This post is from Bethany, written earlier this week. Since then, we’ve received a lot of encouragement from her oncologist and things have started to look brighter. That being said, cancer is a roller coaster and we want to let you in on the journey, as a lot of these feelings are still present.

Last week, we received the results from my latest scan.  The good news is that the chemo is working and my tumor is shrinking, but we were disappointed to learn that my treatment would continue on the original plan of 6 months total, leaving us with 4 more months to go. Well, disappointed is an understatement. Honestly, the news was devastating. We felt sure that I was either cancer-free or very close to being done.  The reality of four more months of chemo is so hard to comprehend and accept.  It’s caused us to question a lot and wrestle and lay if all out there this week.

For the past two months, I’ve had so much faith that I will be healed, and quickly.  Since the day I came home from the hospital, I had a clear sense that I would be done early. We had so much peace, we were covered in prayer and encouragement and meals. Even through the first few chemo treatments, it all felt so temporary. God’s presence and peace was so close to us, and we took that as assurance that we could power through and just be done with all this cancer nonsense. I felt so brave and optimistic- look at me! Laughing in the face of cancer! Pat me on the back!

It felt brave and hard then, but what I’m learning is that it’s actually really easy to have faith for the things you desperately want to happen. Which is not all bad, it’s a just funny mixture of my own desperation and my firm belief that God moves and heals today. Put them together and voila! Surely it must come true. What is much harder, nearly impossibly hard, is to trust God and have faith when the miraculous does not happen.  When the healing doesn’t come, when the scan isn’t clear, when you get the news you don’t want to hear. Up until now, we were really just waiting for all of this to be over.  Now I’m trying to figure out what it means to accept and live my life right now, without checking out or getting depressed or clinging to blind optimism. Previously I had faith only for the waiting, not the living.

I feel like I’m starting over.  I feel like I’m going through the stages that most people go through when they very first get their diagnosis. I’m angry, I’m confused, I’m heart-broken.  I’m grieving the looming loss of my hair, the possibility of infertility, the fact that I’ll spend Nora’s first year in this cycle of pain, only half-present with her. Chemo sucks. It’s so hard on your body and your mind.  Even when you know what to expect, it truly never gets easier. I still regularly feel shocked that I have cancer, that this is my life.

And in the midst of all that, when I get a moment of perspective, there is this: I will live.  My treatments have an end date, my doctor tells me I’ll be cured.  How many people get to hear that with cancer?  I am truly grateful for these things.  The blood clot that landed me in the hospital was so severe, I could have a very different story had I waited a few more days.  I’m here and I’m alive and I might not be whipping up homemade organic baby food and going to spin class, but I’m here and my life as a whole is filled with joy and my suffering has purpose.

This week I felt shaken to my core, and I’m trying to learn how to give this season to the Lord. When things seem dismal, I’m trying to learn how to lean on him for comfort, to discipline myself to seek his presence. In this season, I have the opportunity to grow into a level of faith that shares with Christ in his sufferings, a concept that our culture has no room for.  I do not want to miss that opportunity. Literally, through my heart-broken, confused tears, I raise a hallelujah.