best afternoon ever

This is something moms don't usually get to enjoy once their baby is over 4 or 5 months old. For some reason sweet Kensie decided to curl up and nap with her head on my chest today. aaawwww!!!

just wondering...

"It's a good day to have a good day!" 

I've been reading "The Secret" for a couple days.  I heard about the movie.  Then I started reading "The Law of Attraction."  Finally, my slightly used copy of "The Secret" arrived in the mail this weekend, and I'm about halfway through the book already.  I would really like to believe what I've read so far...The power of my own thoughts is all I need to get anything I want in life.  If I'm not careful about what I'm consciously or sub-consciously thinking about though, I may get things that are unpleasant.  I'm paraphrasing here, but my take away is that if I put happy, positive, wealthy, smart, friendly, healthy vibes into the "Universe," I will be super successful in every important way.

The good--I now spend a moment interrupting a series of negative events and cranky thoughts to think a happy thought and feel grateful and hopeful.  I haven't, yet, had showers of money pouring on my head or throngs of people beating down my door trying to be my friend, but I have experienced an immediate sense of calm and positivity when I've spent that moment feeling grateful and focusing on positive instead of negative thoughts and feelings. 

The bad--I'm wondering if it is a form of mental disease to actually believe one's thoughts can control things...any things...Just thinking that mind control seems a little not grounded in reality.  Also wondering if this is going to get me sent straight to Hell or something!  When I pause in gratefulness, I do remember to say "Thank you God...," but I still wonder if I'm being sacrilegious to follow this theory at all.

I learned this:

Proverbs 3:5-6

New International Version (NIV)

⁵ Trust in the Lord with all your heart
    and lean not on your own understanding;
⁶ in all your ways submit to him,
    and he will make your paths straight.^[a]

 

Can "The Secret" co-exist with "The Bible" on my night table?  In my brain?  And my heart?  Are they one in the same?  Praying does feel a lot like the meditating and focusing of thought I do when trying the exercises of "The Secret." 

 

Time to find a chat board...Or a member of the clergy...Or something to enlighten me here.  Or maybe I can just finish the books before I struggle with this guilt too mightily...Maybe if I could just win the Lotto using the power of positive thought before I talk to a pastor?!?! 

 

positive enough?

If you're a beach person, you know how it feels to be tumbled in a wave and to feel that instant of panic and confusion when you don't know which way is sky and which way is ocean floor.  You need to breath, and you're uncertain if you will find the surface to gasp for air.  That is how our life has felt to me for much longer than an instant. 

Our once almost stereotypical middle class predictability was replaced with uncertainty the day Nick was diagnosed with cancer.  Uncertainty makes me angry.  Cancer makes me angry.  Especially in kids.  Especially in my kid.  So I've been angry.  A lot.

I like to think of myself as an optimist, but these last three years...they've worn me down, and I often feel tired...and frustrated...and confused...and yes, here it is again, angry.

Expecting my life to bloom from this dark place is like expecting a flower seed to grow in the middle of a rock.  I cannot cultivate friendships, dream with my children, or grown my business from here.

Honestly, I wish I could find my peace and my positivity in my faith, in God.  Unfortunately
(please don't judge, especially if you haven't been a cancer mom), I am still struggling with my faith and with finding my church home...And while I believe, and I pray, and I know God is there for me even when I can't see Him...I need more tools and more crutches right now, even practical exercises, to turn the sunshine on in my daily life.

Enter "The Secret."  I haven't read the book or seen the movie, but our babysitter saw the movie and introduced its (paraphrased) theories to me last week.  It sounded like positive thought combined with a grateful heart could bring you anything you could possibly ask for...money, fame, friends...anything, so why not give positive thinking a try?  For a week now, I have worked on learning more about the power of positive vs. negative energy and have observed their powers in my own life.   

Based on my limited research on the "laws of attraction" and positive attracting positive, negative attracting negative, I've decided a couple things...1)  Asking for what you want is not magic...You won't magically have a Maserati show up on your doorstep just because you tossed that request out to the universe, but it does help you get what you want because it organizes you.  It's easier to get what you want if you identify and define what you want.  2)  Positive does attract positive.  Your world is your mirror.  If you are putting angry and negative vibes out to the people around you, you are likely to get the same back.

I am working really, really hard to be positive.  Re-phrasing verbal statements.  Choosing to be grateful in every moment (ie. "Thank you God that I have a car to be breaking down right now.  Some people don't have cars at all.")  I try to help my kids identify their negativity and re-frame and re-define their situations with positivity and gratefulness.  I am being clear and concise and sincere in my requests to the universe, and I focus positive thought beams onto those wants as often as I think about them during the day. 

Let's be real though...I cannot possibly transform from exhausted, skeptical, and (dare I say) negative to a joyous Pollyanna in only a few days, so while my efforts are commendable (really, really working hard here), I still get angry when something breaks or the house is a mess, feel negative when the alarm goes off 2 hours before I want to wake up in the morning, and feel frustrated when I look at my bank account.  My automatic reactions are not always (or even frequently) positive, and when I catch myself being negative, I feel guilty for not having a more positive response.  Ironically, positivity has caused a new problem for me. 

As many people (women, mothers, in particular) are, I am a not enough'er.  I am not thin enough, rich enough, smart enough, kind enough, generous enough, pretty enough...I play the "not enough" tape on endless re-play in my head every day and have done so for as long as I can remember.  Contrary to what most psychologists would say, I don't think this is entirely a bad thing...If I was completely satisfied with myself, what would I strive for?  Maybe this is another essay (debate?!?!) altogether, but I think my feelings of inadequacy have often prodded me along to work harder to be better...As though "enough" is a tangible, reachable finish line.

My new positivity campaign gave me one more thing to be not enough of...I am not positive enough. The thought of not being enough causes me stress which causes me negativity which causes me guilt for not being positive which causes stress...See that cycle starting?  Yep.  That's where I am right now.

Do I keep going?  Should I keep studying the theories of attraction and positive energy and throwing wishes into the universe?  Examining every reaction to every thought, feeling, and situation I ever have?  As I sit here considering whether positive really is so much better than negative, wondering if  I'm just giving myself one more thing to worry about and be frustrated by...Kensie is crawling into my lap (with as much grace as a Great Dane trying to be a lap dog), grabbing my typing hand and saying "hold my hand."  Choosing to be grateful to have the world's most adorable 2 year old girl loving me and wanting to sit with me instead of being annoyed that she knocked my computer cord out and interrupted the writing of this blog post, I get to hear "Me like your hand...Love you much..."  As I stop typing and tell her I love her, she curls up and falls asleep snuggled into my side.  If being more positive brings more love and more moments like these to my life, then this energy experiment is definitely good enough to keep going with! 

Happy 2014!

It'll be a good one.  I feel it.  Everyone around me seems to feel it.  Good is coming. 

We ushered the year in with nachos, peach almond champagne, Martinelli's, and just our family.  I took Kensie outside and told her to gather all the positive energy in the universe and then bring it back inside for the new year.  She said "uh-huh," waved her arms around, then ran inside. 

We're still going through a lot.  I feel like I've already over-shared here about our money and our nomadic lifestyle and the fear that grips our hearts over Nick's future...So I won't bore you with the specifics again tonight.  But it's still just...a lot. 

Somehow this year feels hopeful, and I hope my psychic skills are working.  I'm ready for a good year! 

I feel a little like this baby...bringing some 2011, 2012, and 2013 baggage along with me into 2014, but I don't think that's all terrible.  Once you've gone through cancer (yourself, a loved one, your BABY), you never really move forward without carrying that with you.  Those bags are packed with pain, but they're also packed with appreciation, hope, and compassion that we might not have had with such passion if we hadn't had the cancer.

Some really amazing people have lost their battles with cancer this year...Most recently, Loren Nancarrow, a local newscaster and blogger and brain cancer victim and all around good guy.  He inspired so many of us to look outside of ourselves and give more...focus on the truly important things in life.  When 2013 started, he didn't even know he was sick.

What do we not know about 2014?

I've been sipping peach almond champagne and reading Facebook, and I'm really feeling the pain parents like Jessie's, Liam's, Talia's, and Bella's parents are feeling.  There are so many today.  Photos of healthy babies with full heads of hair...Gone.  Just gone. 

I pray God guides me even more in prosperous times than lean times to do everything I can to help and support childhood cancer charities and the oncology families that so need and deserve financial and emotional assistance. 

Truth be told, I also pray that we do not face recurrence in Nick.  When we were actually going through his treatment, I was just angry and sad and exhausted.  I can do so much more good now...now when I'm not in the trenches...when my heart isn't being ripped out of my chest every moment of every day in quite the same way it is when Nick, my child, my baby, is yellow and skinny and bald and frail and fragile and in imminent danger of death. 

I feel hopeful about 2014.  I think we will see more prosperity as business owners, a family, and as a nation.  I pray that prosperity means we will have more research and more cures in the cancer world. 

Happy New Year!  I really hope that whatever your situation is when you read this, you either provide help and share your heart or you accept the love and the resources available to you if you're in need. 

2014 is unwritten.  Let's write a story of joy, and love, and generosity...and cures for childhood cancers!!

with and without

More often than I share here, my emotions swell until I feel the stitches that bind me straining and stretching and aching for some relief.  If I weren't afraid, I would let my feelings leak and ooze into words, into this blog, into something that feels like sense and logic.  I would write and write and write until I felt some relief or stumbled on some clarity.  But I worry.  I worry that if I only write about negativity that is nagging and churning, that someday the writing will be the only thing my children and my children's children have to remember me by, and what they will know of me will be dark and one dimensional.

I've realized that happy grows slowly, glimmers from under covers and peeks around corners.  Rarely, does joy appear and then grow and then stay in quite the same heart racing, ears pounding, stomach clenching way that pain or fear do.  Joy doesn't knock tenaciously on my brain, begging me to write it's story, the same way pain does.

I apologize.  I apologize for not sharing more.  I apologize for long absences when I am afraid to cement for posterity the darkness I am experiencing.  I apologize for being so inept at capturing happiness and love and lightness in words but so proficient at capturing and describing beasts and terrors. 

As I ramble now, I know I've already deviated from the path I thought this entry would take, but isn't that how my life seems to go?  Seems to be God's little entertainment sometimes...to watch us make plans knowing so many of them will run off the rails before they have a chance at all.

For the first time in 20 years, our family is without a home.  We have a roof, but we don't own it.  We've lost our money.  We've lost our confidence.  We've lost things we never had like our ideas of the future, security, retirement.  We've lost our way, and we've lost our security, or at least the façade of and belief in security.

Following a stress induced physical breakdown this summer, I've even lost my food.  Being forced into a gluten free, dairy free lifestyle took away one of my lifetime crutches.  Yes, I can eat, but I can't eat mac and cheese or a pizza at the end of a long day like I used to.  Having battled eating disorders and weight issues all my life, food was big for me...a relationship all it's own...One I've had to break off as I face a lifetime of eating more like a cavewoman than a modern American carb lover.

We are without a lot of things.  Things we miss.  Things we mourn.  Things we want back.

As we've traveled with cancer these past few years, we have met and loved and prayed for many children.  Many parents.  We have cried as babies died, and their mothers and fathers crumbled, wishing they could go in their place...or go with them.  Every remission, every relapse, every loss is another stabbing reminder to fear the monster.  Every day with Nick is a reminder to turn our faces to God and thank Him for one more day, one more chance to love him and be grateful for the grace of just one more day. 

For the past week, Nick and Krissy have been traveling in Canada with my parents, and I miss them, I'll be honest, especially Nick, much more than I expected to.  When my healthy kids travel, I worry and wonder about them.  When Nick left, it felt like my right arm got ripped away from my body.  This little person I have protected and fought for and guided and loved with a fierceness I didn't even know I possessed, was in someone else's care...Not for a few hours during the school day or for a sleepover at his friend's house...His life was now in the hands of my parents and every airline pilot that would fly him, taxi driver that would drive him, stranger who would cross his path...His life was not my responsibility this week.  His life was not breathing and beating next to mine this week.  And in my yearning to feel him near me, to hear his voice, and see his sarcastic little grin, I know in the truest way, I am without nothing. 

If we are all alive, our family is not without.   

And there, right there...did you feel it as it sprinted across the moment?  Joy.  It's there, woven into our story and the stories of all the other families who have gone through childhood cancer. 

People don't always like to read our stories or even look into our eyes because they fear the pain, but if we, especially the parents of children lost, could find the right words, we would ask everyone to please know that during the cancer journey, it's not just the pain and fear that amplify;  the love and the joy and the poignancy in small moments does, too.  I would ask the general public as well as all my future relatives who may only know me through my writing, please see the love, and please remember the joy (even when we can't express or explain it as thoroughly or as often as we do the ugly parts).  Please see our child, or remember our child, and their happiness and their love...not just their cancer.