LONG ENOUGH
I hadn't expected to be here.
____________________________
From lakeside to downtown, then to a riverfront. This is our third home since diagnosis. A remarkable and somewhat unusual circumstance I find myself in.
Find. Myself.
There have been multiple iterations over the past six years.
Never mind the experience of transforming a triad of spaces—
I have been here long enough to cradle two new grandsons and eagerly anticipate one baby more. The in between of these most-precious moments has drawn me closer to my essence, and to a loving Creator who modeled the best of me after the best of Him.
If you ask my doctor what our goal is, she would say to keep me alive long enough for medicine to catch up to a cure.
Long enough implies the existence of the rest of a hard-fought question:
Long enough...for what?
The one thing I can say with assurance is that my life has never been routine or mundane. But these last years have embodied ‘unpredictable’ to the extreme.
Ordinary scares me more than a little—the day-in, day-out minutes that can neither be remembered nor retrieved. In this context, you could say I was made for this unexpected season of my life.
There are moments that define us.
And then there are those that reveal us.
What are you going through that reveals who you really are?
Cancer does not define me.
I refuse to give it that kind of power.
I have learned to counter harsh news [first] with the gathering of myself—
to calm my breath,
and quiet my mind,
until I am washed in the discipline of barring every negative thought from seeping in.
This is what I have waited long enough to experience.
This is the practice that takes a lifetime to learn.
This is the reason that rises above all the others.
Long enough...
for what?
Revelation,
Healing,
A cure?
Or something even greater that I didn’t know to ask.
NOTES:
A Soul Map
If you had started where I was standing six years ago, you would have found yourself surrounded by a dense forest of fear and doubt. Me, eating a salad when a call from my surgeon interrupted what I believed was a simple recovery from surgery.
It wasn't the end.
It was the beginning of a different kind of healing.
REFLECTION
What are you carrying that quietly exhausts you?
What lie have you lived with long enough that it has begun to sound like truth?
What life can you imagine on the other side of healing—
not only body,
but mind,
and spirit?
It is easier to become preoccupied with what surrounds us.
What of the environment within?
The most difficult work you will ever do is getting to know yourself—
void of distraction,
recognizing and muting the lies,
allowing the One who created you to reveal what has always been true.
Long enough...
for what?
You Are Here.
You are not alone.
IMAGE: I reserve the sauna with a view out. It reminds me there’s a difference between preserving life and discovering what it’s for.