The Curtains

I have many analogies that I use to explain what it is like to be in a war against cancer. I try to use visualizations and life applications and scriptural references. My analogies have changed over the years with the ebb and flow of metastatic disease, but one analogy has remained constant. That would be my reference to the curtains.

Way back in the beginning, in 2001, I used the curtains to describe going through treatment. The curtains are velvet, they are heavy, and they are dark. They are like the curtains you had to try and walk through on stage in elementary school: huge and heavy and confusing. Rows and rows of them have been draped in front of me, and with each chemo treatment, with surgery, with transplant, with radiation, I would mentally pull a curtain back, tie it to the side, and move forward. The more curtains I pulled back and put behind me, the lighter the way became in front of me. There have been several times I have stood in the bright, warm light with what I thought were all the curtains pulled back. Their heaviness and darkness out of my way, out of my life. But, unfortunately, as I continue my walk forward, the curtains have found ways to return and my efforts to push them back go on.

I think without the curtain analogy, the whole experience, the whole battle with its ups and downs, loses and wins, would be too heavy to bear, too overwhelming for most....too dark. The curtains allow me to approach this disease in sections, knowing that as long as I am walking forward, I have the chance to pull a curtain back and head toward lighter and brighter days.
The curtains were very dark and heavy a few months back. Now they are like sheers, blowing with the breeze, making my walk easier.

Some people may think the curtains have been tools of denial. That's fine too. Though denial can be bad, it also can allow you to focus only on success, only on the future, only on the light that is breaking ahead of you. Don't think for one minute that I don't remember all those curtains behind me and try not to think about them suddenly fallings in front of me again. For all the faith I have, the curtains will always be hovering in the back of my mind. They represent every major step, every treatment course, every scan, every tumor marker, every side effect, every bout of sadness, disappointment, despondency that I have gone through. I have parted and pulled back hundreds of dark heavy curtains to find my way to the light and will continue to do so....as long as it takes...as many times as it takes.

Right now, I am in the light. I can breathe again.....the emotional stress, spiritual struggles and
exhausting angst are behind me...tied up in the heavy curtains I have just walked through over the last three months. I am pushing back curtains now that only have to do with side effects. Compared to other times, it is effortless. And even though I am aware of the curtains behind me and their possibility of being in front of me, I push that back, too. I push back this one last sheer curtain that frees me up, lets me walk forward and believe that I will be in the light for a long, long time.
Light for a lifetime; light everlasting.

"for you are a chosen people....a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light." 1 Peter 2:9