For the Rusty Star

I’ve maintained radio silence for over a month because, to be honest, radiation has been a rough road and I’ve been hibernating. Today I write for two reasons: my sister-in-law’s beautiful encouragement last night, and the desire NOT to have a big zero on my blog post count for this month. That’s my rusty star – having one post in June. Yay me.

My hair continues to grow – I think. It’s a little too long for spiking up, and a little too short to do anything else with it. I got compliments last week when Mike styled it for me! Here are a few shots from the last month:

This month I took a three-part writing workshop offered by Cancer Lifeline. It went so well that we’re trying to keep the group going. Ironing out logistics is proving a challenge, so it might fizzle, but hopefully not.

The workshop was, I felt, skewed toward poetry. I’m a prose girl. There are a few poems I love, but many times I just don’t get it. Although I do love the Psalms and really appreciate song lyrics, so maybe I’m not totally lost when it comes to poetry. I did my part to add some balance by sending in a short paragrapah when the facilitator asked us to contribute to her “creative collection.” J

I sent her something I’d written during the workshop. The assignment was to draw your body and place stars on it wherever cancer had affected you, and then write something from the perspective of a body part. I gave voice to my partially reconstructed breasts. I was just a few fills away from exchanging tissue expanders for actual implants when I found out I had to go back for more treatment. In spite of several ideas and pleas on my part, the doctors and I decided the best choice is to put them on hold until my cancer treatment is over. So here’s what “they” had to say:

"Hey! Wait! What about us? We were getting so much attention - you were celebrating our progress! But now, other than a repositioning shove into your sports bra and a half-hearted attempt to cover your double cleavage, we are completely ignored. We might be totally out of alignment, and we know you have more important things going on now, but we still represent hope and healing. This road is longer than you expected, but we'll be with you at the end, youthful and perky and ready to live. Don't give up on us!"

The hope they represent is important, but sometimes elusive. The very first writing assignment made me question whether or not I wanted to be at the workshop. It was a warm-up exercise, and we were supposed to answer “What have you done for your body this week, and what has your body done for you?” My immediate answer was “Nothing and nothing. It’s not being nice to me, and I’m not being nice to it.” So I went to the bathroom.

When I came back, I wrote:

“My body and I are waging war right now. In a year where I was planning to regain strength and endurance, I am feeling weak and leaden and exhausted. Add in last month’s surgery, which rearranged my colon, and I’m feeling betrayed.”

I was just mad. Yes, me, mad. After we wrote about that topic, we got to introduce ourselves, and I could barely recognize the girl who was, albeit lightly, describing herself as mad.

Our take home assignment that week was to write about fear. We were supposed to list all of our fears and choose one to write about. Well, happily, I don’t have many fears. Maybe weird, irrational ones like not wanting my dog to stick her head out of the car while we’re driving because a rock could fly up and hit her in the nose. Highly unlikely, but those are the random things I think about. But I don’t have many every day fears because I believe in a loving, personal God who knows what’s coming and promises to take us through those challenges. Or just protect us from them. And he has done that for me, many, many times.

Instead, I wrote about why I was mad. I was inspired by a song Mike found for me when I lost my hair last year: India Arie’s “I am not my hair.” So I wrote “I am not my…” and listed all the symptoms, side effects, changes, and circumstances that had me fuming.

That led to a list of what I AM. Which included “loved by many, strong of heart & mind & faith [although that hasn’t felt too true lately], a fighter, optimistic, a chosen child of God, a nurse,” etc. And then I wrote:

“I am not defined by these negative things, but right now my life is consumed by them. I don’t have to love and accept them, but it sure would be nice to make peace with them. Most of them are temporary, and somehow they will help me comfort and encourage others. I don’t want them – they are not welcome, and I hardly recognize the scarred, teary-eyed girl in the mirror. I will endure, I will conquer, I will adjust, I will grow, I will minister, I will love.”

Last year, a Bible study with my teen girls brought us to a somewhat obtuse passage: 2 Corinthians 1:3-5.

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ.”

We read it aloud and they said, “What?!” This is why we keep quoting Jeremy Kingsley, our camp speaker a few years ago: “Don’t read the Bible to finish, read it to change.” Nice, right?

So we broke it down slowly, so it made more sense. Basically: when we suffer, God, the expert, unlimited comforter, will comfort us, and then we can pay it forward.

For me, now, cancer is giving me a royal beat-down. But, ultimately, its triumph will be short-lived, and I will go on and use this experience to comfort others. So there, cancer. :P