Friday From the Heart: Good at Being Well

Okay, so I have some pretty good blog posts lined up to share in the next week or so as we closed out our school year. I am excited about summer because I am one of those moms who love my kids around. The hum of activity makes my heart sing.

I need a heart that sings. Lately I have been working hard and making my way back into my life. I finished the book called Life After Breast Cancer and was surprised to find a chapter on hospice? There was also a section that said statistically with the type of tumor I had that there is a 50% chance that I will have a metastasis recurrence within five years. Just to let you know, that was not why I picked up the book Life After Breast Cancer to read all of that.

I suppose there were a few good things to read in it but after I finished it (I skipped the hospice part since that is not my immediate goal), put it down and decided that was not what I needed to help me get back into life after cancer. To be honest, the first time around once the surgeries healed, not once did I think of recurrence, not once. I can say after the second time around I think of it probably a couple of times a day.  I kid you not, I have been blue, to shady gray to dark gray these past couple of months. Mental yuck.

That was, until I decided to take a few half-day sub jobs to see if I had the energy. Well, I did.  Then, two of my kids made high school show choir and had the opportunity to go to Lincoln, NE for a show choir camp. For a hefty price tag.

Praise God for the opportunity to make money. Praise Him for opportunities for my kids and that I had two months before the end of the school year when I was hit with an idea. What if I took all of the available sub jobs until I had made enough money to send both kids to Lincoln if they wanted? Yeah, that did it. It gave me a goal. It got me out of the house (which had been way too much my view for the last year). I started feeling normal. Drum roll...bus leaves June 11th and my kids will be on it! Woo hoo!

Mentally though is harder than I thought it would be. I have shared this with a few people close to me and it sounded good when it came out. My fear is that for the last four years I have been sick. From what I hear from people here, there and everywhere is how much of an inspiration I have been to them. I feel like I am using the word I way too much because the inspiring part has not been me. On my own it isn't that much to cheer about and there isn't supposed to be. So, with His help it seems I have been really good at being sick.

What about well? It may seem strange to think about it this way but mentally I ponder, can I be good at being well?  Do I always have to be sick to write a blog post that makes people glad that they logged on and read it? Can I be well and inspiring in my conversations and daily people interactions? What does that even look like? Hmm.

There is a lot to think about and a lot to get used to. Life,the real life that is going on all around me, kids growing up right before my eyes, dishes to be done, taxiing to do. The countdown now is four years. Like I told David tonight, in four years they start leaving. What are we doing while they are here? Wow, it was just yesterday that I was praying for them to come into our lives.They arrived and things have never been the same.

So, I ask myself this question...can I be good at being well?