years, when doctors consider her cancer "cured."
I am afraid of living life fully again to have it ripped from down under me.
I am afraid of my girls not remembering me.
I am afraid of showing love to my husband and being fully "in love" just to die before I'm 35, before I've even been married to him for a decade.
I can't be grateful for that being part of my reality.
But I can be covered in His love and trust that His love is enough, able, and strong.
This year I will make love my motto.
Love will be my will- His love will be my will!
Don't worry, gratitude will still be my path, but love will be the fuel to walk that path.
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