A Gift

It was late summer, 2003.  I’d just had a party celebrating my new coop, graduation from seminary, and another birthday.  One of my dreams in NYC was to live near green grass and trees, in a doorman building.  Not only did I get that, but this place was catty-corner from a park that had a SWIMMING POOL!!! There was only one logical course of action:  to go there and swim.

Whether normal or note, massaging the breasts when changing is an habitual, and possibly life-saving act for me.  I’d had the routine mammogram several years earlier when I turned forty, but found it so painful that I vowed never to go through it again.  But here I was 7 years later and there was something in my booby that didn’t feel right.

It took three weeks to get an appointment for a mammogram, even with a lump.  I think I saw a surgeon during that time; I remember picking her because her name was Faith.  While she thought the wait a bit unusual, she reassured me that it was “probably nothing,” and that 3 weeks were not likely to make a difference if it did turn out to be something.

It did, of course, turn out to be something.  There was a cancer growing in my breast, one that required two or three surgeries just to get it all with good margins, another two surgeries to get I think the sentinel node and then all the lymph nodes; and a fifth (unsuccessful) surgery to attempt to implant a PICC line for me to receive chemo.  I ended up getting the chemo with a new IV stick every other week for six months, followed by six weeks of daily radiation therapy (one dose, they said, was equivalent to spending a week at the beach), followed by five years of oral chemotherapy.  During treatment, I lost my taste for all food except watermelon, mango, and pineapple; I lost every follicle of hair on my body;  I learned that yes, I can get dry heaves; and I learned that sometimes you have to take your medicine.  I learned that breast cancer is the only one for which there is no “cure;”  other cancers are considered to be in remission after 5 years, but breast cancer is equally likely to return at any time.

During my treatment, two coworkers were diagnosed with cancer, both after me. One was diagnosed also with breast cancer and ended up with a radical double mastectomy; another was diagnosed with stomach cancer and subsequently died. A cousin who had struggled with breast cancer for years also died during this time.  All three of these women had offered love, care, and support to me upon my diagnosis, none of us knowing they would experience outcomes far more severe than mine.

At first diagnosis, I was really mad with God. “What happened?!?”  I screamed as I punched a wall.  “I’m spozed to be your girl! How can you do this?!?!”   At that point, the sacrifice of Jesus was brought to my remembrance.  “Yeah, but I’m not Jesus.  I’m me, and I don’t do the whole pain and suffering thing well.  You KNOW that.”  And then I was gently reminded that “Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.”  I decided right then that I didn’t want to suffer.  So I didn’t.

All the above is background.  People often remark on my joie de vivre, my zest for life.  While I don’t choose to advertise it, my life is probably about as bland and as normal as anyone else’s, jumping out of planes and ziplining through the rainforest notwithstanding.  I’m always aware that each day could be my last – not necessarily from the cancer, but because I live in NY City.  But at some point during the months of surgeries and chemotherapy, I wrestled with questions about quality of life.  Is it worth it to be brought literally to the point of death and kept there for a while to kill a parasitic mutant inside your body?  Or is it perhaps better to live each day to the fullest, and be prepared to go Home whenever one is called?

I suppose the answer is a matter of personal preference.  I don’t know that I’d choose to go through chemotherapy again; if a more aggressive form of cancer were to return, the likelihood of my undergoing the regimen would likely decrease.  I say that, but at the same time, I’m very careful to maintain top shelf health insurance, just in case I need it.

All of which is hypothetical.  Though I'm not very good at it, I do try to live in the moment.  I'm a bit better at my attempts to live as healthily as I can (I’m not rigid and there are no absolutes; but it’s a lifestyle that actively embraces life). I recognize each day as a precious gift from God, and attempt to make the most of it.  I recognize that, even in the midst of physical, spiritual, psychological, emotional, financial, romantic, or any other kind of mess into which I could conceivably get myself – in the midst of all that, at the center of all that, is a God who is working things out, and through Whom all things work together for my good, given that I love Him and am responding to the call according to His purpose. 

There’s a lot to unpack there.  In a nutshell, sometimes the things I want don’t work out because they’re not the things to which God has called me.  And sometimes the most bizarre seeds get planted in my head or elsewhere and work out in equally unlikely ways, ways that could only, in retrospect, have been orchestrated by God. 

Like being ecstatically happy, then finding you have cancer,  and then leading worship in the midst of treatment, finding a way to encourage the kids who are freaked out by your bald head.  And though I’m not a fan of tats, I thought it was interesting that one of the kids decided to get the words “Trust God” as his first tattoo.  I like to think they’ve seen me trust even in the midst of uncertainty, and that they are able to trust a bit, themselves.  I’m not naturally a very trusting person; only an omnipotent God could use me to exemplify trust to a child.

But that’s the gift.  It is a gift to be used fully and completely, to pour oneself out in the doing of God’s work, not because of some expectation of reward in this life or in the life to come, but simply because one has been afforded the privilege to do so.  This thing we call life is a gift, and to live it to the honor and glory of God is quite the privilege.  And though I regularly fall miserably short of the mark, I’m quite grateful for the gift.