Knowing

Sorry, guys. I've been away from the computer for a while. I had just had enough of the intensity that this battle brings to my life and needed to not wake up and think of it so often.

I needed to hibernate for the winter. I needed a little time under the covers and away from the constant talk of treatments, developments, and numbers......always the numbers. I was sick of the side effects, sick of peeling finger tips, mouth sores, no appetite, and bad days.

As I was making the drive to Cary yesterday morning after a rough start of slipping on the ice and dumping the entire contents of my purse out into the snow.....yes, snow in March...., I started thinking that maybe I had been buried away long enough and it was time, even with the snow on the ground, to come out and start writing again. Renew myself. Be a yellow bloom of spring. Talk again about life and living and hope and fighting and winning battles, no matter how small.

I thought about several topics. Like what winter does to us as humans. How the short days and lack of anticipation toward anything other than Valentine's Day for three months, and the cold and decreased activity can really bring you down. Or how taking breaks from chemo, writing and talking about cancer is something everyone needs, if only for a few weeks, to recharge and re-focus. I finally decided to follow-up on something I had written about last year.

It really has to be the reason why I sometimes need a break. The reason why I will, on some days look at Janet, and shrug my shoulder and say, "oh well, it is what it is." The reason why I go under to covers, refuse to touch base with my friends, become nasty with my husband.

It's because there are times when the struggle and the questions and the feelings of foresakeness, the Living with the Knowing (see post from July 27, 2008) just overtake me and I have to give myself permission to be sad and angry and discouraged and disgusted and fed-up
and worn-out. If only for a day...but sometimes for a week or two.

Living with the Knowing is the distinct condition that those who have chronic cancer,....StageIV...
inoperable.....untreatable...terminal......whatever you want to call it, have to experience every day we wake up and live our lives. It is the fact that we know that something within us is determined to and more than likely will cut our lives short. Sometimes, the knowing is a good thing, because it keeps you focused on life, appreciative of what you have, thankful for your loved ones, glad to be here for one more milestone, one more birthday, one more graduation, funeral or wedding. But sometimes the knowing gets too hard to bear, to sad the think about,
too heavy a burden. That is when I need to hibernate...not write, not research, not discuss, not care....only pray.

As I was thinking of all this while driving down I-40...where most of my good thoughts come to me...I was thinking about the ad I had seen for a new movie. It is called Knowing. It stars Nicholas Cage. His son finds a scroll in a time capsule at his school. The scroll is in code and, of course, Mr. Cage's character cracks the code. He realizes that the scroll contains all the dates of and accurately predicts every major disaster that has hit the earth since the earth began. He also realizes that the BIG ONE, the end-of-the world type disaster is drawing very near. In the movie teaser, they show Nicholas Cage's face in one shot and it truly captures the burden of living with knowing that life is probably ending much sooner than he'd planned. Even though he is acting, he had gotten that look down pat. It's a heavy, heavy load sometimes, just knowing.

Then I began to think about someone who really knew what it was like to live with knowing that life would end early. This guy lived a perfect, sinless life, full of meaning and compassion,
teachings and miracles. The most faithful man ever, knew from a very early age that his path would take him down a rocky road from joy and love and worship to beatings and a trial and
a cross. He knew and he was afraid, just like us. He knew and asked his Father to "take this cup from me" (don't make me do this) He did all those wonderful things, taught us all how to live, became the light of the world, all the time knowing he would die a horrible death before going home to his Father. He once again, in circumstance that we who live with knowing experience all the time, walked before us with dignity, integrity, flawlessness, kindness, and most of all with love.

So when you are walking on your path of life with cancer and the burden is heavy. When you get like me and want to hang your head, give up, hibernate, make it stop, jump off the path and run away and never come back. Look ahead of you. Look ahead of you on the path and you will see a man in a loin cloth, carrying a heavy cross, on his way to a hilltop where they will nail his hands and his feet to the cross he is carrying on his back. They will pierce his side with their swords. He will suffer beyond anything you or I will ever know. And He did this for us, so we, that have to live with knowing, will never, ever, ever have to feel alone.

He alone knows better than anyone. He alone knows.

"Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you so disquieted within me? Hope in God; For I will yet praise Him. My Savior and my God." Psalm 42:11