Three Year Cancerversary, A Reflection
Three years ago, three words changed my entire life: you have cancer.
I can only describe that moment as feeling like everything was rushing by me at a hundred miles per hour and like they were coming to a horrifying, screeching halt simultaneously. I’ve never been in such pure and utter shock, and it was nauseating and earth-shattering. I heard the words, but I didn’t want to believe them. My grandmother passed from breast cancer in her 30s, my father had the gene, and it ran in my veins too. I’d felt the lumps in my breast for months and realized that no amount of denial would stop the fact that my biggest fear and worst nightmare was unfolding before me.
After we got the news, John and I drove up to Malibu and sat on the beach to spend time together, equally trying to wrap our minds around what was happening and trying to not think about it at all the same time—the balance of holding grief and hope simultaneously.
I learned very quickly that two opposing things can be true. That chemo can be the thing that wrecked my body and stole so much of my vitality, but that it is also the treatment that killed the cancer in my body and gave me a second chance. I can look at the culmination of the entire experience and count what it robbed me of, but I also lose count of all the things it gave me—fresh perspective, a deeper trust in God, a renewed wonder for life, the ability to see and appreciate the little things, a marriage restored.
I remember being so deep in the trenches and thinking life would always feel the way it did in that season. I was convinced I wouldn’t live past the age of 40. I truly believed my body would forever feel weak and broken. The journey I had to go on to love and trust my body after cancer is a story for another time.
But I’ll simply end with this: words I wish I could give myself three years ago.
Everything will be okay. God, in all of His mercy, will tenderly walk with you in this season in ways that will change you for the better. You will have deep hope again. You will belly laugh again. You will feel strong again, both in body and spirit. You will have countless days that feel like they’re your last, but the people around you will hold up your hands when you’re can’t hold them up yourself. Community will be your anchor. The relationships you hold to in this season will grow exponentially deeper and will make your soul richer than you ever could’ve imagined.
Life will be beautiful again, and you will feel it more deeply than you ever have.
What a beautiful privilege it is to be alive.
From exactly three years ago, driving home from Malibu