22 November 2014

Brain Cancer took...

"When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves." ~Victor Frankl

Brain cancer took my quick wit, but forced me to look deep into myself and write things I couldn't speak.

Brain cancer took my ability to read novel after novel, but not my love of escaping into another person's thoughts, dreams, and trials.

Brain cancer took my stellar concentration and ability to remember all the small details, but not my love of learning.

Brain cancer took me into a fight that I was not interested in fighting, but not my determination to learn new lessons in the moment.

Brain cancer took everything and nothing all at once, but forced me to embrace changes in myself and my family that needed to be made.

Brain cancer took some of my long term dreams, but made me determined to focus more on the daily moments.

Brain cancer took my determination to do everything I could under my own power, but not the daily reminder that I need to be working under HIS power.

This list is not full of regret, but determination.  I want to use this awful trial to help others in their situations.  It might be as small as helping someone believe that they can complete an exercise class or as big as one day being given the opportunity to share my experiences with a large group.  Most importantly I want my kids to know the me that they aren't mature enough yet to understand.  I write here and I'm determined to journal privately for them.  I've been praying more for the opportunity for a larger platform... I'm just not sure what that looks like, I just know it's on my heart.  Pray with me and even help me find the right stage with a willing audience.  I think I have finally reached a place where I can believe that my most effective ministry can come out of my deepest hurts, but that can't happen until I'm willing to be more open and available.  "You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone.  You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts." 2 Corinthians 3:2-3

I have also decided that it is time for me to adventure back into books!  I saw a quote that said, "We lose ourselves in books, we find ourselves there too." Even more convicting was when I read "A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies.  The man who never reads lives only one."  There is really so much truth there. 

First my biggest excuse was that radiation stole my short term memory.  Reading novels became more work than fun because by the time I reached chapter 3, I had forgotten some of the details that I had read in the first two chapters.  The night of my seizure, I had read more than 200 pages of a novel that I get frustrated trying to finish because it was book 6 of a series and I can't remember any of them!  Since my brain surgery, I have read THREE books.  It is embarrassing to admit that in three years I have only read three books for myself.  Maybe I would feel better if I counted the Nancy Drew, Bernstein Bears, Veggie Tales... no, those are for the kids to learn this beautiful adventure into learning that is reading.  Two of the books that I read were other people's stories of challenges and were both very therapeutic for me, but not an opportunity to escape from my thoughts.

Second, all of the seizure medications make concentration incredibly difficult.  In the past if I was engrossed in a good book nothing could pull my attention from that paragraph.  Now I find myself in a constant joke of "squirrel!" when it takes almost nothing happening around me to change what I'm doing and thinking and even more frustrating cause me to go back and repeat the last several moments again as if never happened.  (If you don't get the squirrel joke, you need to watch the movie UP or this clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxYYPziLdR4!)

More recently my health has become a battle with my eyes!  Apparently some of my mini seizures have forced the blood vessels in my eyes closer to the surface.  When I add that issue into the fact that I really enjoy weight lifting I've had to learn to live with burst blood vessels.  My right eye has had a few of these lately and I have had to make some adjustments in my exercise since I am not a fan of feeling like I have sand in the corner of my eye while that blood vessel heals. (I don't want to talk about the conversations I have with my oncologist and her nurses that always sound like "It is rare that anyone with what you have feels like doing that much")  Then for the past two weeks I have had a swollen left eye with unbelievable pressure.  After seeing my oncologist, an ophthalmologist, and my primary care physician it turns out I just have an ear infection and infection in the sinuses around that eye that made my eye bright red and full of pressure.  I have amazing vision and until the last few months never realized how exhausting a minor eye issue can be.

Reading gives me somewhere to escape when I've had all the reality I can endure that day (and have obviously already been to my Bible and the gym!).  While I do not enjoy change I am realizing that in order to get back to my love of books, I'm going to have to make some changes.  I think the time has come for me to give audio books a chance.

"Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything." ~George Bernard Shaw

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