March 31, 2015 - Swimming in the storm

As I sat on the stretcher with a grimace splattered across my face, and as she sat at the side of the stretcher relentlessly jamming a needle in and out of my calf, I started to get the inkling that every day life is not always compatible with the faint of heart. Am I really sitting here in this cubical choosing this procedure? And how come the paper work didn't describe this  intense pain that felt as though you had been hooked up to an electric probe? And was I really sitting here listening to her describe their last Disney vacation and all its hour after hour small world fun while she jabbed the "electricity" on again and again? (she's delightful for sure, I'm just stressing the surreal moment.) Dry needling, also incompatible with the faint of heart.

Each day we wake up, rolling out of bed (some more energized than others), not sure what we will find on the other side of the bedroom door. We may even have it all mapped out. Shower, breakfast bagels, makeup, morning commute, premium parking, meeting number one, paperwork number 45, phone call number 15 all before lunch. But just as sure as you get the first 3 hours inked on to the memo pad, you inevitably find something unexpected barrels its way into your moment. It's a constant up and down and right and left and anyone with any sense of type A strategic personality will quickly find themselves prey to the mayhem. And even those whimsical NON type A (how do you do it?) persons find themselves being pulled involuntarily into another unexpected moment of life. You may mind a little less, because you didn't have a to-do list to begin with compared to those of us who strategize every waking hour, but we all find the unexpected moments unsettling.

I started this blog as a memorial to my now mastectomized breasts. They are gone, but never forgotten (ok, well by me anyway). They've gracefully, rather not so gracefully, been replaced by two almost endearing imposters. And that storm of life is now rather a rainy mist of days gone by. Temporarily anyway. But wouldn't you know it? Just when you think you have one storm off the radar, one glance on the horizon and you see the assembly of cumulonimbus fluffs. You quickly gather your wits enough to know opposing forces are beginning to clash. Drop, drop, drop. Plop, plop, plop. Scanning the horizon for shelter and quickly finding it's 25 raindrops too late. You are smack dab in the middle of your next storm. If it's not mastectomy, it's dry needling for combative calves. If it's not unemployment, it's struggling to get all 3 kids to the right place at the right time on any given day. It's exhaustion, it's presumed failure, it's a diagnosis, it's circumstance. All of them are life's storms and we are all simply learning to swim instead of sink.

I'm finding we are drastically over critical of ourselves in those moments. We hold up an imaginary-poorly calibrated-designed by Mrs Perfect- measuring stick which should be set on fire and thrown out with yesterday's trash. Yet we cling to it with every fiber of our being trying to measure up to something we certainly can't be every moment of every day. Did we pray enough? Did we cry too much? Did we fumble at every yard line? And then we call ourselves "failure" for not doing or being enough. I recall those moments in mastectomy where I wondered if I let it get too much of me. Did I give my natural boobs too much credit? Was this really that big of a deal? Well, what we need to do is dump every inch of that doubting measuring stick in the trash for above all else, His grace is enough!

I want to reclaim life not as we know it and design it to be, but as God knows it and designs us to be. I want to swim in every storm not with perfection or accolades, but with faith and grace with strong strokes when I can and doggie paddle with a sideline of true friendship when I can't. Doggie paddles still get me to the finish line, right? And I want to claim God's provision in every storm and come out on the other side a little better than I was going in. I'm choosing to swim. I'm choosing to equip myself with tools that make my life compatible with any storm. I may look like a wet labradoodle paddling his heart out, but I know a labradoodle will jump in every single time and come out smiling and wagging his tail!

So I don't know what the next blog page will bring, but I do know I want to continue with transparency where I can. God has brought me so much closer to many of you through this journey. And he has brought me closer to him as I shared those moments with you.  Right now we are in a moment of deciding whether to sell our house or stay put (see previous blog post to catch up) and also trying to figure out the timing of that (if we decide to move) in light of another surgery coming up this summer. This has been a very challenging month for us as we seek to hear his plan for us as he grows our hearts for becoming "less". I'm hopeful we have it all figured out soon...for this too does not feel compatible with the faint of heart. It is tugging our pride, greed, and comfort in so many directions and challenging me to faithfully sit still and listen. It's a storm that needed to take place and will no doubt prepare me for something else on the horizon, but until all is made clear, we sit. And we listen. And very soon I know we will swim.

March 20, 2015 - My house is not my home.

I can't adequately explain the timing of this picture, which most have you have seen by now via my social media page, but to say it had a profound impact on me in my "tiny enormous life" adventure (see link here to catch up Enormous Tiny Life) would be an understatement of grand proportions. I wish you could have been in my head the many minutes prior to opening my garage door that morning (anxiety, selfishness, greed) and then again in the many hours afterwards (hope, trust, faith) in seeing this view. That moment of "voila, I make all things whole!".  My mind: the contrast as of speckled to solid, gelatinous to sturdy, wavering to confident, pitiful to whole. I, in a stark moment, became acutely confident of God's sovereignty when he calls to you to trust in him.

Ron and I have been seeking clarity and discernment in an issue that matters all to much to me. In our quest to find tiny, we are being prompted, asked, tempted(?)  to give up something quite precious and comfortable. Our house. My perfect little house of the exact proportions suited to my needs. The right level of comfort and content and location. My dream house of reasonable dreams. The house that made perfect human sense for the state of life in which I find myself.  And to my introverted self, my haven. MY home. What???

Being prompted, asked, tempted (?) to give up your home can bring you to your knees in a few seconds flat. Take my sweater - yes that one that I couldn't part with in my closet because I wore it twice last year - as it is certainly now very easy to give up in comparison, but do not take my home. Everything is relative, right? And yet there it sits, the prompting, the asking, the tempting, day after day as I find myself swinging from greed, to trust, to disbelief, to pride, back to trusting, then straight to the greed of square footage funneling in the vat of mindfulness all in a span of 3 minutes. This confrontation of faith versus self is seriously challenging and takes a toll on every moment of your day! Give up our home? Anything but that. I'm happy to offer you my material anything else.

What started as a prompting to be more purposeful in our days, and more in tune with having a little less of the American dream, became a prodding of minimization and freeing up our finances and lifestyles to whatever was around the next corner for us, not by our planning and manipulating, but by God's choosing for us...whatever that may be. There wasn't a stark revelation, but rather an underlying current moving us to toward less of this and more of that. A desire to be more aligned and better tuned so that we were simply better at life. It's murky in that we have no idea what that will look like, but very clear at the same time that only good will come of that. And in that process our "movie screen" paused on a picture of our house, something we held very dear. (I blame Ron. He started all of this. Wink). My house, which represents everything my soul does not. And it holds my everything. Every tangible possession I've collected throughout. It's my treasure collector. It's my safe zone. It's how I shut the rest of the world out after a frustrating job-filled day with one closing of the garage door. And there the question was being brought to the forefront "can you give up your house?". It was a definite change in events and out of left field. It came screeching around the corner in Amtrak Speed and precision. But it was certainly not on our schedule and surely it wasn't pulling into our station. With one sound of the train whistle, the movie plot got play-dough thick.

As we continue to sort through the current character development plot, I am finding that I'm not entirely sure if it is a specific outcome that is to be reached. I'm not sure this house or that house is the end point. Current square footage, lesser square footage, more square footage. Current zip code, different zip code, no zip code. I believe it all can bring great things when you heart is aligned. But I am quite assured instead that this process of trying to hear God's voice is growing Ron and I in ways that had not been measurable before. Am I WILLING to leave it all behind? That is the first most evident question we are being asked. This short month of contemplate is taking us places we had not traversed in the 6 years prior, and the richness of that is astounding. For our marriage, for our trust in God's provisions, for our view of the world around us, and for introspective searching and revealing of the condition of our hearts.  I'm not confident God is commanding me to leave my home, this structure of plank and nail, but rather revealing to us the whether we love him enough to do that which we would have previously considered absurd if he were to ask us t, particularly when the outcome is not yet known. Our pride and greed had us in a fingertip grip of massive proportions to the frame of our dwelling door. And in that we are finding that living a life fully devoted to him is willingness to leave it all behind if asked. And to recognize that not only in that will you find content, but you will find fulfillment and joy beyond anything imaginable in plank and nail. This house is not my home. The planks of wood not my confident. This garden tub not my sanctuary. And I'm beyond certain that my life through him is my eternal reward. So step away from me, luxury granite counter top! You shall have no hold over me!  (....though for full disclosure just last night when viewing another house, I was desperately embracing my 2 car garage. I'm trying, I'm not perfect. It's a struggle that is very real for us all.
)

Our conflict seems absurd on a secular level. Most of those around us will find us idiotic. And that is not lost on me. (Who leaves their "perfect house" when there isn't a reason to? No job loss, no relocation orders, no need for more space.) It makes no sense. We certainly aren't all on the same path here in life. But he path for Ron and I is ours and we are right in the middle of it and it's our Here and Now. Are we willing to let our faith be our walk? I know not where I will lay my head 4 months from now, but I know where I want to lay my heart. May I be more in tune tomorrow than I am today.

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Disclaimer: Before you abandon this blog ship, I do realize these past 2 posts have drifted quite a ways from the blogging of mastectomy. And for that I offer awareness of my faux pas. Mastectomy is a piece of my whole. Surgery #6 in August will bring us all back around in no time. For now, I am basking in a few months of life outside of mastectomy and giving you a glimpse of the rest of me. Maybe next week I will be back to the hilarity that can be found in my adventures at the grocery store. Commitment issues don't bode well when picking out fresh mozzarella (or new houses for that matter!).
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For extra reading that landed on my plate this week: 

1)  Homesick - by DesiringGod.org)

March 17, 2015 - The enormous tiny life

I'm on a tiny journey. I'm not even sure how I got here. It's been a process over the last 6 months or so but becoming more readily apparent in the last few weeks. It's a movement of an enormous life becoming less enormous. I'm pulled here, I am pulled there, constantly filling my schedule with this, with that, buying one more table to fill that tiny hallway space, hodge-podging life, its circumstances, its possessions, to make it "more" than it was 3 minutes before. Unfortunately, more has made me feel like so much less. I feel weighted, dragging, bogged down with the ins and out of this enormous life. I've made it to my worldly goal, but in that accomplishment, I find little rest. Instead, I am seeking yet another goal after goal after goal to stay ahead of the time tables. As I watch everything grow, I'm being squashed out of what I was intended to be. 

So if growing this enormous life is making me feel so tiny, could the opposite be true?  What if I could make life so tiny that in fact it began to feel enormous, but in an entirely different way - full of purpose and content? I don't know if this mastectomy played role in that. I'd have to say it did, as every life shaking experience brings an inward evaluation. It propels you closer to the clarity of a God focused lens and away from the fogged up spectacle of humanity that we so easily embrace. So yes, maybe in some ways, Ron and I leapfrogging through mastectomy, the death of a parent, job transitions, and such all piled up into a 2 year span became a springboard for this process of re-evaluation of what this enormous life really meant to me. And realizing that focusing on becoming smaller could in fact merge me into something better - a whole different kind of enormous.  In that smallness maybe we could find depth.

As Ron and I started feeling this stir, we had no idea exactly where it would go. In fact, we still don't know. But we are finding that the life we spent the last 6+ years nurturing and fabrication together piece by piece is filled with things of the here and now. The stuff. The gunk. The life-fillers that bring me closer to someone else's dream and less to that of what we think God placed us here for. As we spent our time making life bigger, we found we were missing our intended mark of making life smaller. More purposeful. More focused. More you focused. Less me focused. Less driven by someone else's standards of life. And there we sat, supposedly happy as a lark, in the defines of the Johnny Joe's standards. Three bedrooms two baths - check. Two cars - checks. Eight winter coats - check. Six pairs of jeans - check. More money coming in than going out - check. Job advances- check. But "happy" was becoming more transparent and that transparency brought about a reality. Was this what life was intended to be? Did this checklist of someone else's goals create in us a joyful and purposed reality? Was I more of a person today because of that newly acquired bracelet? Did my heart for other people grow when I added one more calendar event to my schedule? 

We feel our hearts shifting to something smaller. I want to be in a place where there is more of me to give. Less of me to take. Though I don't yet exactly know what that is going to look like. I begin by standing here in the center of my closet with my 15 long sleeve t-shirts. And my 8 pairs of flip flops. And my 12 skirts (all the numbers being reasonable estimates). And as I struggle to purge down to 5 sweaters, I become acutely aware of my shallow heart when I can't bear to part with something I wore only twice last year. And if my heart couldn't part with a poly-blend sweater, how in the world could my heart part with anything else in a quest to make my life fuller? That closet, with the sizes too small or too large that I hope (or don't hope) to one day return to could instead be a new outfit for that single mother of 6 looking for a job with nothing to wear to the interview. As I sit frustrated in my closet day after day trying to find something among the 100 items to wear, there she sits trying to find anything that she could get her hands on without taking food off her table. And that drawer full of blankets, did I need 5 just in case North Carolina becomes a frozen tundra in year 2235, while she would be grateful for just one blanket so they all could sleep in their own bed? My "just in case" was a reflection of my stingy heart, while her "wish for" was a stark reality of how selfish I could be. 

With that realization (and many others over the past so many weeks) came the motivation to purge, and as I watched my material possessions becoming smaller after this prodding of my heart, in great proportion my inner peace was growing larger. It all started with the closet, and I am eager to see where it goes next as I evaluate where my heart is for all matters of life. My schedule - being selective and purposeful with what and who gets to fill a time slot. My relationships - adding more people that fill me with wisdom and peace so that I may focus on giving that in return to those seeking the same. My home - making it a place that is safe so that people want to visit and that they may leave feeling full. My job - bleeding optimism and encouragement instead of pulling coworkers down into my negativity. My health - becoming a better me so that God may use me wherever he needs a vessel. My perspective - this world isn't about becoming great, but becoming small so there is less of me and more of you. And in that I hope you find there will be more of me to love and more love for me to give in return. I share this not as a testament of "look at me", but as a reflection of where I want to go and the prayer request to help get me there. May he finish the task he has started in me, and may I not be so stupid as to get in the way.

I'm giving thanks for moments like mastectomy where focus can be better tuned and a tiny life more enormous.

Click  www.tradinginthetatas.blogspot.com to access other posts. 

March 6, 2015 - "Why"

What is your “why me” story? Which moment in your life did you find yourself seriously questioning the reality of your most recent unwanted “calendar appointment”? What had you digging through the recesses of your mind wondering what in the world you did to anger the “upper management” so much so that they sent you “reprimand”? It’s so easy, even to point of being comfortable, to go through life looking for the cause in such great minutia that if not found in rapid pace, the event is almost missed altogether due to our compulsion and addiction of finding blame. We've become a human race obsessed with knowing why. We feel self-entitled as an outright constitutional right to know the “why” so that we can, with great detail and self-righteous commitment, offer justification or blame.

I remember several such moments in my life where this saga of “why” came to my forefront. One was a particular breakup of my youth. I remember very specific and incessant thoughts of needing to know why I wasn't chosen over the other. I couldn't accept the outcome of rejection until I had analyzed the path into unrecognizable shreds of pitiful becoming self-absorbed, bitter, and paranoid of being “less”. It consumed me. In hindsight I can now see that not knowing “why” was almost more harmful to me that the reality of breakup. (I now know why and find myself so grateful God leaves some prayers answered in opposition to my own will.)

A second event carries a bit more weight. The room was very dim, I’m assuming out of necessity, but it cast an eeriness over the moment. I can still see what little light there was reflecting from the steel (?) arm, supposedly carrying the cure, craning above me in a parallel to where I lay. I lay below it naked on a rotating table of steel and discomfort shamelessly padded with bed sheets as a miserable excuse for padding. The light was cast in the room from the right side, steadily growing dimmer as it cascaded to my left. Linoleum tile created the floor below, and mirrored above the steel arm hang a checker board arrangement of 20x20 ceiling panels. The room lacked color. It was a blah collection of steel and beige scattered with a smattering of sterile this and that. A few steps away, behind a lead lined wall containing single square window was the technician, whom had just gotten me settled onto the mobile table. He evidently controlled the cure. Yes, a he (some days a different she), and yes me, naked on a table. A quick click of a remote control had him sending me and the table into parallels and latitudes. Over-estimating sent me right back into the direction I had come to a lesser latitude. Again, again, there. And then similar traversing with the steel arm above only this time there were red laser pinpoint beams shooting down from the steel arm. The beams were navigated this way and that to line up with tattoo dots on my chest, abdomen, under arms, chin. Then silence as the arm and my table end their romantic swaying dance. Over the speaker: “Ok, Sally, hold still, we are ready to go” followed by 8-10 seconds of this rhythmic clicking sound. I can’t believe I have forgotten the time count. Was it 8 seconds, 12? 15? And after you counted in your head the beats of the seconds you finally hit the moment when there was no sound at all. We were done, until tomorrow, when we would do it all over again in the exact same order as my mother sat out in the waiting room listening to horrific music (which she adored) and putting together jigsaw puzzles while she nervously waited my return.

Nothing about the moment was normal. Everyone else I knew of any merit in my current world was sitting in English class, and then algebra, and then French. No steel arm, no padded table, certainly no nakedness, and I’m absolutely sure cliffs notes on Keats or Thoreau, instead of invisible doses of radiation, were their cure. There was no sadness in that moment for me (that came earlier). There were no frustrations (that too came earlier). A previously abnormal moment, after 30+ days of such, was now a very normal moment for me, and even that was abnormal. But, on one specific day as I sat counting the clicks that the machine regurgitated into the stillness of the room, I recall for the first times in the past 2 months the word forming on my lips… “why?”. Why was I the one on the table? Why was I stripped down to nothingness lying on a table when I could be commiserating “if x = 1, then y = 3” with the rest of the sophomore class. There were plenty of “mean girls” that could easily take my place, right? There surely could be a better substitute for me. That was the mind of an immature 16 year old processing the events of the moment. I may have uttered the word “why” before that very moment, but I don’t recall it. I am also sure my parents had uttered the word “why” on some occasion of this trauma, though I wasn't privy to it. But now, for whatever reason, as I lay shivering on a padded mobile table while counting clicks, the word “why” became my here and now.

There sat a grapefruit-sized tumor in the center of my chest, to the right of my heart, several inches down in depth from the surface, nestled on my lungs like a nest holding its prized egg. I don’t know how long it had inhabited its space, but its picturesque likeness on the grayed-out screen left no denying its existence. I carried a scar of tumor biopsy at the base of my throat and a jagged seam reflecting spleen removal at my abdominal center line. These signs were there pointing me to the reality of the situation, but I could find no tangible merit or guarantee of the “why”.  And there the “not knowing why” sat…with me…in the darkened room…on a frigid steel table…under the talkative steel arm carrying my cure. And it sat. And it sat. Fully exposed just as I was in the center of the beige cube.

It’s as if we can question something out of existence. If we can discover and then in turn discredit the reason, then immediately, in response, the disastrous earth-tilting event no longer exists. It will dissolve itself into nothingness the moment the “why” is deemed faulty. If I could prove I was indeed not worthy of a lymphoma diagnosis, then at that very moment the tumor would recognize its mistake,  fill out forms of relocation, and make its way down interstate 40 towing all of its blood vessels and ick in tow. If I could prove I was on my way to model appearance, he would stick it out. If I could show, I was without fault, I would still have that employment. No tainted words, no broken friendship. Knowing the “why” would propel me into perfection. But nowhere on that CT scan of my chest was anything that remotely resembled “why”.  And no amount of pondering, digging, begging could produce it. How can I blame someone if I didn't know the “who” behind the “why”????? ARRRRGGGGHHHHHHH! And this consumed me for several weeks, each day as I climbed back up onto the table and under the steel arm.

I’m learning in my adult years that there can be great fault with this incessant discovery of “why”. The prodding and poking for the purpose of discovery, and in turn blame, carries little more than profound long-living bitterness. “Why” for the sake of blame, while it carries some relief initially, as time goes on, it equates each moment in life as a negative effect of cause. I admit there are moments when finding the “why” brings great revelation and truth, but in the case of blame it becomes a burden of worry and strife while we continue to obsessively plow our way to its discovery. I don’t want to discredit the value of knowing “why” when there truly is a fault of your own because you then have the opportunity to do self-growth in correcting possible a flawed behavior. I've had moments of that where I would have been much better off not uttering the harmful words to a friend. Recognize, growth, think with a heart of love before you speak. But in most moments of true calamity, I am finding the incessant and belligerent searching for “why” only duct tapes myself in paralyses in the moment, preventing me from embracing and overcoming better on the other side.

I was 16 and likely failed miserably at any form of triumph on this area. I fumbled the ball with each passing day becoming self-absorbed in the teenage years. But over time I did go on to accept and embrace having had a cancer diagnosis. It can bring about miraculous things if we let it. And even in death, it can bring about miraculous things for those around us, if they let it. That’s choosing the outcome instead of floundering in the “why”. It’s choosing joy over bitterness and blame. It’s encompassing light despite circumstance and despite the possible bitterness of “why”. I’m working to flip this switch in my thinking with greater frequency and success.  

So I ask myself again. What is my “why me” story? Which moment in my life did I find myself seriously questioning the reality of my most recent unwanted “calendar appointment”? What had me digging through the recesses of my mind wondering what in the world I did to anger the “upper management” so much so that they sent me “reprimand”? And I hope that as the years have gone by that I can identify less and less stories where the why even mattered at all. Instead of focusing on the forefront of my story of cause, I can instead relay in much greater detail the saga of joyful outcome.

Therefore
I ask you, surgery #6, what joy do you bring me next?