So I was finally able to take my first shower today, and I am feeling so fresh and so clean clean!!!! And I painted my nails last night, a bright pretty pink; you know it is the little things that count.  Not a chance in hell I’ll be able to reach my toes any time soon though, so maybe I’ll just have to train my father/caregiver in the art of pedicures…

We worked through the exercises the physical therapist suggested, and painful as it is, I am happy with the mobility I have already, and I am hopeful that all the numbness in my thigh will at least recede to a smaller area because currently it feels that my upper thigh is permanently asleep from my groin down to my knee cap, almost all the way to the back of my thigh. I can feel the muscle below the skin, but just touching the skin gives me the creepy crawlies now. Kind of like when you get Novocain or local anesthetic and your cheek feels all numb.

I found the quote at the title of this posting on an inspirational cancer website, and it resonates so, so true. But, like a lot of things, my heart absorbs the wisdom, but my mind just cannot seem to let go of the fear. So, that is my challenge to myself throughout this journey, is to learn to trust in the things I want to believe in, not just look at them with a passive idolization. So it’s the end of my day, I’m realizing just how tough this is. At the end of the day, I realize just how scared I am, and just how mean that makes me act towards the people I love the most, the people who are sacrificing themselves just to be near me, and help me. And it horrifies me, because I remember being on that end of that scared anger. It’s like trying to help a wolf with his paw caught in a trap, the more you try to help, the more you get bit.  I remember the pain and helplessness I felt as I kept trying to reach in.  It horrifies me that I know that same fear that she felt that made her lash out in frustration at the ones she loved most is now swelling inside me.

It is so ironic that before my diagnosis, I was just coming to the starting line of the faith I was planning on finding, and the health regime I was planning on starting, and the positivism I was planning on learning, and the patience I was planning on cultivating. I no longer have the grace of time to find all of these wonderful traits that I envy in so many of the people I love. I am now in the position of necessity, because I cannot get through this without faith that I will, the commitment to changing my health and health patterns, the positivism to keep me from falling into depression or culminating the negative that always looms, or the patience to let myself be helped, without having to persecute those who are loving enough to help me. At the end of the day, when I’m alone, I reflect on the day that went by, and all the opportunities I had to be gracious in my actions instead of cowardly apologizing after the damage of my rage has been done.

So tonight I am praying for faith. I read a quote today that “It is when God appears to have abandoned us that we must abandon ourselves most wholly to God.” And it was not the time of my diagnosis that I first felt abandoned, but it was in the weeks before my diagnosis that I finally began to feel the need to abandon the crippling weight of the illusion of control, and let God guide me in finding strength for the things that are actually in my control.  Much like cancer can grow for years within our bodies without it ever making itself known, so can the effects of loss, and despair, and fear. Tonight I am praying for the strength to finally love myself enough to stick to the health changes I need to make because I believe in them, and I cannot allow myself to be self destructive any longer. Tonight I am praying for my negativity to be washed away, it is a storm that has ravaged my dreams and the dreams of those around me, kept me from pursuing my desires, and built up walls around me that have hurt not only me, but the ones I love. Tonight I am praying for patience, for the collaboration of all these prayers to come together to grant me the faith to know that I am loved, and that I do not have to carry my burdens alone, to trust that I am loved, and to truly know that I am worthy of this life that I have been given and the amazing blessings of the wonderful people God has given me to share it with.  And most of all, tonight I am praying for the forgiveness of my fears, because I know there are still going to be moments that I won’t be able to understand the path, and that fear will come to shake my faith, but I will use all my might to reach down within and know my purpose, and trust in God that it has yet to be fulfilled.