TRACING TUMORS
The fastest way to lose what you have is to fixate on what you’ve left behind.
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There is no fascination like watching the interior of your own anatomy going about its work while you quietly gaze at the screen.
“You have a beautiful liver.”
I won’t soon forget my surgeon’s clinical evaluation—unexpectedly poetic amid the mental chaos that accompanied this freshly diagnosed disease.
This past week nearly five years later, the picture has changed. Tiny new brushstrokes have altered the disposition of things.
For some reason their origin has become paramount. Like what ‘is’ cannot be explicitly understood until what ‘was’ can be named.
Identity under scrutiny. This is what lives behind what is seen.
My response to the new spots that inundate this formally “beautiful liver,” is at first, analytical:
I ask, “What does ‘new’ effectively mean?”
As if in the identification of their genesis, I can go back and change things.
I can feel my mind rushing to causality as it is so proned to do.
How curious that I observe myself fixating on the timeline rather than the truth those multiple specks reveal.
There are questions that need answering—
If I had known this was coming would I have done things differently?
Does knowing now call me to change the trajectory of how I live?
It’s a story I would never have written, but now it’s mine. And I cling to it as one gripping the side of a life raft or as a child dragging her favorite cozy blanket about.
There is something comforting in this knowing. After all, it is me I have progressively become more and more familiar with. I crave the intimacy that marks this journey, the necessity to look [literally and figuratively] directly at myself.
It is natural, even necessary, to run toward the knowledge that claims to extend and save life. Yet, there is so much ‘information.’ And I hesitate, not out of exhaustion but a confusion that is not authored by the One who knows me better than my impressive collection of detailed reports.
If I am to save my life it will depend not on knowing everything, but on knowing myself.
I have become a study of the human that is me—
not only the woman that I see in the mirror,
but the girl who made every decision that brought me here.
Who is that version of me, I wonder?
Did she betray me along the way?
Was she too rigid with her opinions?
Was she too lax with her discipline and care?
There are many somber and sacred sides to the woman who draws lines from one spot to the other in her head—
Is the unfolding masterpiece something He intended?
Did I do this to myself?
I seem to be investing thousands of minutes going back—
Not in the belief that this exploration will change my trajectory,
but with this all-consuming desire to forgive all the broken pieces of who I am.
You may be wondering if she has forgiven herself…yet. The real question might be: have you forgiven you?
I used to be afraid to change my mind, as if the letting go of my opinions would mean less of me left. But there is so much power in the willingness to let go—
To hold onto what is sacred in the heart while allowing both body and mind to do what is necessary to survive,
To resist the instinct to go to war with what is unexpected, unusual, unfamiliar,
To be transformed by what is meant not to damage but define.
What I can ask of myself is to value the path forward as much as the one left behind, to believe that all along my Creator has been laying breadcrumbs, then to walk steady toward something not known but deeply intended.
I’ve been tracing tumors.
Tracing timelines.
Tracing decisions.
Tracing the girl.
Tracing causality.
And suddenly the tracing dissolves into one question.
Not:
Why did this happen?
But:
Can I love the one who walked me here?
NOTES
It’s natural to feel nostalgic when we arrive at unexpected junctions in our lives.
Sometimes looking back is less about wanting to return and more about searching for what was that still nourishes us now.
With so many voices offering direction, I keep finding that the quietest, truest guidance comes from listening inward first.
When something unsettles us, the instinct is often to search outward for answers. I’m learning to begin by noticing what is already known inside me.
A text from my high school boyfriend about a 50th reunion arrived unexpectedly. My first thought wasn’t about the date or what I would wear — it was a quiet wondering if I would still be here.
Ths is not shared in fear or drama, but as an honest recognition of how illness changes the way we measure time.
Thoughts like these don’t make us morbid; they make us awake. They remind us that what we believe and where we place our attention quietly shape the lives we’re living.
With all the external noise, can you still hear yourself clearly?
What we believe — about our bodies, our capacity to heal, our relationship with our Creator — gently shapes what becomes possible.
Awareness is where mercy begins.
And mercy is not denial.
It’s not pretending.
It’s not bypassing.
It’s saying:
I will not abandon myself.
Not now.
Not here.