Recognizing Cancer

I've been spending time lately surfing the web, checking out other cancer and lymphoma blogs.  I've found many, many excellent writers, be they family members, significant others, or most inspiring and enlightening to me, the cancer patients themselves.  Wow. There are so many people writing about cancer.  And yet these are just a few of the thousands with cancer who choose to blog about it.  They are the minority - most folks are going through their treatment and staying out of the public eye so to speak.  Despite the traditional and stereotypical effects of chemotherapy not everyone looses hair, looses weight or looks emaciated; we might walk right by them and not even know they have cancer.  Besides, what does a typical cancer patient look like?  There are some generalities yes, but believe me, everyone I've met and seen is different and our trip hasn't been at all to specifications.  

One thing I've learned for sure is that I (we) never saw it coming.  And by IT, I mean the end of our life as we knew it.  It makes me wonder, will you see it when it comes your way or the way of someone you love?  I'm not suggesting that Phil and I, more than anyone else, should have necessarily recognized cancer in the medical sense when it landed on our doorstep.  (Heaven knows we worked this baby up as best we could before he was finally diagnosed).  No, I'm talking recognize in the way our lives changed radically and forever in an instant kind of way.  Will you recognize that your road is forking and there is no stopping it?  See that you are turning in a new direction, are at a cusp, a crossroads, a zero hour where-after you and yours will never be the same.  And know that how you handle it from there will make all the difference in the rest of your lives and the lives of those around you?  And it is going to happen to some of you.  Statistically, probably many of you.  And I'm sorry.

For me, one gift in all of this load of crapola is sharing myself and my struggles, my insights and my aspirations ~ what I am learning through it all.  Perhaps so that you will not be caught unaware.  So you will not be (too) unprepared.  Every journey is personal and not one is the same but there are similar Truths in the human experience.  Everyone suffers, everyone bleeds and everyone requires a lot of grace, love and compassion along the way.  I have the privilege of living in relationship with some pretty wonderful friends and family and between Facebook, letters and the blog I feel connected despite the miles and the separation.  This has been an intense and lonely road for me.  For all of us.  But God has continued to show up and so have you.  Thank you, each one, for reading along and for praying, for commenting and for seeing us through.  For being with us in our zero hour and our new life.  

     "If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn't lead anywhere."  

          Frank A. Clark