Where Do You Find The Resources To Get Through Really Hard Stuff?
Two months ago my wife and I were contemplating the fact that we were nearing the end of Oriah’s chemotherapy treatment. For a moment I felt the freedom of being done with this. But then I saw more clearly. Even after she was done with chemotherapy, she’d need to get a scan of some sort to make sure she was clean. Then she’d need to get her chemotherapy port removed, a semi-serious surgical procedure. Then every three months or so for the next two years she’d get a scan of some sort to make sure nothing was coming back. And if there is cancer trying to grow in her body, the chemotherapy drugs are keeping it at bay. She’d be going off those drugs. Would her body be able to keep cancer away on its own?—a lot of unknown. I realized, after the last chemotherapy treatment, we wouldn’t exactly be “done” done. Later, we were sitting at the table with Oriah, having lunch. I turned my attention toward her and felt the love that I always do. And then immediately a Rolodex of images about what could happen to take her, and the love, away from me, flashed before my mind’s eye as the love was replaced with fear. This happened a number of times over the next week. And I noticed that a habit was forming. I began NOT turning my attention toward her so as to avoid the love all together, because the feeling of love was initiating this uncomfortable love/imagined future/fear cascade. I believe it’s because of the mindfulness meditation work I’ve done and because of receiving the type of care that I provide at the Network Life Center, myself, that I had enough resources available and enough awareness to notice the parts of this love/imagined future/fear cascade. And if you can see the parts, you can choose which ones to focus on. Besides, avoiding the love was becoming painful. I could start to see it was having an effect on my daughter. The look on her face and her body language seemed to be saying, “Daddy, where are you going? Stay here with me, right now.” So I decided... I decided that if the unsavory, imagined future and the fear came with the love, I would commit to the whole package, and despite being pulled away by the images and the fear, I would keep coming back to the love, right here, right now. And I decided that if any of the fear-fueled, imagined future ever came true, I would look her in the eye every moment of it and keep coming back to the love. Well, an interesting thing has happened since then. The gravitational power of the imagined future and the fear has decreased by a factor of 100 and the feeling of love... it’s like it got bigger and pushed the fear to the outskirts. And I can definitely see that my daughter has changed in relationship to me. She’s gotten more relaxed, less tense and finds laughter more quickly in my presence. Two weeks ago, Oriah received her last chemotherapy treatment. At the end of this month she’s scheduled to receive some scans , and if they give us the go ahead, she’ll get her chemotherapy port removed the next day (click here to see the schedule changes associated with this). We're certainly grateful for this part of the journey to be over and we're celebrating that a little bit. Feel free to celebrate with us. On the other hand, there's a lot of unknown and it feels like leaving the gravity of earth or something and floating into space—tethered only to love. So your continued prayers for the future are also welcome. Yours In Healing, Jay P.S. So the thing that I keep saying, that the solution is to go toward the perceived “problem,” has proven itself true to me once more, and on a whole other level. If you're reading this and have come to the end of your tether, and are looking at facing the pain or facing the fear or facing the unknown, and you’d like some support, I can help. Click the link to get started...
