Life Goes On

Pam is fast approaching her five year anniversary (Oct. 19th) of finding her first lumps of cancer. Every stage of this journey has had moments of terror, joy, fear, understanding, confusion, excitement, pain, peace, panic, relief, concern...basically, but especially at a time like now, it keeps her down. Keeps her in (going for doctors appointments and medical tests don't count as getting out). You just don't see her out much right now, a very complicated time for her, dealing with the events of this past year on top of the events of the previous four.

Everyone has hard times. A friend just lost her young mother. A friend is really struggling with his cancer. Two friends miss their husbands who died too soon. Pam isn't alone in going through difficult times, but difficult times make you sooooo lonely. In recent weeks Pam has suffered shared losses with her grandmother's passing as well as a very good friend, Dan Swille. Dan died a couple weeks ago. Most people didn't know the Dan Pam knew. He was so kind to her. We have a little friend facing a major surgery in her battle with cancer right now. Two doors down the pediatric hall from her you'll find our 13 month old nephew, struggling with the unknown. For someone physically and emotionally drained, it almost is too much. But, life goes on.

On a regular evening, Pam will be in her PJs by 6pm. Really. Not that she actually is able to sleep, but she is always ready. Kind of eliminates a lot of our nighttime social options. Yesterday evening our doorbell rang (a rare event, quite exciting). It was Ashley, one of Pam's former students, with an invitation and a gift for her. I called peejayed Pam to the door and Ashley surprised her with a warm invite to her volleyball game this evening (Tuesday). The gift for Pam was a pink Volley for the Cure shirt. The IVC vs. Princeton game tonight was being played with a secondary motive to winning, raising money for breast cancer research. The gym was packed with hundreds of people, the majority in pink. The players wore pink. The ball was pink. The umpires... referees... judges... whatever you call them in volleyball, wore pink shirts and blew pink whistles. They even recognized those in the crowd who have battled breast cancer. And to our surprise, of the hundreds there, I only noticed two stand. I don't know why that surprised me. It was quite an exciting evening. A nice distraction.

Like I said, life goes on despite all of the trials, physical and emotional. It is thrilling when Pam gets an unexpected lift like Ashley's invite last night which actually resulted in Pam getting out tonight to see some of that "life going on." Or the lift that was delivered last Friday night, or even today with some special connection time. Takes the pressure off of our kids, the ultimate encouragers, always finding a way to cheer their mom up, whether they realize it or not. Life is really hard, sometimes you have to look equally as hard to find the bright spots.

James 4:9