Welcome to Reality

2010 has really been a swift kick into reality. When I say kick, I don’t mean a kick in the tush, more like a kick in the face. I began the year in full frantic planning mode for my sister in law’s birthday. Another friend and I had planned to surprise her with an all-expenses paid girls getaway to Carmel. We whisked her away for a weekend of fun and pampering, stuffing ourselves with good food and ocean air. It was pretty much amazing. Our last night there, we were sitting in our room at the inn, drinking wine and eating chocolate by the fire, completely oblivious to the outside world or any of it’s problems when I got a phone call from my husband telling me that our friend, Lyndsay had just been diagnosed with cancer. I hung up the phone, shocked, unsure of how to respond. We were kind of ripped from our little paradise bubble. We drove home the next day, talking about the weekend, Lyndsay, our plans for the following week. We had no idea what was waiting for us there.

A couple of weeks later, we got another call no one saw coming. My nephew Nolan, Amy’s one and half year old son, was on his way to the hospital. After a few confusing days of tests and opinions, he was also diagnosed with cancer. I think the best way to describe this couple of weeks in our life is to say that it was like being under water. I feel like I barely remember it. It was devastating, but I kept thinking, “This doesn’t happen to us.” We were in the hospital sitting around Nolan’s hospital bed and all I could think of was sitting on the beach eating olives and grapes and cheese, watching the sunset.

Each month that followed brought a new challenge with it. One by one, the people around us were being faced with seemingly insurmountable obstacles. In May, a few days after I had my son Josiah, we were admitted back into the hospital because his body temperature was really low. Talking to the doctor that night, somewhere between the words “spinal” and “tap” I started feeling like the room was spinning. Literally. Thank God, Josiah’s temperature regulated throughout the night and we were able to skip all of the invasive testing. But in the middle of the night, while things were still uncertain, I thought back to the previous week at our community group meeting. One person battling cancer, another stuck overseas trying to complete an adoption gone wrong, another couple facing emotional turmoil in their domestic adoption, another mourning their struggles with infertility, another battling depression and anxiety, another flying to hawaii where his mother was thought to be on her way out of this world due to a mysterious disease, and me, sitting there in the dark hospital room wondering if I am going to watch my 5 day old son get a spinal tap the next day. It was a profound moment for me that I really believe shifted some deep inside of me. The way that I saw the world was changing and I wanted to yell, “I don’t want to live in this world! I want to go back!”. Back where? To the time when we all felt young and invincible; when the world didn’t touch us. But I realized that you can’t live in that world forever. It felt like we crossing over to a new realm of life together, the realm where the world actually touches you. I was and still am seeing everything differently: people, relationships, things, etc.

Although these things have been hard to deal with on an emotional level, I really believe it has been the catalyst for major change in my life that has been a long time coming. I feel like a different person than I was, sitting around my Christmas tree on December 25th. My perspective, my lens, has changed and I don’t think it will ever go back to the way it used to be. In a way, I mourn it. But I also see that it has allowed me to connect with the suffering of the world in a way that I never have been able to. I think of Job when his wife tells him to curse God and he says, “You talk like a foolish woman. Should we accept only good things from the hand of God and never anything bad?” Job 2:10. It is not a negative or pessimistic view of the world, it is a deeper understanding of it.

In our unexpected relationship with cancer and other ugly realities, I feel like I am seeing life and people for the first time. I have seen Lyndsay and Amy rise up to the challenge with a supernatural and inspiring strength that blesses the purposes of God despite their inability to understand it. Later in Job chapter 4, Job is doing a “woah is me” speech (that he has kind of earned) and his friend responds with this:

“In the past you have encouraged many people; you have strengthened those who were weak. Your words have supported those who were falling; you encouraged those with shaky knees. But now when trouble strikes, you lose heart. You are terrified when it touches you.” Job 4:3-5

In the midst of extreme trial, I have had the privilege to watch the people of God believe that His purposes endure. I don’t want to be the one that looks at my friend and says, “Take courage, be strong!” yet when trouble comes to my door, not believe it in my own life. Although I am sure that behind closed doors, there are moments of despair, I am so challenged by the response by my friends to the hard things. I don’t know if I will never be happy that these things crept into our life, but I do know that we are a small part of something so much bigger. It may be easier to watch life through a rose colored glass, but it is not what is real. Cancer and the sunset on the beach exist together in this life. It is not two worlds, it is one.