Ceasing
Last night we grieved the loss of two of our fellow cancer kids.
We’ve grown to know and love them and their families.
They were 3 and 13.
We celebrated them as they learned to walk again after their bone marrow transplants, we sang with the nurses in victory when they got to go home, cancer free. And we mourned with them when they returned with a new prognosis and bad news.
Loss is hard and nearly impossible to understand.
But it has caused us to reflect on our own cancer journey.
It’s been 174 days since we took Colton to the doctor for what I thought was a cold.
157 of those 174 days have been spent in a hospital room.
I have wished every one of those days away.
There aren’t a lot of times in my life where minutes have felt like years and days have felt like decades.
But our time here has been just that.
If you’ve ever attempted a plank at the gym, that’s the kind of burning impatience I’m referring to.
Try planking for 157 days straight and let me know how you feel.
I’ve wished our minutes and days away because it’s easier than sitting in the pain and heartache of our reality.
That’s called ignorance.
I’m frustrated that we have no answer as to how Colton got cancer or how to prevent him from being amongst the 80% of children with leukemia who relapse. It pains me to have no end date and no knowledge of when we will go home next. And even after our time here is over at some point we’re going to need to explain cancer to our sweet Colton James. I don’t want to do that. No parent wants to do that.
But last night I sat in a moment of gratefulness.
Because I got to put our miracle baby to sleep after spending the day playing and chasing him around the hospital halls in his walker. Today he ate cheese curls and a banana and sausage and tater tots and drank a bottle twice. We read books and went to music therapy. We worked our legs out pushing the green john deer tractor around and waving at all the nurses and patients.
I am living in a million answered prayers.
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All of our days are numbered.
We hear that all the time.
We have no idea how many more times we will get to love on the people around us, how many sleeps we will get with our spouses, how many mornings we will get to wake up to crying babies or barking dogs. We don’t know how long we will get to spend our last dollar blessing the person behind us in the drive through line or tipping the waitress way more than what she’s used to. We have no concept of how many meals we will get to put on the table or how many more times we will need to play Let it Go or Baby Shark to keep the peace with our kids.
If that doesn’t cause you to change the way you’re living, I don’t know what will.
I would really miss holding that sweet little boy all night, even if it’s due to his nausea and I would miss the air mattress and rock hard couch that’s been our bed if it meant I was sleeping alone and not next to the people I love. I would miss the masses of mushy bananas I have to clean up after every feeding if it meant I had no one to feed the banana to and I would miss the mood swings and roid rage even if it meant peace and calm.
The point is that life is a privilege. Time goes fast and deserves to be handled with grace and truth and fun and crazy.
Buy the steak dinner.
Pop the champagne.
Celebrate the small stuff.
Bend the rules a little.
I can’t begin to count the amount of times I’ve said to myself “this is just a season or this too shall pass”.
But what if it doesn’t? Are these seasons and days not worth living too?
It’s nearly impossible for us to not picture ourselves in the same circumstances as our friends. Returning here after months of refound freedom with life threatening news. But we refuse to give in to the fear and worry of tomorrow.
The days I’ve wished away, I wish you back. And to the days ahead I’m vowing to cease you because you deserve to be lived fully.
As long as my life is within me,
And the breath of God is in my nostrils,
My lips will not speak unjustly,
Nor will my tongue utter deceit.
Job 27:3-4