Saturday, November 26, 2011

Thanksgiving, Gratitude and Allowing God to Carry My Burden


My favorite holiday, Thanksgiving, has passed as well as most of the chemotherapy drugs in my system. I did my very best, staying awake and up on my feet for our family feast. My Son, Jonny came down and spent Wednesday and Thursday night with me. Even tough I was exhausted from the treatments, it was wonderful having him in the house again.

My Son and I have been close his whole life. It is so odd the way things change in life. He is twenty years old now – a grown person with a baby on the way. He is completely self sufficient, at least in terms of coming and going. (He still needs occasional guidance and direction). He is no longer the small boy that I brooded over for so long and with so much concern. Oh, I still concern myself with his wellbeing more than any other thing, but unlike when he was young, I can no longer protect him from the world, or any bad decision he might make. I am so very proud of my Son, and if you were to combine all the wealth in the world, and compare it to the value my Son has to me, and would not even be a close comparison. And he worries about me as much as I worry about him. He is constantly asking me if I feel ok, or if I am going to be ok. I re-assure him with all of the hope I reserve for myself, and he accepts it and goes on about his young persons life.

In world flipping chain of events, he wanted me to help him get caught up on his math homework. He is taking a class that I have taught before. He and I spent hours mulling over his assignments. With only minimal guidance, he was able to complete the rest of his semester homework and he did so with clarity I have not found in my of my own students. He certainly could be a math person and that makes me proud of him.

I worry about him so much… he has so much on him to be so young. He has a son on the way this spring and he’s working full time at a job that pays minimum wage. He is going to school full time and is living in Lexington on his own. While he has had difficulties in the past with substance abuse, he doesn’t party and he is focused on how to make his life one upon which me might be the best father and husband he can be. Most of the time, my heart aches for him when I recall my own early twenties. I had the chance to be a young man with little or no cares barring my college grades. My Son will not be allowed such a carefree early adulthood.

I haven’t really thought much about the cancer this week. I haven’t thought much about what prognosis I might get after these six months of treatment lately. Not sure why. I had treatments Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of the week past, and that went as expected; nothing out of the ordinary. I am now beginning to feel better. My mood and concern over my fate seems to be like an ocean tide; sometimes ever present and dominating, and at other times, far away, and insignificant. It is true that we go through periods of acceptance, the final phase of which is exactly that; acceptance. At least that is how it has been for me. As I have said before, the hardest part of cancer for me is the profound weakness that has come along with it, and the inability to join my friends and team mates for bicycle rides…. Not being able to go fishing or hiking.

I trained hard for several years, and won several medals in cycling, and now I am at the weakest point in my entire life. That is hard for me. I care little for material things, in fact to a fault. My values; the things I have held most important have involved my ability to explore the world around me, and deploy this God Given Miracle – my body – to see everything I can see of His wonderful world.

Still, the crushing “Oh My God, I have Cancer” thoughts have faded into the basal fabric of the life I am living at this time, and I am able to concern myself with other things more easily now. And that seems odd. My chances of surviving this are not certain at all, but somehow I have accepted that – perhaps truly placed it all in Gods hands, and that being the case, I find it senseless for me to worry to much about it now – at least from day to day. Sure, there are days I take it all back from Him and carry the burden of it myself for awhile – that is only natural. When I realize that it is all too heavy for me, and I can not carry it, I give it back to Him…. He gladly takes it from me.

The treatments are not fun, and are extremely debilitating. But I believe they are saving my life, if not simply prolonging it. When the treatments are over, despite the odds, I will climb back up onto the track of life and get myself back into shape; I will train to race bicycles, go fishing and hunt ginseng. And I will go hiking – perhaps climb Mount LeCounte. As my good friends keep encouraging me, I must proceed with my life as if I didn’t have this illness, nor ever did, and conduct myself in such a manner. What else can I do, or what is the risk in that? Until or if I am told otherwise, I will simply assume I will survive. And when I am not doing a very good job at this, I know that I have not truly given it over to God.

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