Advent is for waiting

It has been brutally cold here this week - our first true Alberta cold snap of the season, the kind where the air hurts your face and your lungs. We have very little snow which is so unusual for us and so all our winter favourites - sledding and both kinds of skiing are not happening yet. A  few weeks ago we started skating because the girls have been asking for years to learn and with the lack of snow we thought why not? And so we have been skating once a week or so. I haven't skated much since high school and I forgot it kind of feels like swimming, the lightness and freedom of gliding across the ice, mind clear for a minute or two.

This morning, on the way out the door to choir, a kiddo got sick in the garage, which I saw coming as she didn't eat much of anything yesterday. I was hoping to spend the day going on a walk in the woods to bring clarity to my body and mind, among other things. Instead I spent the day tending to an under the weather kiddo. Washing dishes, watching lots of food network and reading stories together. The holy, fatiguing work of motherhood.

Today was a lot like all our days right now. Not very spectacular, in fact pretty darn ordinary. These days we are doing our normal life and not much more. Work, school work, keeping the house tidy, making meals, going to appointments, soccer or dancing and music depending on which kiddo and what parent you are on any given day. Trying to remember things like putting money under the pillow for lost teeth and showing up for parent watch night the right week.

I can't remember an advent season so void of so many of our usual advent things. Aside from the lack of outdoor snow activities, we aren't caroling or hosting anything or doing a lot of extra volunteering. We aren't making cookies or doing almost any gift buying or making. I haven't read the kids even one of our advent/Christmas books yet and I keep thinking about sending cards but not making any forward momentum.

For me this year, advent has shifted. Instead of doing and celebrating, I'm waiting and I'm making space. I'm trying to make room in my heart for something new to be born; exactly what I'm not sure yet. I'm reading poetry and I'm sitting in the dissonance I see in the world and in myself of so much hurt and also of so much beauty. I'm thinking about hands: held open, held empty, receiving God's love. This sparser advent I'm having this year, it feels right, it feels fitting.

I have been watching the stars every night in a little bit of meditation. We are lucky to live far enough from the city lights, so that on a clear night the sky is absolutely brilliant. As I gaze past Orion or the almost full moon I can't help but think about the universe and all it's wonders constantly expanding, creation happening right this very instant when I look up. This advent I'm trying to open my heart to any iridescent knowledge they may want to pass onto me. I wonder if they are waiting too.

Surprises part two

(Just a heads up I'm going to talk about what it was like to find out I have either pre-cancerous cells or cancerous cells - the doctors aren't sure yet. It isn't very light reading so you may not want to read it. My main intent is to give a sense of solidarity and normalcy  to anyone else dealing with this type of news. Also I'll write more this week about how I'm doing so much better now.)

One thing no one tells you who has had to deal with oncology (and that you couldn't imagine even if they did) is that when a doctor tells you they found a tumor during what you thought was a routine appendectomy, is how often you think about dying.

At first you hope and pray benign, benign, benign. You cling to that in between imagining your own funeral and your family without you. When you find out no, not benign, the fears come even faster because you are not ready to leave this beautiful life. In a bizarre turn of events at age 37 your body has cells that (whether the doctors are unsure until your next surgery if it is technically considered cancer yet or not) if left alone, if you carry on the same path, will kill you.

When oncology calls you put your head between your knees and breathe because you notice you are hyperventilating and trying not to have a panic attack. Also you are nauseous everyday and you wonder if it is the growths spreading. (It's one of the questions they keep asking you, are you nauseous? Were you experiencing nausea?) Also you still have some post-surgery abdominal pain, is that normal at this point? And you are tired. All of it in your mind, cancer, cancer, cancer. You lose twelve pounds and people who don't know tell you you look great.

You avoid people who can't control their own panic because you have absolutely zero emotional reserves for anyone other than your very own people in your very own walls and you tell yourself you are barely holding your own shit together although truthfully, during this time you really aren't. At times you are mad you are a person who needs help, who needs empathy.

You don't tell anyone about how many times a day you picture life without you in it because you realize it is totally crazy town up inside your head, but also because no one imagines their loved one will be the one that actually dies tragically. You think longingly about when you had days, weeks, months, years where you didn't think about dying, not even one little time.

Then maybe the worst day, you google. If you are reading this and you are recently diagnosed please listen to what everyone says. For the love of all that is good and holy don't google. Don't google. Don't google. You will read things you cannot forget even though you will really, really want to. You totally loose it and spend the whole day weeping, absolutely sure you will not live to see your children move out.

You consider the progression of pleading in your mind. Please let the tumors be benign. Please let me not need chemo. Please let me if I need chemo that there be one that works. Please let me live at least long enough for my kids to be okay.

You also joke, you joke a lot because this helps take away from having tears spring up unexpectedly at bill paying, carving pumpkins or putting your kids to bed. When you get calls for test appointments you didn't know you needed, you joke that if you don't have cancer already, after this many CT's you will. There is also a lot of numbing with facebook and with television and the election because you just need some non-cancer distraction every day. You feel thankful for this, but also a bit guilty because thinking about death gives you an awareness that you really should be making the most of your days.

In between all this you hug your kids, you hug your husband, you list your gratitude's. And pray, yes you don't really stop praying although it would take God to make sense of all the anxious, frantic, disjointed thoughts coming from your mind. Thankfully that is what God is for. Someone who has been through a lot and has a beautiful faith and spirit reminds you that when you don't have words the Holy Spirit will pray for you. You count on this. You ask other people to pray for you because you know they are more coherent and rational and also they love God and they love you and prayer feels like the best gift anyone could give right now. You borrow some of the faith of everyone you know because this really is the only thing getting you through.

You can read Surprises Part I here