If I'm 100% honest, this journey has been hard. I'm strong in my faith and I've never once wavered from that, but the day to day things I go through after having the double mastectomy are tough. I don't want to have a pity party, but I also want to be true to what I'm going through if I'm going to help the next person walk this journey. So, if I were given 5 minutes to complain, here's what I would say.
I want to...
- Hold my kids
- Hug someone without fear of them touching my drains
- Take out my last two drains
- Open a bottle of water without help
- Get out of bed and off the couch without wincing in pain because I can't use my arms
- Be pain free for just 5 minutes
- Lift my elbows higher than my shoulders
- Take a shower
- Wash my own hair
- Blow my nose, take a deep breath, and laugh without feeling the weight of a ton of bricks on my chest
- Take off the scarf that's tied around my waist that my drains are pinned to and throw it away
- Sleep on my side, not my back
- Stop having to clean my drains and incisions twice a day because it takes forever
- Stop writing down how much fluid I get from each drain, twice a day
- Stop taking medicine, 13-15 pills a day
- Drive my car
- Close the lid on my contact solution because its too hard to snap shut right now
- Wear deodorant because my incisions are to close to risk it right now
- Take out my expanders for just a few minutes so that my chest muscles won't feel so tight
- Bend over to kiss my kids without feeling like my chest will explode
- Stop complaining because I am blessed
I want to thank God for this journey. All of these complaints have Saved. My. Life. I'm sitting here without any fear of getting breast or ovarian cancer. My journey is far from over and I will still have follow up visits and screenings in the years to come, but my chances have gone from 87% to less than 4%. That's worth all the pain in the world.
So, instead of complaining, I choose to focus on Gods promises to his children...
- Matthew 11:28-30 - “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
- Ephesians 6:10-13 - "Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand."
- 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 - "Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus."
I will leave you with this exert from the book Undaunted by Christine Caine. I was blessed to hear her speak at my best friends church in Broken Arrow last year and this woman is amazing.
- "Anything meant in this world for evil, God can use for good. God is able to take the mess of our lives and turn it into a message. He takes our trials and tests and turns them into a testimony... This is God's nature. The very thing that the enemy uses to destroy your life is the very thing God uses to help others. God can heal every hurt and can turn your scars into signs of strength for his glory. Your mistakes, hurt, and pain can help give someone else a future. Whatever we have gone through enables us to help others. God doesn't waste one experience in our lives. He uses everything to help someone else. He doesn't want us to remain crippled, stuck, or paralyzed by what has happened to us. Instead, he sent us Jesus to show us how to step into the future. I have always known that I was not the only one carrying around such pain. We are all broken in some way. We all have wounds. Some of us use that as an excuse to do nothing, to serve no one, but rather to sit and nurse our misery. That's not what God wants, and not the model we see over and over again in the Bible. The biblical model is that God deliberately chooses imperfect vessels - those who have been wounded, those with physical or emotional limitations. Then he prepares them to serve and sends them out with their weakness still in evidence, so that his strength can be made perfect in that weakness. In fact, more often than not, it's our weakness that makes us capable of serving, because those who we serve identify with our pain. As always: God works in us so that he can work through us. And so he did with me."
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