This may be long, but it is two stories interwoven. I hope you'll read to the end for the connection.
After Katie died last October, I wondered . . . how do I do this? How do I get up each morning and fix breakfast for my other kids? How do I fill my day instead of just wandering around my house? How do I take steps forward? How do I heal? Yes, I am regularly seeing a counselor. Yes, I know exactly who to call and whose door to knock on when I cannot speak through sobs. Yes, some days I did (and still do) just sit in nothingness. But I know me. I know I function better when I am active -not avoiding, but active. I don't know how to deal with the death of a child, but I know I deal better with other life stressors when I run. So I decided that when I could not do anything else, I would make myself run. The cemetery is one mile from my house. One mile there, one mile back. I could do that. I had not ran much over the past year of Katie's illness, so that's all I would ask of myself. And so it began. When grief threatened to take me under, I would run the mile to the cemetery, sometimes sitting there for a long time before the return trip. After some time, I found that occasionally I wanted to run but didn't need to visit the cemetery, so I would take a different loop. My neighbor knew that if she saw me go left out of the neighborhood, it was a rough day. If I went right, it was a better day. Maybe not great, but better. Then one day, my friend convinced me to train for a race. Now keep in mind that I don't race to win, I race to train. It's the training that is good for the body, the mind, the emotions, even the will. It is the discipline of training that can provide focus and purpose when the rest of life has very little. Running clears my head. It is a reset button. Sure, sometimes I pray. But mostly I think about nothing. Or everything. Some runs are sweet little getaways. Some days I pound the pavement as if every step is a fist being thrown at cancer or God or Satan or whoever happens to be the adversary du jour. Somehow, running has become part of my healing. Well, running and boxing - like I said, sometimes it just feels really good to hit something. At some point during a long run, I decided that I needed a TeamKatie race shirt to go with all of this training. The shirt should be similar, but not the same. We are still all about Katie's story, but the story is different now. After a lot of thought and discussion, the shirt was printed for the race. Now, for the second story. Early June 2017. Katie was very ill. She had just a CT scan showing worsening of the cancer in her lungs and the mass in her chest continuing to grow to the point of putting pressure on her great vessels. Tylenol was given around the clock with fevers returning before the next dose was due. Multiple times throughout the day and night, she would have coughing fits that were only relieved with vomiting. She had went back on oxygen continuously and had also begun IV nutrition because of her poor intake and electrolyte imbalances. Chemo had recently been aborted as it had proven to be completely ineffective against her Hodgkins. Immunotherapy infusions had just begun and full lung radiation treatments were getting ready to start. She would be back in the ICU within a few days. It was during this time that I had a thought. A dream? A vision? It didn't feel like any of those. I even wrote in my journal that it was not strong enough to describe it as being from God, and yet, looking back, I would definitely say it was the quiet voice of God. My impression consisted of a very clear sense of Katie speaking to me from Heaven and saying: "It's okay, Mommy. It was worth it. It was worth it." Honestly, in the week following, it was absolutely the only thing that brought me comfort. The only thing I held onto. Every day, as I asked God some really hard questions with no answers that made sense to me, I heard her voice saying those words. And for the following months, even as the new treatments brought improvement, the same words played on repeat in my head. Circle back to this past fall, to my running and feeble attempts to process my life at this point. As I am perusing Katie's journals one day, I find the words: the prize is JESUS it's WORTH it!! don't give up, trust God The reference she connected to these words is I Corinthians 9:24. Don't you realize that in a race everyone runs, but only one person gets the prize? So run to win! All athletes are disciplined in their training. They do it to win a prize that will fade away, but we do it for an eternal prize. So I run with purpose in every step. (I Corinthians 9:24-26) Can you see that? Can you even believe that? I refuse to label that as coincidence. Just as I wrote in my last post, I claim that and allow it to build my faith. Can I look back at Katie's struggles and death and say it was worth it? Hell no. But she can. She can. From her current viewpoint, I honestly believe that she would say to me, "It's okay, Mommy. It was worth it!" So last weekend, I ran the half marathon for which I had been training. It was a challenging race. 13.1 miles in the rain through grassy fields, rutted gravel roads, single track trails, mile long asphalt hills, mud and standing water. I did not win any prize other than a piece of pizza and a foam roller to my calves. But I ran to win that prize. I was disciplined. I ran with purpose in every step. I passed people in the last half mile. I met my time goal. And you know what, in the end, it was worth it. All the training. All the soreness. All the long runs and the squats and the sweaty clothes. I don't regret it. And while it's a poor comparison, one day I will stand with my arm around Katie as I smile and say, "Yep, you're right, girl. It was worth it." Philipians 3:14. I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. Blessings, Sarah
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What do you fear most?
Several years ago I was working my way through a bible study and that question was presented. A recent sermon at church reminded me again of one particular lesson. As I pull out my tattered book, it falls open to the pages that discuss fear (I guess I have revisited that teaching a few times). The question at the top of the page says: What do you fear most? I look at my answers and right at the top are the words "if my children die." When Katie was initially diagnosed with cancer in October 2016, I spun that thing like DJ Jazzy Jeff. "Yes," I said, "Hodgkins is cancer, but it is one of the most treatable kinds! It has a short chemotherapy run with high success rates and lots of research behind it. If we have to fight cancer, Katie, this is the one we want to fight because we can win! Six hard months and then we can put this behind us! It will just be a part of your past." I said those words. Those exact words. Katie tucked that ball and ran with it. It was game time. She sailed through 5 months of chemotherapy without a single complaint. She was winning big time. But through it all . . . what she feared the most . . . was relapse. Then in April, only a few weeks after a clean PET scan, her worst fear was realized. The surgeon who had removed her port less than 2 weeks prior had to peel off the dressing that was still covering the wound in order to place the new port. What we said wouldn't happen, happened. Fear became reality. Most of our fears will never come true. They are like these big ugly monsters that parade in front of us, ever taunting but never touching, incessantly distracting us from Jesus and life. So we fight back by telling ourselves that fear is a lie from Satan. Which is true. It isn't real, we say. Just don't look at it. Don't think about it. Don't live in fear. We try to defeat irrational thoughts with rational thinking. But . . . what if that doesn't work? What if that isn't the solution? What if one day our worst fears come true? Then what? Then God. That's what I learned in my study so many years ago. That's what I have returned to so many times. That's what I wrote. If my children die, then God. In each of our lives, the blanks are there. If ______________, then _____________. We have to do something with those blanks. Satan will continue to parade those monsters in front of us over and over again until we can say . . . then God. If we refuse to complete the first blank or, instead, try to write God's name in there, we are simply trusting him to not let our worst fears happen. Our trust is conditional. In that case, what happens to our faith when our fears are realized? It crumbles. We're done. So we look back at the times in our lives when God has been faithful. All the little moments that others said were coincidence but we knew were something more. We listen to others share their stories of faith and how God stayed close in hard days. We read the book. We write the verses. We remind ourselves that God is good. We learn to hear his voice when the days are sweet and life feels easy. The building and preparing and learning to trust part doesn't happen in the midst of our greatest fear. It happens before. In the off-season. Because when your game face goes on, your faith muscle better be ready. I don't trust God to let me avoid what I fear most. I am determined to trust him no matter what. For deep inside my soul, I truly believe that what I suffer now is nothing compared to what will be revealed to me later, so I wait in eager expectation for that day when everything sad will come untrue, when everything wrong will be made right, when everything broken will be redeemed (Romans 8:18-19). If I relapse, then God. If my children die, then God. If I have to cry every day for the rest of my life because this is not okay, then I can still get up in the morning because there is still hope. If ____________, then God. Blessings, Sarah *Kudos to Beth Moore for the Bible study on Esther which strengthened my faith muscle in the off-season. Katie was discharged from the hospital on June 21st last year but was not released to return to WV right away. During that time, my brother and sister-in-law were in Cincinnati for an outdoor concert featuring O.A.R. and Train, and Katie and I were invited to join them when they ended up with two extra tickets. They had introduced Katie to O.A.R. previously and she already had a few favorite songs. She was so excited! After being stuck in a hospital, often confined to one room, for over 10 weeks, she was more than ready for a little adventure. We went shopping that day so she could buy an outfit to wear; she then spent a long time on her makeup for the evening. We did not realize quite how far the walk would be from the car to the amphitheater and, although Katie's flip-flops looked really cute with her outfit, they were quite impractical. With nearly all the muscle in her legs atrophied, she was having difficulty not tripping on those flops with every step. She ended up needing carried, piggy-back style, by my brother as I carried our blankets and bags.
She had an incredible time at the concert - laughing, singing, and people-watching! I heard a new song that evening that plays on repeat in my head sometimes. Drink up by Train. It makes me think of that summer. Now, some of the verses would not really pertain to the memories that I have attached to the song, but, like Katie told me occasionally, "Mom, you don't have to analyze everything for a deeper meaning." Can't let this moment, this moment slip away 'Cause things like this don't happen to us every day So take this moment and put it in a glass If you want a sip, I got memories on tap Drink up, drink up Write your name on a cup Drink up, drink up Write your name on a cup One evening in early July, just a few weeks later, Katie was finally home and Chad and I were walking through our neighborhood after dinner. We were talking about how to parent in this season of cancer when he said, "What if our goal isn't to raise a responsible adult for the future? What if our goal becomes to enjoy our children as a gift for today?" This probably does not seem like a profound statement, yet for two people who tend to plan and set goals and not always live in the moment, this was a huge realization. That one thought changed the way we parented that summer (and maybe forever). We really enjoyed our kids in the following months. We said yes a lot more. We ate a lot more Dairy Queen. We laughed and talked. We slacked on the chore list and dropped the nagging. I'm not saying we didn't discipline or expect them to participate in the household, but we became less concerned with teaching responsibility and raising adults and more focused on enjoying the now and being present. When we received the last minute opportunity to vacation in Florida, we did not do so under the weight of our normal vacation budget. We ate out, rented kayaks, drove go-karts and bought lots of ice cream! I told Chad, "We can't always spend like this on vacation." He responded, "Maybe not, but we are going to this time." A comment that was so out of character for Chad, but so in line with what God had impressed on him. Oh to always be able to listen to the Spirit like that! I am so glad we lived like that for those months. We wrote our name on a cup and drank up every moment. I truly believe that because of that one statement and conscious decision on our part, Katie did everything she wanted last summer. She had no "should have's;" nor do I. Since then, we haven't given up on our family budget or let our kids live without responsibility, but we have let some of that approach carry over into our lives going forward. The laundry and dishes still need washed, homework still needs completed, bad behavior still requires consequences. But I can't let this moment - this moment - slip away, 'cause things like this don't happen to us everyday. Drink up. |
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