Faith.....

Faith is defined as the belief and trust in something or someone. It usual refers to your belief in God.

I am not one to really talk about my faith and my relationship with God because it is very complicated. But today I was talking with a friend who was newly diagnosed with a Cancer again and faith and God kept coming up in the conversation.

So I thought I would try and explain my faith journey.

A few years ago I was asked to give a sermon at church and tell my story. Now the pastor knew me pretty well and knew that my relationship with God was pretty complicated.  But for whatever reason, he trusted me to get up there and tell my story. It was one of the hardest speeches I have ever had to give because it made me face head on my relationship with God.

My story has its good parts and its bad. It has the lightness and the darkness. It just happens that the dark parts of my story play a more prominent role than they do in most stories. It is like the story of Job in the bible. But I'm no Job.

At 15 you can't really grasp what cancer is. You see the doctors mouths moving but you don't hear anything. You listen as if they are talking about someone else. You hear only what you want to hear.The only time I cried was when the doctor told me he would have to remove my belly button. How was I supposed to get my belly button pierced without a bell button. But he assured me he would make me one.

A 8 hour surgery determined that the cancer was worse then they had thought and that it probably had been growing inside me for years. I don't remember having much of response to this. I don't remember being afraid. It was as if I was numb.

As the day to day treatments started, I threw myself into life. If it could be done, I did it! Life went on and I survived!

It wasn't until I was 18 that God really entered into my story. It was then when the doctors gave me a choice of either chemotherapy or surgery. Chemo may not work and would most likely destroy my bone marrow. Surgery would be more definitive but there was a good chance I would not survive.
With 24 hours to decide, I decided surgery and God became my villain. He wasn't my hero. He was the one who had caused my cancer, or at least allowed it. 

During that exact time a friend from high school sent me a forward of a story of a boy who had cancer, but through faith prayed for healing and the tumor disappeared. I thought it was the cruelest thing someone could send another person facing terminal cancer. Did I not have enough faith? Was I judged and found lacking? Or, like most email forwards I get, was it a fraud, and God along with it. I sent a not so nice reply back to the sender.

And if I wasn't being tested enough in my faith, my mom insisted that I get blessed by our priest before surgery. I went to the Catholic Church as a courtesy to her and nothing else. I was given the opportunity to confess my sins and given a blessing that sounded a lot like the last rites. It was like being escorted to the grave by a stranger. I told God that I would confess my sins if he confessed his first. With no reply, I kept my sins. At least they were mine. God could take my life, but I wasn't about to give him the satisfaction of self-deprecation.

So as they laid me onto a stainless steel and cold table, I thought about my last words. And how you think the last words that someone says is "I love you". But in reality the last words I was going to speak was "Four".  See they bring out the gas and ask you to count backwards from ten and 4 is as far as I have ever gotten.
TEN- You life doesn't pass before your eyes. Not when you're 18
NINE- At least not the life you've already had. Instead it is the life you will never have.
EIGHT-
SEVEN- I walked up slowly to the rim of the cliff and peered over the edge into the abyss.
SIX- I won't try to describe what I saw. I can't. It doesn't fit readily into human words or concepts.
FIVE- But it changed me... Forever
FOUR- Everything goes black.

When I woke up from surgery we were told that there was no tumor. The tumor had disappeared. The doctors said " Call it a mistake, a medical anomaly, a miracle, whatever you want. Just don't ask your doctor about it again. He won't tell you what happened. You'll have to decide that for yourself." And as he left the room he said " and we never had this conversation."  Apparently they don't like to talk about things like this.

The conversation that never happen punctured my whole worldview like none I had ever had before or since. Like trying to grab smoke in your hand, my mind grappled to make sense of it all. Give me an explanation. There must be a rational reason.

Don't let this be God. Oh, Please, don't let this be God. What would that mean if this were God?

For a moment it was like being face to face with God. And like a staring contest to see who would blink first, we just sat there, our gazes locked. In the total silence and complete stillness of the moment my breath stopped, subservient to the notions of what might be. And then God winked, and I was at peace with my limited understanding of a universe and eternity that is wider and deeper than the human imagination.

And so life went on. Cameron was born shortly after that and his sister to follow 4 years later.  Life when on as it should. And through is all, God would pop in and out of my life unobtrusively , sharing my victories and my defeats. I was finally at peace.

And then the Summer of 2005 came and it tested me all over again. I became pregnant with our third child and as we grew confident with this pregnancy we began to tell our friends and family. Two days later I miscarried. All the joy is replaced with extreme sadness. And , as if overnight, everyone around you seems to be pregnant. Each expectant mother only makes you more mad at God.

I lashed out angrily at God and he didn't even have the courtesy or goodness to respond to the charges. Why my child? Why had my life been spared- maybe even miraculously- but my baby's life wasn't with His effort?

My ranting against God was interrupted by the source of the miscarriage: extreme endometriosis. A painful year and a total hysterectomy later and my anger at an apathetic God turned into apathy with an angry God.

Was I even a women anymore, without a uterus or ovaries? Are you really a woman if you don't have the womanly parts?

So at 27 years old I found myself going through menopause. At least it gave me an excuse for my mood swings and made me very popular with 50 year old women who shared the common experience of hot flashes.

It was to control the hot flashes that the doctors put me estrogen. It was the estrogen that caused the Breast Cancer. One surgery later and 20 pounds lighter I finished my 27th and 28th year on earth without Cancer.

I threw myself into raising money for Susan G Komen through the 3-day, 60 mile walks. It was between the Chicago and Atlanta walk that I did that they discovered he skin cancer on my stomach from the radiation treatment i received as a teenager.

I had the malignant tissue removed on a Tuesday and walked 60 miles that following weekend. I think the doctors wanted to tell me not to do the walk, but knew better. And sure enough I walked all 60 miles. Not in record time but all 60.

When I turned 30, I was able to start a new decade of my life. Now I could sum up my life in cliches. I could tell you that I have learned that every day is a gift and every relationship is to be cherished, but I couldn't do it without sounding corny.

I have learned that it takes all the colors on the canvas of my experience to make the mural of my life. The pastel greens of my children's birthdays. The deep reds of pain that were my own or shared by another. The warm yellows and oranges of love. The strokes of black and grey that are hurts that won't go away... ever. And the bare whiteness of the canvas, not yet filled with the colors of life.

I hope that my struggles and pain have made me a better person, a stronger person.  Nietzsche said that "what does not kill you, makes you stronger." I'm not sure if that's true, but I hope so.

Now, don't get me wrong, I still do the self-pity thing and gossip and lose my temper. But from time to time, I have a flashback to one of the times I strayed into close proximity with death or God. And I am reminded that our time is limited and that we are each given the task of making the world a better place. I try to us this insight. Sometimes I succeed and sometimes I fail.

And what of God?   It's complicated.

I envy the simple faith of my daughter, Hailey. She KNOWS God is good all the time and everywhere. Her trust is complete.

I like to think of my relationship with God as more of a relationship. And like any relationship sometimes we fight. Sometimes we disagree. Sometimes I get mad and pout when I don't get me way. but like any good relationship, I know He will still be there for me when I come back around. We have the weathered relationship of old friends who've been through some tough times together.

And now I know that He cries when we cry and He smiles when we smile. And that has made all the difference.