Loving the present...

Rewind to November 12, 2012...  It was a rainy and dreary Friday. We had just finished Eric's 12th and final round of chemo from his first diagnosis. To add insult to injury, we were also going on DAY 12 with no power, heat or running water from the havoc wreaked by Hurricane Sandy. I know. Brilliant timing. The physical and emotional exhaustion after 8 excruciating months of chemo on all of us is impossible to describe and to come home to an empty, cold house was almost more than I could stand. I had farmed the kids out for the weekend to stay with friends so that Eric could sleep and recover by the fire in the family room; the one room in the house that we could keep warm. I'm NOT the "farm your kids out" kind of mom - I'm like a hen, I like my chickies close.  So coming home and having them gone was like the icing on the cake of hitting rock bottom. After I got a fire started and had Eric settled in, I laid there in the dark listening to the logs crack and the tears I had been working so hard to dam up began to rush.  In a matter of minutes, I was drenched with my own tears and my body convulsed as intense emotion and despair finally overcame me.  It was in that moment that I truly knew what it meant to weep. To really, really weep. As the hours went on, well past midnight - I remember pleading, absolutely begging the Lord to put my life on fast forward.  I didn't just want our current circumstance to be over, I wanted to be past it.  I wanted to be so far ahead that the sting of it all was forgotten. I would have offered a limb, a million dollars, my soul - if only to fly past one year, JUST ONE YEAR to get this awful hell behind us.  

I eventually fell asleep and morning came. Two days later, the power was back on and the kids came home. What followed the next few months was a slow, but welcomed recovery. By January he was back to work and little by little it seemed we were getting back to that "normal" we used to love. The better and better he felt, the better I felt. The whole feeling in our home turned from anxiety and stress to laughter and fun. The sweetness and appreciation for each other, for life, increased 10 fold and those 3 or 4 months were awesome.  I felt the skip in my step return, I no longer had to just "grin and bear it".  I started designing again and my creativity exploded.  Eric felt well enough to travel. I painted. We had moved into our new house just a few weeks before he was diagnosed, so I was anxious to decorate and put my stamp on it. We even went on a vacation to Washington DC.  Life was seriously awesome. It was a new kind of normal, a new kind of awesome, and although the fear of ongoing scans loomed in the background - and I appreciated every second of it.

Then... in a unique moment, just about a year later, suddenly the remembrance of that awful night flooded back to my mind. The experience had been so vivid, I could almost smell the fire and I physically cringed just thinking of it. I remembered how I had BEGGED for life to advance past the turmoil we were in. Ironic that now, about a year later, we were back in the hospital.  Months had passed since a second diagnosis robbed us of that new found relief and Eric was sleeping, hooked up to a centrifuge collecting his stem cells for transplant. I almost fell over when I realized it.  Had the Lord granted my wish to advance a year - we would have missed those precious months of bliss before he was diagnosed again. We would have missed the wonderful feeling of remission and the relief and happiness that came with that.  We would have missed the growth, the gratitude and the quality that LIVING IT had added to our life.  By all accounts, one year from that awful night - we were now in a much worse, far more serious and life threatening situation.  I couldn't BELIEVE I unknowingly WISHED for that!!   It was in that moment that I learned how important and ESSENTIAL it is to live in the present. Today is a gift. Who knows what tomorrow or next week or next year may bring?  It was that day that I chose to appreciate each day for what it was, no matter what.  Wishing away today would be a huge mistake!  Looking back... I might even realize that those days, the days I wanted to end so badly, were actually some of the sweetest days.

From that day forward, I vowed to no longer wish away my circumstance... but to embrace it.

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