On an episode of Seinfeld that aired in the early 90’s, the characters invented a holiday for those who don’t celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, or Kwanza.  It’s called Festivus and its slogan is, “Festivus. For the rest of us.” 

Festivus is symbolized by an undecorated aluminum pole, rather than a Christmas tree or menorah.  It features traditions like The Airing of Grievances, a ceremony in which you tell everyone how they’ve disappointed you over the past year. 

And after dinner, there are Feats of Strength, where you attempt physical feats that seem impossible to show how strong you are.

After the Seinfeld episode aired, some people actually started celebrating Festivus on December 23rd. 

It’s funny to think about such an unorthodox celebration, but I like Christmas too much to ever give it up.  Most years, after the Thanksgiving table is cleared, I’m one of the first to sprint for the Christmas music, lights, and decorations.  I figured out a long time ago that breaking out the festivities on Thanksgiving night allows for the longest possible enjoyment of the Christmas season. 

But two years ago, Christmas was different.  I was still reeling from my diagnosis and catastrophic surgery.  One of my closest friends, Lauren, was dying of lung cancer and in spite of my Ivy League degree in medical science, I couldn’t do anything to save her.  I was a pastor’s kid, but in spite of all my eloquent prayers for her recovery, God was taking her away.  The world was fast approaching a season of celebrating peace and joy and love and hope, and I could barely muster the interest or the energy to get out of bed.  

I felt like a child must feel when they’re told Santa Claus doesn’t exist — he’s made up, a story grown ups tell children to get them to behave 364 days a year.  I felt that way about the Christmas story of Jesus coming to give the world peace and hope.  It  felt like an illusion, made up, like a fairy tale.  A story preachers tell parishoners to get them to behave and go to church and give their tithes and live in denial of the real pain going on in the world 364 days a year.

The Christmas story seemed too optimistic to be historically accurate; it read more like hopeful children’s literature.  And my response to the gushing glow of the holiday season was “Bah, humbug.” 

One afternoon  in early December I met one of my friends for coffee.  “Do you have all your Christmas decorations up?” she asked.  “I know how much you love Christmas.”

“Loved,” I corrected her.  Tears brimmed behind my lower lids as I saw the stark contrast of how much joy I used to have, and how cynical and sad I was now.  Paradise was lost. The puppet had strings.  The emperor had no clothes. 

I walked home in the snow, and when I got to my apartment, I decided to celebrate Christmas against my will.  Maybe if I went through the old, familiar motions, the old emotions would follow.  It didn’t work.  Nothing I tried to do to cheer myself up or “get in the Christmas spirit” worked.

I think a lot of the world feels that way.  Christmas seems like a biblical fairy tale with talking sheep, singing angels, wise shepherds, and even wiser wise men.  It seems like a setting for a moralizing Dickens tale, complete with a converted Scrooge and a beneficent Tiny Tim proclaiming God’s blessing on everyone.  Christmas is a warm backdrop for a truce in the trenches during World War II.

But look around you now, and Christmas is nowhere to be found.  You don’t have to look far.  Just take this year, for example, when a Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death the day after Thanksgiving when an agitated crowd surged through open doors to start the Christmas shopping season.  Tourists in Mumbai were terrorized and murdered.  Thousands are dying of cholera in Zimbabwe, and medical staff who took to the streets to protest the lack of government funding for their clinics were clubbed and beaten by police. 

Christmas may have come to the world 2000 years ago, but now?  Look around you.  No, Virginia, there’s no Santa Claus.  There’s no baby Jesus sleeping silently in a manger.  There’s only Festivus.  For the disenchanted rest of us.

Right?

That’s what I thought…until I had an epiphany that Christmas two years ago while I was studying the strand of lights above my window, that appeared blurry through my tears. 

In the first chapter of John, the author describes Jesus as the Light of the World.  John writes, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.”

I mulled that image over in my mind.  Jesus was the light, sent into the darkness.  If the world wasn’t dark, we wouldn’t need light.  If the world wasn’t full of despair, we wouldn’t need hope.  If there was no sadness, what would be the use of joy?  If there was no conflict on this planet, why would we need the Prince of Peace?  All the disillusions I was holding as a grudge against God served not to discredit, but to prove the veracity of the Christmas message.  All of this pain I was experiencing was the explanation for Christmas.  This pain, these tears, this sadness, all of these were why He came. 

But no sooner had I answered that question than a new one arose:  if He came to light up this world, why are we still stumbling over hate and sadness in the dark?

I think C.S. Lewis answered this question when he pointed out, ” If I find in myself desires which nothing in this earth can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.” 

The ultimate purpose of Jesus being born on earth was not to give us a reason to buy presents and go sledding and drink hot chocolate and sing advent carols, but to become the substitute for us so we could be made right with God. 

He didn’t come to make this world the perfect place – just look around you or glance at the headlines and you’ll quickly see how true this is.  Instead, He came to provide us free passage out of this world, so we can spend eternity in the place and with the God we were made for. 

It’s the best kind of story – the kind that’s true, where the King slays the dragon, and His subjects live happily ever after. 

It’s infinite love.

It’s the naked emperor, clothed.

It’s Paradise Found. 

Forever.

When you are diagnosed with cancer, you have many hurdles to jump.  First the biopsies.  Then the surgery.  Then the chemo.  Then the baldness, the nausea, the joint pain, the muscle aches, the mouth sores and the fatigue.  Then comes radiation and more fatigue.  Then comes the moment when you’ve finished your last treatment, and you breathe a sigh of relief. 

And then comes the fear.

What if I’m never the same?  What if I can’t live with these scars?  What if they didn’t get it all?  What if it comes back?  What if it’s not so treatable next time?  What if I’m dying and I just don’t know it yet?

I imagine it’s similar to the way soldiers feel when they win a skirmish with the enemy they can see, but know they could still get taken out by the sniper they can’t see.  It’s a feeling of vulnerability.  Defenselessness.  And, if you think about it too long, debilitating fear.

For most cancer patients, this takes the form of a heightened awareness of every physical sensation.  I have a headache.  It must be a brain tumor.  My back hurts.  I must have spinal mets.  I forgot where I put my keys.  The brain tumor must be worse than I thought. 

The other day I was driving and I got a sudden twinge in my knee and I instinctively thought, I must have cancer in my knee.  And then I had to remind myself that you can’t get cancer in your kneecap.  

I started doing research on the Internet in an attempt to get a handle on this fear.  I wanted to find out how other cancer survivors have been able to move on with their lives, what has helped other women get over the fear of the unknown future.

On Breastcancer.org I found an article that listed ten steps you can take to minimize the fear of a recurrence.  It listed suggestions like, Be an active part of your treatment team.  Reach out to people around you for support and reassurance.  Ask  your oncologist for medicine to help you with your anxiety. And, Even women with very advanced cancer live longer than expected due to advances in cancer therapy.

Instead of assuaging my fear, the article greatly increased my apprehension.  Really?  Seriously?  That’s all you’ve got? I wondered. Am I really supposed to be less afraid because if I get metastatic cancer, a new chemo drug that might make me really sick could possibly add a few weeks or months to my tortured life?  That’s what’s supposed to make me feel better? 

If I wake up in the middle of the night with a panic attack, I’m really supposed to soothe myself with the thought,  Don’t worry, if you get metastatic cancer you won’t die in six months; you’ll die in nine, and then fall back into a blissful sleep. 

I don’t know who wrote that article, but if you’re reading this, THAT DOESN’T HELP AT ALL.

So what does help?  Not much, actually.  Unless your mind allows you to live in denial (mine, unfortunately, does not), the reality is that in some cases, cancer does come back and it’s not treatable, and in spite of the best treatment, people die.  So there you go.

The only reassurance I’ve been able to find in all of this is in Psalm 139 that says, “All of my days were written in Your book before one of them came to be…I praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”

The only meaningful answer I’ve been able to find for the lingering questions of an unknown future is that I have been made by a Creator who knows me and loves me and has carefully planned the day I was born and the day I will die. 

Any other hope seems at best trite, and at worst, a lie.

Anxiety medicines are temporary.  Even the best-intentioned family and friends are human and will let you down sometimes.  And while cancer advances are encouraging, and, let’s face it, the reason I’m alive to write this, they fail, too. 

But our Creator?  He never fails.  He is never late.  He is never wrong.  He knit my being together in infinitely careful detail, and He is the sovereign master of every part of me. 

I surrendered my life to Him long before this cancer came along.   And no matter what happens, He is, as He has always been, Lord of my life, my death, my career, my finances, my health – and yes, even my kneecaps.

I took a year off between college and graduate school to work as a phlebotomist at a hospital near my parent’s home in Illinois.  My job involved going to every department in the hospital to collect blood from patients.  I spent time in the ICU, the cardiac floor, the maternity ward, and the psychiatric unit.  I even scrubbed into the operating room once to do a finger stick on a patient undergoing brain surgery.

The most memorable experience of that year was the night I got called to Pediatrics to draw blood from a 5 year-old girl who was being admitted with newly-diagnosed diabetes.  The nurses called me so I could draw blood off of her I.V. instead of having to stick her with a needle a second time.

I walked into the room to introduce myself to the patient and her parents, and I immediately recognized the patient’s mom, who was sitting in bed with her little girl.  She was a physician on the hospital staff that I had often seen rounding on her patients while I was doing blood draws on the floors.

When the nurses were ready, we walked the little girl and her mom down the hall to the Procedure Room.  Because the medical staff didn’t want children to associate their hospital room with pain, all procedures were done in a separate room.

As the doctor stood against the wall watching, we strapped her daughter onto a papoose board, and started her I.V.  When the needle went into her arm, the little girl shrieked.  As I collected her blood into vials to take to the lab, she kept screaming.  After a few minutes of crying without seeing any results, she lifted her head off the table and screamed, “MOMMY!  I’M IN PAIN!” 

I watched the doctor’s face, and noted the tears that welled up in her eyes as she watched her daughter continue to struggle against the restraints.  But, to her credit, she kept her distance and let us finish the procedure. 

The moment we were done, the doctor undid the restraints, scooped her daughter up in her arms, and carried her back to her room.

I’ve thought about this scene a lot over the past few years.  Pain is one of the age-old arguments against the existence of a loving God. If there really is a God, and if He is as loving as the Bible claims, why do humans suffer? 

C.S. Lewis tackled the issue with his book, “The Problem of Pain.”  Later, after he lost his wife to cancer, he wrote a candid account of his disappointment with God in, “A Grief Observed.” Decades later, another Christian author named Philip Yancey tried to answer the question in his book, “Where is God When It Hurts?”

This abstract, theoretical question became very concrete and personal two years ago when I was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 27.  Despite undergoing the most aggressive surgical treatment available, a bilateral mastectomy, the cancer recurred a year later.  I spent the next seven months undergoing four surgeries, eight rounds of chemotherapy and 30 sessions of radiation.

I was out of work for most of that year, and depleted the majority of my savings.  I lost friends I thought I could depend on, and when I needed them most, my church family kept a safe distance.

 I couldn’t understand why, when I was hurting so much, God seemed so far away.  And I couldn’t understand why, in spite of all the prayers of those who loved me, the cancer recurred and I had to suffer even more.  Where was God?  Why didn’t He intervene?  Why did He let the pain continue long after I said ‘Enough’? 

I struggled with these questions for a long time without arriving at any satisfactory answers until I thought back to that Procedure Room on the pediatrics ward. 

I thought about the paradox of that doctor.  The mother in her loved her daughter more than anything, and wanted her child to be healthy and pain-free more than anyone else on the medical team.   But the doctor in her knew that the very best thing for her child was an I.V. that could provide life-saving insulin and fluids, and blood work that could accurately diagnose the problem. 

And so, even though it caused her child pain, because the doctor knew it was ultimately in her child’s best interest, she allowed us to inflict pain that the little girl could not understand.  But at the soonest possible moment, she was there to pick her daughter up and carry her away from the pain.

And then I thought about the paradox of God.  How is it possible that He could seem so far away to me – and to other saints, like Job and David – and yet promise, “I will never leave you or forsake you”? (Joshua 1:5)  How could life hurt so much when He promised to give us, “a future and a hope”? (Jer. 29:11)

In the light of the woman who was simultaneously a mother and a physician, I began to see God as both my Father and the Great Physician, the One who is infinitely loving, and infinitely wise.

Sometimes, like the mornings when I can’t get out of bed because I am exhausted from my cancer treatments, or the evenings I watch the news and see victims of natural disasters who are dying of starvation and diseases, I wonder where God is.

And then I think, He’s the loving, all-knowing Father standing against the Procedure Room wall of life, watching His children suffer as tears well up in His eyes, waiting for the moment when our trial has finished its work in our life, and He can pick us up and carry us home.

Where is God when it hurts?

He’s right here.  And He’s been here all along.

My friend Lauren died of lung cancer the night before I started chemo.  She died a year ago today.

Lauren was the adjunct professor of my first journalism class at Columbia.  When my professor found out I was facing breast cancer, he asked Lauren to meet with me.  She had been diagnosed with stage III lung cancer the year before and had finished surgery, chemo, and radiation.

“Cancer is one big mindf%*#,” I remember her telling me.  “It makes you wonder, ‘Who did I piss off in heaven?’”  Then she told me she had a few friends who were breast cancer survivors and were doing well.  “You’ll get through this,” she promised.

Lauren was tough.  She was a tenacious newspaper reporter.  She told me she didn’t tell her colleagues about her diagnosis because she didn’t want them to feel sorry for her; she wanted them to think she was a bitch.  (her words, not mine)

When her cancer went into remission, she married her fiance and bought a cool apartment in Manhattan. 

 Lauren was like the big sister I never had.  When someone made an insensitive comment to me, like, “I want to have breast cancer so I can get a free boob job!”, I’d call Lauren.  When I was in pain after my mastectomy, when I had a falling out with my oncologist, when I just wanted to talk to someone who I knew would understand, I would call Lauren.

We exchanged cancer articles and iPod playlists and writing ideas. 

And then, just weeks after her honeymoon, her cancer came back. 

She had more surgery, chemo, and radiation.  The sicker she got, the more we talked.  I was taking classes at Columbia again.  Every week when I went into the city, I took the subway to the stop near her apartment, got pizza from the neighborhood pizzeria, and spent the afternoon with her at her apartment.  Her nutritionist had told her to eat more vegetables, which she hated, so her concession was to eat veggie pizza. 

She was writing a column called ‘Life With Cancer’ for her newspaper, so when I went over I’d proofread her column and we’d brainstorm about what topics she should write about next. 

The last time I saw Lauren was one of those afternoons when I took the train into the city, and took the subway to her neighborhood.  We got pizza, then walked to a spa a few blocks away.  She got accupuncture because her chemo was making her nauseated, and I got a massage.  Then we met Barry, a mutual friend who is a New York Times reporter and Columbia professor, at a Starbucks nearby. 

Barry and I left to meet a group of Columbia students for dinner, and Lauren went home. 

A few weeks later, I had reconstructive surgery, and found out that my cancer was back.  As I was getting scans and bone biopsies and a port placement, Lauren’s cancer was growing out of control.  In the two weeks between my diagnosis and starting chemo, I talked to her on the phone a few times.  She had mets to her liver, which caused fluid to accumulate in her abdomen, which put pressure on her lungs.  She sounded more and more out of breath.  And she was in pain. 

Talking was an effort for her, so we started e-mailing instead.  In the last e-mail she wrote to me, she said, “Cancer is f—ing cruel and sick.”  She asked me if I had any Kavorkian ideas.  She just wanted to die, she said.

She died two weeks later at Memorial Sloan Kettering, a cancer hospital in New York City.  She died the night before I started chemo.  It was like she was passing the cancer torch to me to carry on.

I couldn’t go to New York for her funeral because I was sick — the first round of chemo made me vomit incessantly.

I miss Lauren.  When I was going through treatment, there were many times I picked up my phone to call her to ask a question or get advice or get reassurance that everything was going to be okay, and then realized she was gone. 

A year later, I still have her phone number in my cell phone.  I still have her e-mail in my address book.  I still have her memory in my heart.

In the spring of my senior year of college, I made an S.O.S. call to my dad.  I was doing my taxes on my own for the first time, and it wasn’t going well. 

“Let me get this straight,” he said.  “You’re getting an A in Calculus, but you can’t fill out a 1040 EZ form?”

I sheepishly admitted to the irony.  It’s a paradox I still can’t explain — why complicated things like writing a master’s thesis, studying at two Ivy League Universities, and acing Organic Chemistry come easy to me while simple tasks like completing a 1040 EZ form, changing my windshield wipers, or registering my car at the DMV completely elude me.

This may help explain why I was dreading my recent trip to the Oregon DMV, where I had to register my car and trade my Connecticut driver’s license for an Oregnian ID.

I had everything with me: my license, registration, proof of insurance, title, address verification…every piece of paperwork I thought they could possibly need.  I produced these proudly to the woman behind the counter, who instead of being impressed by my organization asked tersely, “Where’s your emissions certificate?”

DOH!

She gave me the address of an emissions testing site, I packed up all my documents, and left.  An hour later, I returned with the certificate. 

Before finishing my registration, the woman said I needed to take my driver’s exam.  Had I studied, she asked.

Yes, I answered.

She showed me to Computer #1. I sat down, took the exam…and failed it.

“I thought you studied,” the woman said.

“I did,” I answered.  “I read the entire online study guide.”

“Oh,” she said, handing me a driver’s manual.  “The online edition isn’t the complete version.”

“Obviously not,” I whispered to myself. 

She told me I could come back the next day to retake the exam.

I left the DMV completely frustrated, ready to pull out the little post-chemo hair I have. 

The bright spot of my day was that I had a date that night.  “There’s this cool place that has a great happy hour,” my date told me when he called me to make plans.

“Perfect,” I said.  “I could use a fun night out.”

When we got to the restaurant, the bartender asked to see our ID’s before we could enter the bar where the happy hour specials were being served. 

He looked at my Connecticut ID - the one taken 3 years ago when my hair was long and blonde- then looked up at me, then back at my ID before finally handing it back to me.

“What made you chop your hair?” he asked glibly.

“I had chemo and it fell out, and it’s just starting to grow back,” I answered him with an even stare.  I have found that this answer usually shocks people into a respectful silence, or at most a meaningful, “I’m so sorry.”

But not our guy.  Nope. Without pausing, he asked loudly, “Did you lose ALL your hair?”

I nodded silently.

“What flavor did you have?” he asked next.

“What do you mean — what flavor of chemo or what flavor of cancer?” I asked incredulously, shocked that this conversation was still going.

“Cancer,” he said nonchalantly.

“I had breast cancer,” I answered, barely above a whisper, willing him to be shocked into shutting up.

“Cool,” he answered.

“No, not really – it’s not like picking an ice cream flavor.”

“This guy who works here had thyroid cancer and he had chemo and all his hair fell out – even his eyebrows. It was crazy.”

And with that, he switched topics.  My date ordered for us, and the bartender left to put in the order.

I stared at the TV monitor on the opposite wall pretending to watch the NCAA game, mustering all the strength in me to blink back the tears.  I am always ashamed to cry in public.  To me, it carries the same stigma of peeing your pants – everyone stares at you and simultaneously feels sympathetic for and titillated by your misfortune.

I was managing to hold it in until my date put his arm around me and said softly, “You’re really quiet.  Are you okay?”

I shook my head, and with that, the dam broke.  Tears of anger and frustration and profound sadness began streaming down my cheeks.

I tried to find the words to tell my date how angry I was that this idiot had dared to compare having cancer to choosing an ice cream flavor, that he had dared to point out how inferior my cropped head was to the long blond tresses I used to have, that he hadn’t shut up and respected my privacy, that I hadn’t forced the end of the conversation sooner, and maybe most of all, that he had reminded me.  I was trying to be a normal girl in a cute skirt with a matching hand bag out to dinner with a date, and with a few questions from an intrusive stranger, the illusion that I was just a normal girl was shattered, and I was thrown back into the terrifying hell of cancer and chemo.

But of course, I couldn’t articulate any of these thoughts.  I could only blubber and use my cloth napkin to wipe away the tears falling so furiously they were dripping from my chin.

In an attempt to retain the little dignity I had left, I stood up, layed my napkin on my chair, whispered “I’ll be back,”and made a beeline to the ladies’ room.

In the privacy of the stall, I buried my face in my hands and cried. And cried. And cried some more.  Every time I thought the flood was abating, a new wave welled up and streamed down my face in torrents.  All I could think was, ‘If only.’  If only we hadn’t come here, if only we hadn’t sat in the bar, if only the bartender had kept his mouth shut, if only I’d passed the driver’s test and gotten my new ID, he never would have seen that old photo of me…that’s right.  In a hail-mary attempt to fault someone for this disastrous day, I blamed it all on the DMV.

I don’t know how long it took me to compose myself. 10, 15, 20 minutes?  I wasn’t keeping track.   I splashed my face with water, then blotted it dry, and prayed I could be strong enough to hold back the tears I could still feel deep down inside of me.

I walked out of the bathroom to find my date standing in the lobby holding my purse. 

“What did you do with the food?” I asked, feeling guilty he’d forfeited his dinner for me.

“I took care of it,” he said elusively, but I didn’t press him for details.  He held my hand as we walked to the car.  He opened my door for me, and closed it once I had my seatbelt fastened.

As he started the car, I began crying again.  No drama, just sitting in the passenger seat quietly with tears streaming down my face.  As he drove and I cried, the rearview mirror caught my attention.  I watched the road and the trees that lined it, the ones that used to loom so large in our view, growing smaller and smaller until they disappeared into a vague background. 

And somehow, it gave me hope.

I’m usually pretty open about my diagnosis and everything I’ve been through and how I feel about it.  But 2 months ago, I moved to Portland, OR, from Connecticut and decided I was going to start over.  I began working in the emergency room at a local hospital, and I wore my wig every day, and I never told anyone what I’d been through except for my supervising physician…and I swore him to secrecy.

 When I started the job, I didn’t know when I was going to stop wearing the wig.  What I really wanted to do was to wear the wig until my real hair was as long as my wig hair, and I could just take the wig off and everyone would just think I’d changed my hair color.

 But this morning, I put the wig on and my real hair, which is blonde, was sticking out from under the brunette wig.  I tucked in my real hair as best I could and went to work, but I worried all day at work that someone was going to notice and was going to think I was a freak for wearing a wig.  And so today, I decided I was ready to come out of the closet and reveal my true self to my colleagues. 

I came home from work and wrote a letter to my supervising physicians to explain my situation to them.  It took me a long time to compose the letter, but this is what I came up with…

I’m writing this e-mail to tell you something that’s probably going to be surprising, and I wanted to make sure you heard it from me instead of from the rumor mill.

Before I moved to Portland, I underwent treatment for breast cancer.  I had 4 surgeries, 30 radiation treatments, and 8 rounds of dose-dense chemo. The chemo suppressed my bone marrow, which is how I got gram positive and MAI pneumonia in November, and ended up in the ICU in sepsis.  As you know, this delayed my start date.

I only told Dr. — about my situation, since he was my supervising physician and I thought I owed him an honest explanation for why I was moving to Oregon later than expected.

I wanted the chance to get to know you, and give you the chance to get to know me, without any stigmas attached.  The reason it becomes important to tell you about this now is because for the past 2 months I’ve been wearing a wig while I waited for my hair to grow back.  And my hair has now grown back to the point where I’m comfortable without the wig.

So…in the next few days I’ll be showing up to work not as a brunette, but as a cropped blonde.  It’s a pretty dramatic change, and I’m sure it will raise questions.  Since I’m not a big fan of lying, I’m fine with telling my colleagues and co-workers that I’ve been through chemo, but I’m not planning to share any more particular details than that.

Sorry to spring this on you, but like I said, I wanted you to hear this from me.  If you have any questions or suggestions, I’m open.

Thanks.

Sarah Thebarge

I feel really nervous about the whole thing…I am afraid that my coworkers will think I was a freak for wearing a wig, that they will feel betrayed that I didn’t trust them with the intimate details of my life, or that my colleagues who know me as a confident, capable clinician will now view me as a vulnerable, sick girl. But I’m doing it anyway.  On Saturday, my next shift, I’m going to show up to work not as a brunette but as a cropped blonde. 

Wish me luck.

A few days after every Herceptin infusion, I get muscle aches that make me feel like I’ve been weight lifting with Hulk Hogan.  During those few days, it’s hard to get out of bed and once I finally do, I limp around for a few minutes until my muscles finally concede and agree to start working like they’re supposed to.

The other day I was post-Herceptin, and I had to get groceries.  I drove to Albertson’s and  looked for the spot closest to the store entrance.  There were handicapped spaces, in which I cannot legally park, but right next to those spots was another space with a sign that said, Reserved for Expectant Mothers.

I sat in my car for a minute, pondering my dilemma.  OK, so it was technically reserved for pregnant women.  I didn’t begrudge any expectant mother her parking space, but surely I was having just as hard a day as any pregnant woman.  I may not have been pregnant, but my muscle aches and fatigue provided just as much a challenge to me as any bulging belly could present to another woman.

And then I wondered why the proprietors of the grocery store singled out pregnant women. Weren’t there lots of other people who, like me, were having a bad day and needed a little TLC, like a special parking space?

And so, in a subtle act of civil disobedience, I parked in the special spot. 

If it were up to me, every mall and grocery store and shopping center would have a Bad Day parking space.  Because, let’s face it, we all have bad days.  And on those days, it would be nice to know that the rest of the world cares and has made a special accommodation just for you.

You just lost your job?  You had chemo this week?  Your teenager got her navel pierced without telling you?  You didn’t get into grad school?  You spilled coffee on your white shirt on the way to work?  Your adjustable rate mortgage just doubled?

We care, we love you, we understand.  We’ve been saving this spot just for you — park here.

We can’t fix each other’s lives, but we can certainly make others’ lives easier with a little creativity and a lot of kindness and some simple sacrifices…even something as simple as a parking space.

My favorite essay of all time is one that an English professor named Nancy Mairs wrote about her experience with Multiple Sclerosis.  In her essay, entitled On Being A Cripple, she wrote, “Life is a lesson in losses.  I learn one at a time.” 

After my mastectomy in 2006, I began writing a memoir about my experience with breast cancer.  Borrowing Mairs’ phrase, I tentatively titled it, “A Lesson in Losses.”   When I told one of my friends what I was calling my memoir, she said matter of factly, “Well, that’s just depressing.” 

She was right — it was depressing.  Four months after my mastectomy, I wrote this prologue to my memoir:

 At that point, that’s all my experience was: a series of excruciating losses.  After my recurrence in 2007, the list of losses grew even longer.  At night when I had trouble sleeping, I’d lie in bed and take a mental inventory of everything I’d forfeited to cancer: my breasts, my hair, my boyfriend, my fertility, a lot of friends, and, after being out of work for seven months, most of my savings.  A few days after I finished chemo, I went into sepsis from pneumonia and almost lost my life — and in the midst of all the sadness, I almost lost my faith.

God felt so far away, it was as if He weren’t there at all. I read verses like Joshua 1:5, “I will never leave you nor forsake you,” and I told God, “I know You’re there, but I can’t feel You.” 

I read Jeremiah 29: 13, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart,” and I told God, “I know You’re there, but I can’t find you.”

It was a dark, dark time, and it seemed to me that the only solution was for God to take me home.  At least in heaven, there would no pain, no scars, no sadness to eclipse the light of His presence.  “I just want to be with You,” I told God over and over again.  “I’ve lost everything I cared about.  Just take me home to be with You.”

And there, in the darkest valley, is where a merciful God reached down and found me.  In the midst of sleepless nights and muscle aches and bone pain and nausea and fevers and everything else I was going through, He finally let me feel His presence again.  He didn’t magically remove all the effects of living with cancer in a fallen world; He made Himself known in spite of it.

Like David said in Psalm 18, “He reached down from on high and took hold of me…He rescued me because He delighted in me.”

After that experience, I decided to rename my memoir, because A Lesson in Losses doesn’t seem adequate any more.  The amazing aspect of my story is not in all the losses I sustained, although they were significant. 

The really remarkable thing is that in the midst of those losses, I was found. 

Whenever someone learns I’ve had breast cancer, the response is always the same.  They cock their head and study me for a moment, then finally overcome their inhibition and ask, “How old are you?”

I tell them I was diagnosed at 27.

“But you’re so young,” they say.

I nod.

“Do you have a strong family history for breast cancer?” they ask.

I shake my head.

“Then why…?”  they wonder out loud.

I used to get frustrated with this line of questioning, because I don’t have a good explanation for why I got cancer when I did.  Now, instead of trying to identify a cause, I shrug and tell people that Fate flipped a coin and it landed on the wrong side.

For the past 7 months, I’ve seen the ugly side of that coin: chemo, hair loss, surgery, radiation, pneumonia, Tamoxifen… the list is exhausting.  I’ve gotten so used to ticking these negatives off to God as I tell Him I’ve had enough and I can’t deal with anything else going wrong right now.

Finally this week, for the first time, it occurred to me to look at the other side of that coin.  Yes, I had to do chemo, but at least chemo is available and there are medications to ameliorate the side effects.  And yes, I’ve had four surgeries, but at least at the end the surgeon was able to say, “We got it all.”  And yes, it’s unfair that I have to take a drug like Tamoxifen, but at least there’s a medication available that reduces my risk of a recurrence by 50%. 

Trying to be thankful takes a lot more energy than I thought it would.  It means that I have to start getting over myself and looking beyond my unfortunate circumstances.  But I think it’s an important step in getting my life back. 

Because if I wallow in my misfortune forever, if I forfeit my future to ruminate on my past, then cancer wins. 

And I’ve fought too hard and too long to concede now.

 After writing the previous post, I remembered a verse I read a long time ago in the book of Lamentations that began, “Because of the Lord’s great love for us, we are not consumed…”

Today I looked it up on Biblegateway.com in a reader-friendly version of the Bible called The Message.  I was amazed to see how relevant it was to my experience and all the questions I’ve had — and how much hope it offers to people who are having a hard time.

Here it is, from the 3rd chapter of Lamentations:

19-21I’ll never forget the trouble, the utter lostness,
   the taste of ashes, the poison I’ve swallowed.
I remember it all—oh, how well I remember—
   the feeling of hitting the bottom.
But there’s one other thing I remember,
   and remembering, I keep a grip on hope:

 22-24God’s loyal love couldn’t have run out,
   his merciful love couldn’t have dried up.
They’re created new every morning.
   How great your faithfulness!
I’m sticking with God (I say it over and over).
   He’s all I’ve got left.

 25-27God proves to be good to the man who passionately waits,
   to the woman who diligently seeks.
It’s a good thing to quietly hope,
   quietly hope for help from God.
It’s a good thing when you’re young
   to stick it out through the hard times.

 28-30When life is heavy and hard to take,
   go off by yourself. Enter the silence.
Bow in prayer. Don’t ask questions:
   Wait for hope to appear.
Don’t run from trouble. Take it full-face.
   The “worst” is never the worst.

 31-33Why? Because the Master won’t ever
   walk out and fail to return.
If he works severely, he also works tenderly.
   His stockpiles of loyal love are immense.
He takes no pleasure in making life hard…