It’s December 6th and I find myself getting a bit anxious with Christmas to-do’s and other things that are on my mind.
I know if I can just get my gifts ordered and a photo book made (a traditional gift I make for a loved one every Christmas) and ordered then I will feel much better. I know when I get a couple of home areas rescued and my laundry put away, I will feel better. I know that if I take some time to walk outdoors and do some yoga I will feel better.
Sometimes keeping a slow mindset is work. When I start to feel the familiar pit of anxiety in my stomach, and will just stop and tell myself small tidbits of truth. Usually it goes a bit like this: “It’s OK” “God’s got it all” “it will happen when it is supposed to happen” “life is not an emergency” “haste makes waste.” These small thoughts along with a deep breath usually does wonders.
Today when I felt overwhelmed, this is what came to mind:
“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.” Ecclesiastes 3:1
The providence of God disposes and arranges every detail of man’s life.
I know that all that needs to happen will happen in the right time and way as I hang out with and hold on to Jesus. I know He has all my little concerns and also my big ones. I know He sees me. I know He has those I love who are suffering in his hands.
Yes, my heart is heavy for those I know and love who are going through hardship and suffering. There are several stories of others that God has placed me in that are just plain hard right now. I hate to see loved ones suffer. I mourn with them.
The above Ecclesiastes verse gives me much comfort. It reminds me that there are seasons and that God has a purpose for it all. He came, was born, to bring us hope, be near and know the details, and show us that He will work it all out in the end.
Now that I have my mindset in check, time to get to gift ordering!
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Weekly Goals
Meal Plan — grocery list +5 meals
Rescue My Home — dust, sweep, vacuum, mop, bathrooms
You lifted me out of the muck and mire and set my feet firm.
Lord, I still need you.
When I cannot stand, help me fall on you.
When I stumble catch me, turn my eyes and face to you.
Help me to keep looking up at you.
I will love you all my days.
You have become so very real to me, especially in the trials this life brings.
You have not left me alone.
Forever all my days, I will praise you!
The time of suffering I mentioned above was when I was in the thick of anxiety. If you are in a season of suffering, hold on! Look to God. He promises to never leave or forsake His children. He is with you and will get your through.
I’ve had the privilege of calling this man my husband for 20 years.
I’ve watched him morph into uprightness, right before my eyes.
Don’t get me wrong, there has always been good and beauty in this man of mine. I’ve learned from him since day one.
Over the years, pain and struggle have entered our world and has softened and humbled him. He has chosen to see the beauty in the struggle and it has made him beautiful.
In my struggle with cancer and mental illness, he has come alongside. Not perfect, but persistent and ever-present, accepting what is and allowing me to heal and grow.
Right now he is in a season of hard work and problem-solving. He is working harder than I’ve known him to and that says a lot, for my guy has always given 100%.
Here is what I’ve noticed:
He’s working harder than ever at this problem solving, yet comes home with enough in him to solve our family’s everyday problems.
I witness this and I know where the goodness, gentleness, humbleness, and persistence comes from. I know his help is from the Lord.
He comes home long after dinner in this season and doesn’t miss a beat. Teenage girls go straight to their Dad with their everyday problems.
Problems that feel anything but every day to them, because everything is big when you are a teen and really, it is. He welcomes them and their words and struggle. They know they can always go to their dad.
I listen to father and daughter’s voices drifting up from our downstairs. Our daughter shares what is on her heart, hard decisions she needs to make, her voice young and shrill and a bit frantic.
His voice? It is the voice I fell in love with 20+ years ago, deep and gentle and calm. He is right where he shines, in problem-solving mode. He problem solves by listening, truly hearing, and possessing the wisdom to know what to say, when to say it and how.
He weighs the future and gives insight into moving forward with the best goals in mind. He does all of this without forcing, controlling or manipulating. He helps her sort out thoughts and come to her own conclusions.
His calm words of wisdom and acceptance calm her and I notice her voice gets quieter. After about 1/2 hour of processing with her Dad, her tears turn to laughter.
She has experienced the love of her Father through words of her father, given to him by his Father.
It’s a slow Saturday morning. I’m sitting in our sunroom, crossed-legged on the hard porch swing with a fly buzzing around my head. It’s hot and muggy, but the cloud cover and breeze in the trees makes me hope for rain and a bit of respite from the heat.
I woke up thinking about the past week, how summer has me frustratingly busy and unable to find time to write a decent post for this blog. Photos need edited and social channels need updated and I love it all but find myself wanting to post like the old days. The days when I would just type my thoughts and put up a photo with dull lighting and finish feeling satisfied instead of relieved.
This blogging turned job thing is an amazing but interesting blessing. I love taking time to give my best, post with excellence and capture beauty through the lens to share it with you. There is something about working hard to produce good content, to push the publish button, share social content and meet deadlines. I love it and cannot believe I get to call it my job.
But I miss this. This just typing away, unedited blabbing, starting a post without an outline or idea of where it will go or end. How pushing publish can give the same therapeutic feeling I get after spending time with a good friend. I miss it so I’m doing it. Thanks for allowing me, my good friends. I plan to do it more often.
Appointments
There is so much to love about this summer! Comparing it to last summer, well, there really is no comparison. Last summer was filled with doctor appointments, tears, illness and fear. This summer is not perfect, but oh what a difference! Doctor appointments do not consist of issues dealing with life or death. There are still appointments, but they are normal and for my teens. Orthodontist for brace tightening. dermatologist to keep teenage acne at bay, dentist for cleanings and optometrist for replacing teen’s lost glasses for the THRID TIME (insert sigh and eye roll here.) Life is still busy and the calendar full, but it is a bearable busy and I’m grasping to hold on to all these fleeting, beautiful moments.
Teen Driver
This holding of moments is intensified because I now have a teen driver who is working all of the time! What a relief it has been for me to have a driver, and a responsible one at that. My Teagan walks out the door daily and I watch her back and wonder when my baby became a beauty that sprouted wings and is soaring. Her summer is spent watching and keeping others safe while lifeguarding in a red tank top with a cross on it, and nannying 3 littles on her ‘off’ days. She is scent of sunscreen, sun-kissed hair in a bun, whistle around her neck, Bible and journal in her bag –just in case she gets a few minutes of quiet. She is laughter with friends often bringing them home unexpectedly to entertain and kick us out of the basement mid-movie so that she can connect and socialize. My baby is beauty and I’m missing her already and she has not even flown away yet.
Camp
My Middle went last week, took a friend and had a blast meeting more. My Youngest goes this coming week and I am excited for the fun she will have. I’m ready for the longing I will have for her to come home that creeps up about 2 days before she is due. With Oldest working all day and another at camp, I get focused time with the one left. This is a new blessing, a quieter house with just one to love on. I’m looking forward to the week and purposefully kept my calendar as empty as possible.
Construction
Everyone should have a Cory in the family. He is my hard-working brother-in-law who teaches during the school year and constructs during the summer. His work is seen all over our home, from the swings in our backyard, to our porch, porch railing, drywall in basement, a new kitchen–the list goes on. Last year he gutted our failing kitchen and created a new one that I smile at daily. I have yet to share it with you all but I will! This year he is tearing down old siding and putting up new. It is a gift to have him around. I learn from watching him, he teaches while constructing, showing by example what quality and hard work looks like. His hammering starts most mornings at 7:30, it is a familiar routine that brings a surprising comfort instead of intrusion. I sit and have my coffee, toast and journaling/prayer time with the background music of a saw and hammer. It pushes me to start my day and continue on, working hard with a servant’s heart, just like Cory.
Swimming
Grandpa and Grandma have a pool. The are amazingly generous and let the family use it. They have a pool house which is very convenient; we don’t have to intrude with our wet suits into their home. They set up a family google pool calendar which allows us to reserve it and share it with others. This has been going on since my 13-year-old was 3 and I still can’t get used to the gift that is. We’ve made so many memories there, and each summer more are created.
Flexibility
I am learning this. I love a schedule and predictability, which is probably why I find comfort in early summer morning sounds of tools. I love knowing what to expect. Summer is always a challenge for me to adjust from a schedule to none, especially now that I am a work-at-home Mom. I’m learning to let go of expectations and roll with the punches. I’m learning that parenting teens means being available when needed but letting go and letting wings spread at the same time. I’m learning there is little to no predictability when it comes to teens and summer.
Today I thought my Oldest would be life-guarding all day and my Middle would be with friends all day & I would have a full day at home to do whatever I want until a family wedding tonight. At the beginning of this post I wished for rain and it came and caused both of my girls plans to change. I stopped this post right in the middle of talking about the family swimming pool to rescue my girl from the farmer’s market crowds and rain. I drove with bedhead and in shorts and my Todd’s t-shirt, my slow morning became fast & off I went. It might be uncomfortable at times to release my schedule, doing whatever I want, and babes who are becoming beauties, but really, is it? It all depends on my perspective. When I think of what could be and what is, I’m so very thankful. Thankful for life, for family, for summer days that bring sun or rain, and for you–my good friends who let me share about it.
It is a word my counselor used at the end of our first session, “I see someone who is grieving.”
2015 was a year of grieving. It was a year I lost my voice and this blog took a bit of a standstill, which had not happened since I started it back 2007.
CS Lewis says of grief in A Grief Observed:
“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I’m not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering of the stomach, the same restlessness, the yearning. I keep on swallowing.
Other times it feels like being mildly drunk or confused. There is sort of an invisible blanket between the world and me.
I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting yet I want others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another & not me.”
This puts words to what I was feeling. Grief brought on anxiety and the enemy ran with it. I lost who I was as I became a person with no words to type.
I felt like another person as my introverted self who was used to craving moments of a quiet, empty home now felt lost, I didn’t know what to do in the silence.
I was coming out of grief after years of fighting cancer and multiple surgeries and medications and all the loss that it brings. I was embracing what it was to live new.
But then my hardest of hard grief hit, grief over our sweet daughter whose story took an unexpected and abrupt turn and hit extra hard due to her young age.
Her story is her story and will not be told in full here, but illness of her own took over our girl and she was not recognizable to us, or herself. A severity of illness, taking us all by surprise, and into a battle that felt much harder than my previous cancer battle.
Mess with me, I can deal, at least so far. Mess with my precious baby, and I battled hard to stay strong through her battle, but in the end, anxiety sank me.
I wrote about the sinking here, and along with my prolonged anxiety, I found also found myself in a pool of sadness, swimming in grief. Anxiety and depression can often go hand in hand.
I am acquainted with anxiety, but never of that severity & had not experienced it accompanied with depression. Deep sadness was a new experience for me.
Together anxiety and depression are a brutal duet that brought my life music & happiness to a halt. It was survival time. I was a survivor learning what survival really meant.
Ecclesiastes says there is a time for everything. A time to weep. A time for grief.
Those months of grieving in 2015 were long and hard. I look back and remember the tears that would just appear sudden and silent, falling down my cheeks anytime I would hear the words “how are you?” My mouth would open but tears would replace words and I would try to answer but mostly kept silent & went inward.
I could not hold the flow back. It was not a sobbing type of tear, but a quiet, constant flow that would just come whenever I would try to speak of my inward pain–which was almost never–unless someone asked those 3 words “how are you?”
The words would be asked and there were the brave that would continue to come toward and were able to get me to talk even while tears flowed. I remember the saltiness of tears tasted when I would open my mouth and speak.
I remember the relief I felt after months passed, medications were found, and I could speak without the saline taste of tears.
There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens….a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance… Ecclesiastes 3:1,4
I think of the song, the one below:
Turn Turn Turn
A time to be born, a time to die
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to kill, a time to heal
A time to laugh, a time to weep
A time to build up, a time to break down
A time to dance, a time to mourn
A time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together
This summer, 2016, for me, has been one of dancing & laughing, but I will not soon forget what it is to mourn & grieve. I know God bottles our tears & will not waste a single one.
I know there is meaning and purpose in pain when one knows the kindness of their Maker & chooses to turn their tear-stained face to Him.
God and His promises were the only lasting hope I could find while grieving, and it was one that held. I was held.
Are you grieving? Know that Your Maker loves you so very much, and holds you and your tears, too.
Remember: there is a time for everything, and as the world turns so does everything and relief will come as all turns, turns, turns. Remember while in the spinning He’s got the whole world and YOU in His hands.
{Turn, Turn, Turn by The Byrds}
Update: Since writing this post, I have learned that a sweet friend’s cancer has returned & I find myself reading these words I wrote about grief and thinking hers.
Yes, this is a summer of dancing for me, but I still and enter into the spinning grief of others, for we are made to mourn with those who mourn and I do. My heart is so sad for her.
Will you pray for my sweet friend? She has 2 young kids and wants to see them grow up. I won’t share her name here but God knows it and when you speak of her and lift her up to Him. I would be so appreciative if you do.
I usually find myself giddy about the start of a brand new year but this year I am especially excited to say goodbye to 2015 and have a brand spakin’ new 2016! 2015 was a hard year for me, as an extreme anxiety overtook my body & it took much of the year to figure out what it was and what to do about it.
This little blog of mine took a hit, as my writing voice and stamina was lost during much of the year last year. It was survival. I am so thankful to have found it again & it is slowly returning to something that feels familiar and “me.” As I continue to find my voice & my bravery, I will share with you more of my struggle with anxiety, not to spotlight struggle, but to hopefully give hope to others who find themselves surprised by the same battle.
Despite a hard year, you all were so great and supportive to continue to read New Nostalgia. Looking back over the posts of the last year, I see God’s goodness in helping me produce some content despite my struggle. I hope you enjoyed this little roundup of last years bests posts, and if there is anything that is of use to you, know that was my Heavenly Father carrying me through and helping me create, despite hardship. What a great, sweet & faithful God! All praise and glory goes to Him.
I sit writing this, with big, fat, snowflakes falling outside and Christmas music playing inside. I feel at peace in this moment.
The last few days I have fluctuated between feelings of anxiety and feelings of peace. More peace than worry, for we have been in this place of waiting before, but this time it feel different. Heavier.
I went to see my Oncologist last week for a routine checkup. I was expecting to be in and out of there quickly, as I have been feeling much better compared to this summer, and have even gained weight, which was truly a comfort to me.
My doctor came in and congratulated me on reaching the 5 year mark. She said it is encouraging, but also cautioned that as a grade 3 breast cancer survivor, she can never use the word “cured.” Regardless, there was a lightness about her and lots of smiles. She commented on my 5 pound weight gain and said my “eyes and cheeks look so much better..filled out instead of sunk in.” Why, thankyouverymuch! This made me smile.
She did her usual routine check, her capable hands sweeping over my body, feeling for lumps and bumps. She runs her fingers along my lymph lines, a familiar path she takes every checkup, but this time they paused at the left side of my neck. I remember a short pause in that very spot 3 months ago during my last exam. During that exam she asked me to come back in 3 months instead of the usual 6, due to my weight loss and unexplained nausea. I had moved on from worrying about my physical symptoms, thinking it was not anything to do with cancer and blamed anxiety that I have been fighting this past year. It has been in the back of my head that I am still experiencing morning nausea if I don’t take anti-nausea medication, but the meds work so well it is easy to just continue on and forget the extreme of my illness this past summer.
It could still blame it on anxiety, and it very well may be, but her hand stayed on my neck, and I knew she had found something that made her eyes turn concerned. And then she voiced concern.
It is a hard lymph node, higher up in my neck, a bit below my ear. It feels hard as a pebble & stagnant. She also found another node under my right arm, but that one was less concerning as it was soft and movable, although swollen.
The lightness in the room turned heavy, and she said she wants a CT scan done right after the holiday weekend.
This was 2 days before Thanksgiving, and I have been concentrating on inhaling and exhaling and trying to find my thankful in the perspective that facing one’s mortality brings. It is a love/hate thing, this facing. It is a scary place, one that I want to deny and turn away from, but it just turns with me and follows me, front and center, in my face. On my neck.
It is also a precious perspective, for we all are mortal, and every day is such a beautiful and delicate gift and I GET IT, but I lose it in the comfort of the absence of lumps, bumps & scans.
My CT scan of the brain, neck and chest is scheduled for Thursday, 12-3-15.
I am afraid. I do not like looking on the insides. Especially the insides of my head.
We sat as a family and explained all that is happening to our 3 girls. They are sweet and strong & asked all the right questions. A few tears due to the unknown and scary, but they were very brave tears. This world of cancer has been their world most of their growing up years, and I know God is faithful in working it out for their good–this news and the waiting that they endure. I am the proudest of Moms.
If this node does contain cancer, the location of it makes it tricky. It places me at an automatic stage IV, and that is what brings the heavy. Nodes above the collar-bone have their own entitlement to staging–who knew? We do now.
I am hopeful for the all clear, and then I will go on and not waste this deep knowing, this reminder of how quickly life can go from ordinary to not, and how each moment is truly a gift. I will continue to work out anxiety and do what it takes to overcome it. I will continue to find my voice once again during this hard season.
I know I am not alone in these hard seasons of life. I know so many of you are facing your own bumps that bring on the heavy. I pray that we all remember that we have HOPE, especially in this advent season. It is a season of waiting on the one who comes whose name is Emmanuel, which means GOD WITH US. This is my hope. It is a real, true hope, one that overcomes the heavy. Yes, He is with us. He is holding me, holding you, and holds the heavy so we don’t have to.
Want to join me in advent? I am following along with IF:EQUIP. If you sign up, you will get a daily email that will walk you through this Christmas season & will point us all toward true hope.
I will keep you all informed. Be sure to follow my social channels (instagram, facebook, twitter) as I usually am able to get to them before getting to writing a full post. I expect results from the CT scan the second week in December, hopefully by the 9th or 10th.
