This post was written by Bethany. This is our fifth update on Bethany’s cancer journey, to see older posts scroll down. Thanks for reading.

September 6

One strange thing about chemo and cancer is that as you get better, it doesn’t get easier. Chemo is chemo, and it knocks you to the ground every time, regardless of your progress.  I have three more chemo treatments left.  The countdown is like a mantra, on repeat in my head. “Three, two, one… three, two, one…” I only have to do this super hard, disgusting thing that I hate three more times. The end of treatment is in sight, but I also have to come to terms that cancer will now always be a part of my life.  The follow-up appointments, the way it will shape our family and our ministry, the fear that it could come back 5 or 55 years down the road. I hate it and I’m grateful for it all at the same time- the mixture of pain and depth that it’s created in our lives. I wish that I could end treatment and just wipe my hands clean of the whole experience, but I know that won’t be the case.

I often say to Ben that cancer is the club I desperately don’t want to be in… like, I’m in the club but I’m not showing up to the meetings.  I’m not ready to run a 5k for research or add “cancer survivor” to my instagram bio. I need some space. I’m longing for a season that is free from cancer and its restrictions, I’m longing for what it feels like to get to day 15 and not have to go back in for treatment. I’m hoping that space can bring me to a better place of acceptance.

The other day in counseling, I was processing a lot of things and I found myself succinctly saying something that had been swirling around in my head, but felt so good to say out loud, so simply and direct. I can find myself somewhat paralyzed by daily decisions… should we really own a microwave? Use normal sunscreen? Dry shampoo? Breathe the air in California? It all comes with a cancer warning. Sometimes I think I’m a complete fool for not throwing out every “toxic” thing in our house and replacing it with some essential oil-based substitute that will cost 4 times as much. It suddenly feels extremely urgent to get rid of anything in my life that could possibly invite this horrible thing back in.  Then, just as suddenly, I swing in the exact opposite direction.  I refuse to let my life be dictated by fear. I refuse to let cancer control so much of my life and my emotions and my spending. I know that there is a middle ground to all of this, but it’s very hard for me to settle into.  Anyway, what I said out loud to my therapist is, “I desperately want to make sure that this never ever happens to me again, and I desperately don’t want my life to be controlled by it, either.” Those things feel at odds to me most of the time, and I can’t seem to pick a camp.

I think the essential struggle of it is wrapped up in the confusing reality that I am a healthy person who got cancer. I eat really well, work out, buy organic, sleep 8 hours a night. I’ve never had surgery or broken a bone, and now I have to check the box on medical history forms that I’ve had cancer.  It still fails to compute.

It’s all very confusing and hard and strange but I am seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. As treatment ends, I know that I will still be processing all of this for a while to come, that it might be hard for me to engage with people who think that since my treatment is over, then everything must automatically be great again. I have all sorts of apprehension about navigating life after chemo, but when I think about that light at the end, I don’t see those things.  I see me, and Ben, and Nora. I see the three of us, surrounded by the light, whole and happy and tired and together. Three, two, one.