Numbering Days, Week 110-113

This week always gives me pause, since its the week, now ten years ago, that I was first diagnosed with cancer, and with that one phone call a permanent marker was placed on the timeline of my family's life...before cancer was part of our story and after.

When I start to think back on the expanse of years, I acknowledge there is so much unimaginable in my story. There are so many untold, unimaginably hard things. So many times I've looked out at a day stretched before me thinking, how am I going to get through this?  How will I survive?

There has also, always been such much unimaginable love. God, in his great love, has been unfalteringly faithful...He is a constant help and presence. Strength in my weakness. And my people have loved me so well. How great a blessing to be seen, loved and cared for, without fail, for a very long period of time. I grow weary of me so often, but its only patient love that I receive from others.

Surviving ten years post-diagnosis cancer has not made my life miraculous; it simply brought to light the miracle that was already there. If I hadn't gotten sick, I would still be living in the grace of an undeserved life, I just wouldn't know it. Now I have the gift of waking to a new day aware that it is just that...a gift.

All my life you have been faithful, all my life you have been so, so good. 

With every breath that I am able, I will sing of the goodness of God.

I have made good use of my two and a half month break from treatment! In the last few weeks we've done some big milestones. Amanda was our first to leave the house, as we dropped her off at school several states away. Avery was our first to get engaged when she said yes to Jack's proposal. I'm so thankful to be here for it, as we pile on the memories.  Being in this life, as an active participant takes my breath away. 

I am living, breathing proof that life can be hard and good, beautiful and brutal at the same time. We can love our lives, even when it looks different than we expected. 

Life, I've learned, is tenuous and fragile but its also more miraculous than we realize. I live with open hands, not grasping at something or someone that was never meant to be mine to keep; I live with open hands, ready to receive all that God has prepared for me.