Resurrection: Chapter 1

If this were just a story, it would end with the heroine giving birth to a child the doctors said would never be conceived. The new mother would gaze in to her son’s eyes, feel his soft form snuggle against her torso and communicate this new love by lifting her eyes in wonder, and meeting those of her husband. This husband, too, was another closely guarded dream come true. This would be the story of a successful but broken businesswoman who had survived stage 3 breast cancer, found grace, left Corporate America to follow her heart and purpose, become an entrepreneur, ultimately earning six figures in an executive role, while becoming a wife, stepmom, and finally, a mother.

This would be a true story.  

But life doesn’t pause at the end of a neatly written chapter.

Highs follow lows, yet lows follow highs. It is in the lows we find the story here. The dark valleys, the place one lands after being shoved from a cliff, free-falling into an empty ravine, bereft of inconsequential beliefs that one is in control, that one’s actions can somehow guard against sorrow or pain. The dark place where one’s hope and peace are like a firefly flitting about with a dim, pulsing light that disappears before it can be grasped by an outstretched hand. That place is where this story begins.

Shortly before Christmas 2017, I could no longer withstand the pain. My bones ached. We had an energetic puppy that pulled when walked on the leash, perhaps his strength caused the ache. My cuddly, chubby seventeen-month old rode my hip all day. Perhaps it was the aches and pains of carrying a near toddler. I had spent the past six months enjoying a break from work after a surprisingly tumultuous year following the birth of my child. The respite was ending, or so I thought, but the pain in my joints was growing unbearable. Even getting in the car was torture. At one point, I broke into tears trying to climb in to the driver’s side of my SUV. I would slowly shift my backside onto the leather seat, and then physically pull my left leg up using the strength of my arms. My hips would throb as I pushed down the gas pedal.

Still, when the diagnosis came, I was surprised. Unbelieving. Metastatic breast cancer, pervasively throughout my skeletal system, spots here and there in other organs but nothing definite. Incurable. Stop breastfeeding. Look at your little boy – your greatest and most longed for gift – and… listen to God.

LISTEN.

I heard God whisper “It is over.”

Yet before you say your prayers for me or my family, or close this story hoping to avoid contact with a tragedy, know that the “over” did not feel connected to life on Earth, but rather, to the death of — the ‘over-ness’ of — cancer — and the death of the ego demanding separation, hinting at resurrection found in the cycle of life, death and re-birth.

This is the story of my resurrection.

If you’d like to follow the story, subscribe below or keep visiting the blog. (Caveat: I’m a full-time mom, managing a health condition, writing an adventure story for children, managing this small business and teaching writing courses at a local university, so I may not be lickety split about posts but I’ll try…)