Rolling On

Over the past couple of months I honestly feel like the cancer was a past detour -- an exit off the real road of my life. I am only a few days away from the last reconstruction surgery. Since the last surgery I have moved to Oklahoma and started a new job teaching 6th graders. New beginnings all the way around, and it pushes the "year of breast cancer" further away.
I recently read a book by Elizabeth Edwards, Resilience, which was given to me by my dear father-in-law, Bert.  After reading the book I was struck by how much Elizabeth and I had in common in the events of our lives. We both lost a son, a husband, a father, and then breast cancer -- in the same order. For women, I guess, these would be the toughest losses we could endure.  So, not a huge revelation that these would be common threads in our lives.  Through her revealing expressions of these events, I realized also how different we can be in how we process through them. No where in Elizabeth's story telling does she speak of God, or faith. Not that she didn't have it, she didn't write about it. It just makes me wonder -- how did she get through it without the One who loves us? How did she get through it without the knowledge that her husband was going to be there for her, through it all, faithfully? I am so blessed.  We know that she writes with the knowledge that her cancer comes back and takes her life. She writes so heavily about how she handles the news that the cancer returns in her bones. I almost had to stop reading at that point, but I reminded myself that I am not afraid because I DO have knowledge of the one who loves me and I am healed. She and I had one last thing in common: the understanding that there is no use for unforgiveness.  Love on every one in your life every moment you have.