Clarity

Sometimes Clarity can be beautiful. Sometime clarity can be gut wrenching. I feel like I am going through a season of heartbreaking clarity. I’ve said before that I thought that 2017 was going to be a year of going all in. I did not think that God would be asking me to go all in, in the way that he has been and not going to lie. There are aspects of this messy journey that are painful, very painful and exposed.

I have decided that I am going to start to write about my parent’s journey with Cancer and death. I have not given this enough credit. I have not acknowledged it enough. I have spent 5 years stuffing the trauma and grief from my dad’s death and 2 years for my mom’s. I lost both of my parents to cancer at the age of 52; 4 years apart. Event typing that sentence makes the wave of emotion in me surge. Sometimes that wave completely drowns me if I let it. Often I try to pretend it’s not there and I find myself completely numb.

See, my parents didn’t just get Cancer and die. They slowly died from cancer. For my dad it took a little over a year and for my mom about two. I hope that that is the most traumatic thing that I ever have to go through because watching your parent deteriorate to nothing is something I would wish on NO ONE.

It is easy for me to say “It happened” and life goes on. I mean in a way life has to go on. I have a full time job, a full time Oils business and two beautiful children. It has to go on. I have let myself get caught up in “getting on with it” to the point that I never have dealt with it. I have to now. I don’t know why NOW is the time, but it is. I refuse to live like this any longer. Half a spectator to my own life that I won’t engage in because it’s not safe. And half too overwhelmed to engage because it hurts too much. Cancer didn’t just ROB me of both my parents. It didn’t just rob my brothers and sisters of a mom and dad or my kids of their grandparents. It took so much more from me. It took my safety net. I took what felt like protection away from me. It robbed me of the births of my children I imagined, the college graduation I had hoped for and many other events I have experienced and will continue too… without them.

I don’t give it enough credit. It’s not that CANCER needs credit. But the experience of how CANCER has affected me needs credit. I have to acknowledge that it was/is a BIG thing. That what we went through was a big thing because if I don’t, well I am not sure what will happen but I do know it’s not good for me not too.