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You know, you come to this life as a tiny baby, and everyone coos and cuddles and feeds you wondrous things. Then you get a little older and watch Barney and Arthur, where you learn about sharing and caring and relationships and exploring. At age five you go to school and cut out construction-paper-everything with little blunt-blade scissors made for little fat fingers, and things look quite lovely for the rest of your life. It’s all about glue sticks, Halloween candy, roller-shoes, and Pixar. No one, as they say, expects the Spanish Inquisition.
And then one day you grow up and your older sister is diagnosed with stage four breast cancer. Your sister. The one who knew answers to every math problem on the planet, crocheted clothes for your dolls, taught you to ride a unicycle, and carefully typed up the family recipes on an ancient typewriter to give you the day before your wedding. She’s not supposed to go anywhere before her time. We all need her too much—us and her children and husband.
But she goes anyway, and we don’t have a say in it. She leaves a giant sister-shaped hole in the world. A painful hole. And you kind of wonder what the point of it all was.
And then you get the news that the broken gene that gave your sister her cancer, the narsty little susceptibility protein that went on strike in her and didn’t do it’s job protecting her from all of her cells’ mutations, has gone on strike in you too. And you run the same risk your sister did of doing a long, drawn out, life-changing health-battle.
But because of your sister, because she went before—as she always did—you are able to be tested and find out that you have that broken protein before your body does anything drama-queen with it. And as a result, you are able to make the decision to have preventative surgeries. Massive, somewhat mind-bending, painful surgeries. But blessed, amazing, brilliant surgeries that will extend and maybe even save your life. So you do. And for however long it will be, you are fine. But . . .
How do you wrap your brain around what happened to your sister? How do you come to terms with what’s floating in your body, waiting to strike—even though it’s not as likely now that you’ve taken preventative measures? How do you tell your children that they too must be tested for the broken gene? How do you live with all of that new reality, and the wrenching departure of the old?
Well, you realize—as you lie in your hospital bed recovering from the first of those blessed/cursed procedures—that you still have choices. You can turn inward and be buried by it, or you can turn upward and outward and learn from it. You choose the second. Not perfectly, but every day, that is your choice. And as a result . . .
You become aware. There are people all around you dealing with this same thing—with and without the gene, before and after cancer has set into their bodies. And so very many of them are square-shouldered, hope-filled, and unblinking as they step into their futures. And you wonder at it. For example:
The woman you met at the writer’s conference whose last chemo treatment had been the day before. She’d lost her hair, gained weight, completely transformed—and there was her beautiful husband right by her side, arm around her, fiercely daring the disease to try to take the love of his life.
The 86 year-old who’d just finished her second battle with cancer and had decided she was too old to have breast reconstruction so who cared? She’d managed to kick the disease twice and that was good enough for her.
The young mother at the boutique whose beauty totally belied what she had been through the year before. And all the women and men in your neighborhood whom you’d never known had been touched by this militant life-changer.
Above all, at least for you, the woman you’d never met who reached out to you when she found out that you, like she, had the gene. And she helped you through your process, gave advice on recovering, answering questions and reassuring you that you were normal. She became your angel.
All of these people had not. been. conquered. All had chosen to live; to turn upward and outward, regardless of the outcome. They, like your sister, were not cancer. They were stronger than the cancer, even if it eventually won. They had stories, just like you do. And those stories would give you faith—in God, in humanity and affirmation of life—if you listened to them. They, like your sister, would blow your mind.
So finally, finally you begin to change. You become deeper: you sense more, you live more, and you pray more. In a way you never have before, often without words. Just feelings pouring from what you thought would be. The questions. The longing. Despair. Hope. Fear. Demands. Wondering. Confusion. Glimmers. Understanding. And at last, submission. Because in the end, that is all you can do. You’ve exhausted the other options. You just . . . submit. Let go and float up to the One who knows so much more than you.
So what did I learn from my brilliant, warrior of a sister and our BRCA gene? That we are not alone. That God is at the helm, and family—in every form—surrounds us. Life is about souls and hearts, spirits and minds. It is not about our bodies, what they look like, and whatever is happening to them. It’s about deeper things like love, gratitude, courage, grace, selflessness, and cheer. It’s about reaching out and smiling. Seeing past the hard things to what lies beyond: that which God gives us through experience. And that which we have all around us supporting us as he does. Our trials are not us, no matter what they are. And they are not punishments. We are more than that. He is more than that. We are our deepest strengths and our greatest courage. We are our softest moments and our kindest smile. We are not so different from one another no matter what our circumstance.
And He? He is our sculptor, our balm, and above all, our wise and loving Father.
So this moment, and every moment beyond, you decide to reach up and out, loving, listening, embracing, and supporting others. With or without cancer. And you find out who and what makes us strong, human, good, alike, and family. That way we all win. And the disease, the trial, the pain—loses.
KaremJanuary 23, 2016
Thank your for your powerful and sensitive article. As we learn to overcoming adversity we are given new hope. You are surrounded by people who love you as you take on this challenge. We are never alone, but we can be strengthened through the Refiner’s fire. That Refiner’s lesson brings new depth and understanding. I watch with a dear friend diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. She is so busy filling her bottomless bucket list with life that she is too busy to mourn. She has a special needs daughter to love. Had it not been for the Refiner’s fire our nation would have lost the revolutionary war. We pray for that Refiner’s love, and quietly pray that we will win our battles. You have chosen to meet that test, and you are rewarded.
Ron and BonJanuary 20, 2016
What a powerful, inspiring article. Almost as courageous as the woman who wrote it.