A Spring of Joy

Yesterday was my fourth treatment this month, and I am so ready for a two week break! Walking into the cancer center yesterday, I found myself vigorously swallowing lumps in my throat. I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want to talk about how miserable I felt over the past week. I didn’t want to discuss how my body reacted. I didn’t want to see a new doc while mine was on vacation. I threw an internal temper tantrum, because I just didn’t want to do it anymore.

It’s kinda hard to think this is just the first month, that this will go on indefinitely. *sigh* So you could say discouragement was at a high yesterday.

Once again God met me there in my brokenness and graciously gave me good news and a gentle pharmacist who talked through tips for dealing with chemo with me. My white blood cell counts are back up–higher even then when I went in my first day! This is because they’ve lowered my dose to make it more tolerable for my body. The pharmacist, John, who I wrote about last week and is such a kind man, encouraged me to keep taking the meds at home they have given me. Admittedly this is hard for me. I don’t like taking medications. John smiled and told me that while he was a pharmacist, he doesn’t like to push drugs. But if it will improve my quality of life, those pain meds and anti-nauseas, and probiotics and all the rest will help with how I feel.

He’s right.

I’m just stubborn.

I think what I’m seeing is my “superwoman complex” crashing. I am unable to do all I could do before chemo. All I want to do now. I’m having to scale back. On Saturday night I was heaving sobs all over my poor confused Brian because I really wanted to go visit my brother’s church to hear one of our dearest friends from college (and one of Bri’s groomsmen) preach. But I had hit a wall. I just kept saying, “I don’t know what I want to do.”

Poor Bri would ask, “Do you need me to tell you what to do?”

To which I would wail, “I don’t know!”

We ended up not going, which was a big sacrifice for him to miss.

My Bri… he is golden… dealing with all my drama.

See, I had watched him the past two days take Bella and Bear bike riding and shopping and to Sbux for hot chocolate as a treat. Ash had stayed home to be with me and read. It was wonderful to watch them go off together excited and come home with that chilled air smell on their clothes and bright chapped lips to tell me all about it. But inside I ached, and I was jealous and I was sad that I wasn’t right there with them.

Yes. My “superwoman complex” is crashing. I don’t like it, but I am learning to let go of a lot of what I want to do and focus on what is necessary for me to do. I am learning when I can’t do any of what’s necessary, to allow others to come in and do it—to fold my laundry, to love on my children, to drive me to appointments, to volunteer at the office and do some of my work. Brian and the people at my work are so very gracious to me. I am learning to be gracious to myself. Instead of asking, “How can I?” in desperation, I’m asking, “Who can help?”

And y’all, that list of helpers is so very long.

So I sit here, curled next to a fire, under a beautiful plaid blanket a sweet friend gave me, tears coursing down my cheeks, asking God for more of Him and less of me. That is what I need in all this…

More of Him.

Less of me.

Because while yes, this is about me, this hard and this struggle, ultimately it is about Him. As I friend who is fighting her own battle reminded me yesterday, will I count it all joy when I am facing this trial? For it is producing an eternal weight of glory…

Thank you all for your love. For meals on my table. For painting my dining room. For asking for ways you can help. For phone calls and texts and emails and gifts. For flowers throughout my home. For time. You are blessing us beyond what we can share.