Cancer, it's an ugly word.  One that brings fear and worry.  It makes your head spin and your breath stop.  It leaves you feeling like you are swimming in a stormy sea and you can barely stay a float.  Waves come crashing down on you and just when you think you are safe in the life boat they wash you out to sea again.  Cancer...it adds words to your world that you never really wanted to learn.  Terms like oncology, biopsy, chemotherapy, prognosis, advanced directive, living will.  These words follow you where ever you go.  They are always in your mind.  Cancer...it forces you to make decisions.  Decisions that you never wanted to make.  Decisions you aren't ready to make.  It steals from you.  Your hope, your security, your future.  It leaves you living in some kind of between.  Somewhere in the middle of the before and after.  A space where you can remember the before, the carefree days when all that weighed on your mind was what to make for dinner and how to get everyone to activities on time.  You can see the after, you've been told that it's treatable, a good prognosis.  It's the in between that scares you.  Treatments and hair loss.  Bad days when you just don't think you have the energy to face the world.  Exhaustion.  Worry.  Those brief moments when you feel that something is squeezing all of the air out of the room.  You know you can make it through this between but it's going to be a battle.  A long hard battle and their is part of you that wants to run and hide.  To scream No, I don't want to.  A part of you knows that you are facing a demon so big that only faith and God will get you through.  You know that your life will never be the same.  You know that when you come out on the other side you will be forever changed.  You will be refined and purified.  You will be stronger.  You just hope you survive the journey.

*My mom was diagnosed 12/30/13 with Hodgkin's Lymphoma.