2016: a reminder

Note: This was a post I made on a wordpress site ten years ago, after life brought us to our knees.

From the hard, plastic, hospital chair in the Sarah Cannon Cancer Center, I reached up to hold Emily’s hand as she remained tethered to tubes of one kind or another. It was the middle of the night and the certainty of our future together was suddenly anything but certain. I was terrified. All I could control was that moment. And the best I could do in that moment was to hold her hand and tell her that I loved her.

Two days earlier, Emily went to the doctor for a phantom pain in her side that had been coming and going for the past 6 months. After being shuffled from one office to another, the only thing they could tell her was that she was going to need surgery … immediately.

3 hours in, the first doctor came out to let us know everything was fine. It was just her appendix and all would be well. My mother-in-law and I embraced and cried tears of joy. 2 hours later, the doc came back out, but this time he wasn’t alone.

“Bad cells” had been found in the original section and a specialist was called in to remove 1/3 of her colon to see if cancer had spread to her lymph nodes.

But wait, everything was just fine.

And now … Cancer?

Cancer.

The tears came again, but this time they were saturated with fear. I walked away from the waiting room to gather myself and took a detour into the hospital bathroom to have a break down. The kind of break down that only comes when you need to jump the line of everyone you know and take it straight to God. So I prayed. And cried. And then prayed some more.

Suddenly my job, my career, my podcast, my twitter, my facebook page, my instagram and a million other things that I had given SO MUCH OF MY TIME to over the past 2-5 years had zero relevance. Sure, I guess I had been a present and loving husband and father, but those weren’t things I necessarily worked on. They were always there. They were givens.

Em and I have been together since before Y2K, before cell phones and before I stopped requiring the need for hair products. I felt justified giving my attention to other things because our family was so solid. It was all these other trivial pursuits that needed my full attention. I had to work the hardest at them if I was ever going to turn them into … well, I wasn’t exactly sure what the point was in that moment.

So, I asked for strength. I asked for her healing. And like a child, I tried to barter with God.

If you just do this, I promise I’ll do this … and so on.

Over the next few days, we were surrounded with love and support. Cards, flowers, food, prayers, kindness and even money came rushing in from our family, friends, church and even people we barely knew. We were wrapped in love. Any time we started to feel consumed by the fear, the love poured in. Our cup was running over. I knew no matter what the pathology report said, we would not be facing anything alone.

My prayers started to change from asking God what he could do for me to asking God what I could do for him.

How had I been so selfish for so long? Where was I when anyone else I knew was going through a similar struggle? I let facebook messages saying I’d pray for someone replace actually trying to ease their burden with actions. I let my uncertainty for knowing exactly the right thing to do or say become an excuse for doing absolutely nothing.

The Wednesday of the following week, Emily got a call from her surgeon.

There was cancer.

As you might imagine, she didn’t hear much of what was said after that. We gathered the family together, called in medical favors and tried to get our strength up to deal with whatever was about to come our way. 4 hours later, I got the surgeon on the phone myself and he told me that yes, there was cancer, but … they were optimistic that it was gone. Hopefully cured, he even said. Relief washed over us. We pulled each other close as the tears of joy found their way back to the sides of our cheeks. Another week later and the test results would tell us that the cancer had not spread to the lymph nodes. Even better, it was determined that she would not require treatment. Only observation.

In the span of two weeks, Emily rode the roller coaster of dealing with a phantom stomach pain to beating cancer.

Yeah, that’s right. Cancer, you got beat. Put this one in your loss column. Hang your head and get back on the bus.

I know Em would be embarrassed for me to say that she’s beaten cancer. She would in no way want to diminish anyone else’s much longer and more difficult battle by claiming to have overcome a disease she didn’t even know she had. In her eyes, she just got sick and had surgery.  But I promise she’s done so much more than that. She’s been unbelievably strong. Both physically and mentally. She’s battled through this with less complaints than I battle through a common head cold. From the first time she pulled herself up out of the hospital bed to the day she stepped back on the treadmill, her will to get better has amazed me.

I’m writing all this down for two reasons. One, because I think we’re supposed to share good news with each other. Both literally and spiritually speaking. And two, because I have to hold myself accountable.

If I didn’t, it would be very easy to slip back into old habits once everything was back to normal.

The thing is, I don’t want to things to go back to normal. I want to live in this new normal–the one where I don’t take a day of this amazing life for granted. The one where I put my work into becoming a better husband and father. The one where I don’t ignore God’s daily calling to try and lighten someone else’s load. The one where we take all the love we’ve been given and spend the rest of our lives trying to pay it forward.

I hate that Emily had to go through a second of this, but I won’t let it go in vain. When I lax (which I definitely will), I will keep coming back to the person I wanted to be in that moment where I thought I was losing everything. Its the least I can do.

May you be so lucky as to have your life shaken to its core, yet left completely in tact.

I know it’s changed ours forever.