August 10, 2016 - If it takes a nodule...

I’ve mentioned before that I often struggle with what to keep private (my introverted heart protecting my everything) versus what to share here openly. It’s a constant internal battle of vulnerability versus honoring my commitment to model “doing life together” and letting my Story be His Story. It’s not always easy doing life His way. But I know that when I do, He honors that, and He uses that. Three days after my double mastectomy, I made a commitment to God that if He brought me to mastectomy I would do everything I could to be open to Him using my story. All of my story. So I’m laying my vulnerability on the line, and stepping in to His command for us to do life with other people, not in solidarity. And also because it is related to my mastectomy story that you have been following for 4 years now, and I want to stay committed to my transparency in that for hopes it helps one of you should you find yourself in similar shoes one day.

It was 1:30 in the morning and I was jolted out of a very deep sleep. I sat straight up in bed, eyes wide open, heart racing, and my mind attempting a record speed to orient myself to time and place.  I originally thought I must have heard a noise, but no, that wasn’t it. The house was very quiet. Beyond still. Beyond quiet. Often Oliver (the cat) comes up and hits me on the forehead when he thinks I need to be up and about. He’s brutal about it when he thinks it is time, but not this night, he was tucked in at the end of the bed on Ron’s side heavy in sleep. I laid back down and immediately felt a “twinge of something” in my lower right breast. Earlier in the day, I had done an arm/chest workout and now the muscle was in a cramp, no doubt its way of getting me back for what I had done to it hours before. I reached up to massage the area back into submission as I laid back down to fall back asleep, and there it was.

It’s the perfect text book “lump” I’ve heard described so many times before. Small, round, peanut sized, rubbery, non-tender nodule. It’s location: one inch to the left of midline and ½ inch up from the base of the breast (ok, there, that IS too much information, but location matters). Had it been in any other quadrant of the breast, I would have thought it to be a swollen lymph node, but lymph nodes don’t live in this region of breast tissue. But here it is, all the same, in MY quadrant of MY breast where it had not been invited. Something. Something that shouldn’t be there. Something that wasn’t there before. Immediately, I mean immediately, panic set in. And then a furious investigation of the situation (thankful to have only found this one). Then, the wondering of “what in the world?!”, “I had a double mastectomy”, “there is little to no breast tissue in my breast”, “It’s August! My heavy month! My Celebration Month. My Mastectomy Month. My ARE YOU KIDDING ME month” and then all the other things that run through your mind when you are in panic mode. Then, no sleep for many hours as I watched the room get lighter and lighter as the hours ticked on (I may or may not at one point reached down and tapped Oliver unrelentingly on his forehead until he raised his head. Just because I could. But don’t worry he got a lot of belly love too). 

The following day my rational side returned. It always does. And this time it was in record time. I felt this flooding of peace, aware and anxious, but underlying peace. I could hear in the back of my head that this story was his story, and that he has purpose in even this. He was calling me, even in this private moment, as reminder that he has a purpose. And it just may not be all about me.  

We often think God’s story comes when we have a “known”. Once we know the outcome (a diagnosis, a decision, a plan), we then bring our inner circle into our story for moral support. It’s as if we need to have it all figured out before we allow God to publicly do his work in us. I think it can be a rookie mistake, and a mistake that I make often. I’m learning we can miss some crucial moments that are ripe for the blessing that can come in chaos.  These are the core moments of this “period of wait”. There is huge value in this period! Where prayer may have its biggest outcome. Where friends can rally and remind you that your story is also their story, because they love you and they want to do life beside you. Where anxiety can be repurposed into astounding faith. Instead we sit in silence and in the privacy of self, and often rob ourselves of the beauty and restoration that can come while waiting with others in tow.

This journey of mastectomy has been all about this for me. Teaching myself to do life with others in the moment that life unfolds, and teaching me that every aspect of my story can be used for something. It may not mean a hill of beans to me, but it may mean something to the young wife who finds herself in tears while standing in front of the mirror the week after her surgery, or the middle-aged friend who doesn’t know why she feels so overwhelmed while emptying her breast drains, or the forty-something mastectomy soul who wakes up in the middle of the night and finds a lump. There is always someone out there who is just like you. And maybe they too need to know they aren’t alone, they aren’t a failure for feeling what they feel, and they aren’t strange for the thoughts that creep in when they don’t expect it. God is re-training me to be the version of me he designed me to be. And maybe 25 years after my lymphoma remission is the perfect time to remind me to stay aligned with faith in His plan. For His way is perfect, even in the waiting, and there is much to be learned (I’m working on this, but boy is it challenging! Be gone, negative thoughts! Be gone, fear!).

Lead Breast Surgeon (who did my mastectomy) is taking me back under her wing. She wants to see me in her office next week for an initial “touch and feel” session, and then I imagine imaging or biopsy or something is likely in my very near future (update: the appointment had to be moved to the following week due to a scheduling conflict on my end). But let’s look at the totally reassuring statistics that we all need to remind ourselves of in these situations. 8 out of 10 breast nodules are benign. 8 out of 10 ladies!!! That's only 2 being breast cancer! That’s for you too! So let’s relish in that truth when we find our lumps and bumps! Not worth worrying about 20% right? And for me, I had a prophylactic double mastectomy. These boobs are man-man, “his best work ever” he promised me, I have little to no breast tissue left (picture and orange, you cut a slice, then chew the fruit off the skin. You get almost all of the fruit, but there are bits and pieces left behind on the skin. Same with the boob after mastectomy, most but not all). So having so little breast tissue there, I am wondering how this nodule even found its way here. I must be very likable for it to choose to do all that work to reside in an area where it will have no friends. But it’s here, and we are going to pray it to benign-ville! The outcome just may lie in our prayer, not because God is our puppet, but because we grow closer to him through our prayer. Hurry is the death of Prayer. There are times we must wait and listen. And if it takes a nodule, it takes a nodule.

I’m a work in progress, and maybe because of His work in my story, you are too. Hello, nodule, welcome (eeek!) home. 

Habakkuk 2:2 says, “I will wait to see what the LORD says and how he will answer” (NLT). 

You guys are my people, for such a time as this.


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