Four Things Cancer Taught Me

Hey, yall. Today officially marks four years since surgery, so im reflecting a big on what I have learned because of cancer.

a)    I learned to be less afraid of pain. Physical and emotional. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a masochist, but I think the ways that I was so very timid were shattered during that experience. Pain is a part of life, but just like this life, we must remember that it is very fleeting.

b)   I learned to laugh. I don’t know what it was about that experience, but I notice that for the first time in my life, I have really belly-laughed. It reminds me of proverbs 31 when it says the woman laughs in the face of the future. That’s real. With God I totally get that.

c)    I learned to cry. I cry like A LOT now. I find myself seeking to identify with people’s sufferings in a deeper way. I find myself crying at fireflies, movie trailers, little kids on bike. If you’ve seen the movie Collateral Beauty… collateral beauty.  Its profound and it’s like I’ve been given goggles as if to see for the very first time.

d)   I learned what joy really is. At a worship service a few years ago, I asked God what joy is. And the image that popped into my mind was of a moment in the hospital. It was early in the morning, somewhere between the midnight and six am vitals checks. I was in sooo much pain and my nurse walks in. I ask him if I can have more pain meds and he said no but smiled and left the room. A few minutes later he came back with a warm blanket to lay across my stomach. It was perfect and I smiled. God told me that joy is the smile on a hospital bed. All was not well with my circumstances, but all was well with me. Joy isn’t an emotion, it’s a state of being. Because of Jesus, eternity and what is true, I have joy.

      

This blog started because of that tumor and I wanted to thank you all for coming on this journey with me. You’ve seen the ups and the downs and I pray you’ve been blessed. Let me know what you’ve learned because of trying times. Much love, Anna

Spin, or a Poem about Mania

Spin, or a Poem about Mania

Spin, Spin, Spin--

They picked me up and set me spinning;
now I cannot stop.

"Look at you go! Look at you go!"

Can they see me coming apart at the seams?

This euphoria is a prison of falsehood.

Oh, someone save me! Who will deliver me from this body of death?¹

٭٭٭٭

Spin... Spin...... Spin--Crash!

I've hit the wall.

Now I lay here on my side.

The mesmerized crowd disappears.

I am alone.

Who will deliver me from this body of death?

 2am, 3am, 4am, 5am... all come and go as sleep evades me.

My body starts to fail under the overexertion. I need help; can anyone help me?

I feel barren. My mind feels like a dust bowl. Hot tears roll down my face. 

٭٭٭٭

I play some spontaneous worship music, and I feel

the cool water of his presence wash through my brain.

"Send out your light and your truth; let them lead me;

let them bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling!

Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my

exceeding joy, and I will praise you with the lyre, 

O God, my God.

Why are you downcast, O my soul,

and why are you in turmoil within me?

Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,

my salvation and my God." 

¹Romans 7:24-25-"Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from

this body of death? Thanks be to God through Christ Jesus our Lord!..."

 ²Psalm 43:3-5

If you or a loved one suffers with a mental illness, I am so sorry. I wish I could take everyone of you by the hands, look you in the eyes, and tell you how loved and not alone you are. For more information and resources on this pervasive issue, please visit the sight of or contact the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

Much love,

Anna Jo

everlasting arms

***This post was NOT edited for grammatical correctness. Or even to sound good. Sorry. This is my brain plopped on paper.

This summer I started having night sweats, sporadically. Somethimes worse than others. Which NEVER happens to me. I just tucked it away in my little notes folder on my iphone. Don’t worry, im not a hypochondriac. I just always go blank when my doctors ask me my symptoms. I tuck them away and then tell them to my oncologist every six months. No biggie. So anyways when I came home from Portland, I had a bad sinus and ear infection. I also felt horrible. Like barely get out of bed for a week bad. So I went to my primary care (shout out patient first) and the lady said all my lymph nodes were swollen. She told me I needed to see my oncologist, like,now. I said I had an appt on the 14^th of December (it was now end of nov.) she said I needed to get in sooner. A little panic. Then she said to go thru the er if I had to. I asked if i was being dramatic for coming in and she said no. she said, after all the things she’d checked and knowing my history, malignance could be the cause. Just fyi, doctors don’t say that all willy nilly. They only do if they really have to. So, a bit of panic. But this will all just be a big misunderstanding and ill soar thru it with flying faith colors like all the other times.

So get appt for that Monday. My original onc is back from asia (military hospital, you know). She feels them all says they’re swollen but also that im super skinny. She gets some blood work done and gets a chest xray. “it could be lymphoma” she says. Not dramatically. Just there. And she keeps my regular 6 mos appt to get abdominal mri that happened to fall on the 6^th of December. So we get all the things done. Talk to insurance people. Long day at the hospital. I’m waiting by a young wife whose husband is getting xrayed and biopsied for cancer. She’s all teary, her world seems to be coming apart before her eyes (literally. They were wheeling him back and forth in front of us. To xray, to biopsy. Etc.) I catch eyes with him. He had this beautiful radiant confidence. I used to have that with all this. But now im just tired. Go home. Put on my parka and uggs and big winter scarf and curl up in bed. (all that bc im really cold). Wait on call wait on call wait on call. Still feel horrible physically, but less so. And I was taking heart because no news is good news in the medical world. If there was something seriously wrong I would have been back in that hospital by that night. But still, wanted to get the all clear.

Doc finally calls. She doesn’t want to move forward with biopsy. She says scans clear. 

But that I do have mono. (I already had it, but yeah, cause it’s a virus you can get it again). 

So im here. Im still in pain (less). And I try to be strong, but can I tell you something?

 Im not. Im not strong or brave. God is. Im not. And this whole ordeal showed me that I really

 am scared that the cancer will come back. And ive read case studies on this type of carcinoma. 

(again, not a hypochondriac, just curious about what grew inside of me for months and months)

 its not good when it comes back. Anyways, I am scared. I cant be whipped back and forth like 

this. I feel like my life gets torn at the seams from all the spinning. But I read an interesting take 

on the word “compels/controls/constraineth” in 2 cor. 5:14… “For the love of Christ controls us,

 because we have concluded this: that one died for all, therefore all have died…” I have always read this and studied this
in terms of being moved and compelled by the love of God to serve and live out
a godly life. But Kelly Minter wrote this phrase about it… “sense the love of
jesus constraining you, actually holding you together” and then the Deuteronomy
33:27 everlasting arms have kept coming up… “The eternal God is your dwelling
place, and underneath are the everlasting arms. And he thrust out the enemy
before you and said, ‘Destroy.’” I went to chatbible to study the word
translated at control (ESV) in 2 cor. 5:14. One of the translations for the
greek word sunecho is this: “1) to
hold together 1a) any whole, lest it fall to pieces or something fall away from
it.” I don’t want to take this scripture out of context. Im no theologian nor
am I an expert on biblical greek. But for a moment, I needed to see this picture.
My life seemingly spinning out of control but God not letting one piece of me
fall away. I don’t know. Cool water flowed over me. Through me. It will be
okay. Im still in pain, and perhaps this fear will loom over me the rest of my
life. And I wont ignore it, and I wont deny that it scares me. But I will rest.
The everlasting arms aren’t going anywhere.

winter and babies

Sometimes, I’m taken back to memories of hospitals. The weirdest things bring my mind back. Often it’s the smell of certain types of handsoaps. I have most of my classes in Mcbryde(VT) and the hand soap there smells like hospital disinfectant. It is oddly comforting because it always reminded me of the why. Why I should give everything to Jesus. Something that period of my life taught me but I often forget. Other times, I hear a loud noise and I weep. I can’t help but cry as I type this. Motorcycles do it to me a lot.  My friends don’t really know what to do when I start crying randomly. I wouldn’t either. I’m instantly back in a waiting room or in a hospital bed, bruises up my hands and arms from IVs. And I can feel the ghost of pain. I’m not scared of it. It just halts me for a moment. I have to feel it. The other night, it was the scattegories buzzer that reminded me of all the noises a hospital room makes. People tell me that I stare vacantly a lot. I do. I’m just remembering. But sometimes, I can’t stop crying. Because I think of all the children whose life this actually is. Year in and year out. Pain, noise, fluorescent lights, uncertainty. I remember the day we found the tumor at chkd, we were waiting in a small room when a mom brought her two, twin babies in. They weren’t more than three years old. In wheel chairs. And one of the brothers started screaming and crying. It was horrible. Horrible. I couldn’t do anything because I was whisked away to the big hospital. I have never forgotten that boy. I never want a child to feel that way. I would do it for them if I could. I cant.

I know I’m supposed to say something that turns this post around. Something about Jesus. I know God is still good. Suffering, pain, these are not God’s will. But sometimes I don’t think we need to promote sweet-sounding Christian platitudes when we’re sad. We can acknowledge the pain without excusing it.

Winter is my favorite season. People look at me funny when I say that. I just spent my first winter in the mountains. I love the bitter cold, the long nights. To me, all the hope is in winter. Once December 21 rolls around, we know the days get longer and longer. We anticipate what the glory of spring will hold. I like the barrenness of winter because we get to really see. What is worth it. What do we need. And what is the actual longing of our hearts. I can’t take the pain for every child in this world. But Jesus did do something profoundly more impactful and loving. He took the eternal pain. The Dayspring is coming. There is an eternal dawn. Praise him.

mental health and christianity

I don’t know. I don’t know a lot about a lot. I’ve been thinking about how we think we know a lot about a lot. But I think even the wisest people… still don’t know. The rich, deep mystery into which we were born—a fallen cosmos—well… there are a lot of things we just don’t know. We can explain some mechanical functions of the universe—social laws, natural laws… but we can’t fully understand the implications, the why, the how, of original sin and redemption and the working out of our salvation. It is sometimes more “great, availing mystery” than we’d like it to be.

C.S. Lewis had some thoughts on this. In The Great Divorce, he writes:

“Ye cannot in your present state understand eternity… That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, ‘No future bliss can make up for this,’ not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backward and turn even that agony into a glory... The good man’s past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of heaven… And that is why the Blessed will say, ‘We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven.’”

One thing I long to ask God about is the sometimes inexplicable madness of our minds. Mental health. I think you could read every secular source on the topic, sit under the most spiritually adept theologian, and still not come close to comprehending the complexities of sin and nature and truth and forgiveness. 42¹ just doesn’t cut it. And that’s okay. This is meant to be no polemic against the noble pursuit of understanding, healing, loving… The compelling to attain to the full stature of Christ Jesus must go on! We must forge ahead into the deepest, darkest questions of the universe in Spirit and in truth. But this is to you who feel like you are going insane. Do not lose the hope and joy of your salvation because you do not fit into the scholar’s boxes or the theologian’s parapets. And if you have not accepted Christ Jesus as your Lord, your Love, do not let this keep you from him.

Mental health, the physical and the soulish, we will never fully understand while we labor in the pangs of childbirth. That’s okay. Pray. Seek medical attention. Lean not on your own understanding. It’s okay if you still don’t understand. I don’t. But I still believe in the goodness, the goodness, of the Lord. And one day, in the near and coming future, we will see his face and have the answer to all we never knew.

¹ In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything

The Waiting Song

Come, let us tend the garden of my heart, You, to whom it belongs.

Though it tarries yet, Your word remains

‘neath the soil of my inmost being.

The early rains and the late rains shall be pleased to make their way from heaven;

my harvest shall yield its increase

to You, my Beloved, You to whom it belongs.

  


I do not wane in the waiting, but set my face upon Jerusalem.

Come, let us tend the garden of my heart, You, to whom it belongs.

 Hebrews 6:7; James 5:7-11; Psalm 85:12; Habakkuk 2:3-4

Spirit of Adoption

I was anxious and heartbroken over my failure to steward well the much that I’ve been given. I always seem to fail. ‘I should be here,’ I think. I began to succumb to the dark waters of guilt.

I sat down at my piano, desperate for an answer. Playing a C chord and singing in the Spirit, I was lost in the Father’s heart. To whom much is given, much will be required, yes. But instead of showing me a picture of the unfaithful servant getting cut to pieces or even of the wise and faithful servant being blessed, I saw a child, before forgotten and hungry, now adopted in the arms of a father. Secure. Loved. The smile on his face contained no ounce of fear. Not one. But a knowing that he was approved of by unconditional love.

Lord, grant us the grace to know this Spirit of adoption in all we do.