Last night we had parent teacher conferences.  Meleah’s young-5’s teacher put a turkey on the bulletin board with all the “secret recipes” from five-year olds on how to cook a Thanksgiving turkey.  Meleah’s recipe is in the picture above.  The recipes from these little five-year olds are really quite funny.  Most of the kids think it takes under five minutes to bake a turkey. Most think you can use a microwave.  A few, have these obscenely high numbers, but none of them really grasp time at this age.  I suppose these latter ones are the ones that see their moms get up at 5 am to put the turkey in the oven.  This is obviously not my child because she thinks it takes a little cheese, a microwave and 15 minutes.  Of course, I’m not sure she’s ever seen me really bake a turkey….lol! 

But you know, I have difficulty telling time sometimes too.  I have a hard time knowing when to be patient and when to plunge forward.  When to sit and when to stand.  When to run and when to rest.  Sometimes it makes no sense to me.  Once in a while God gives me something really clear, like cancer, where I know I need to rest in him.  Running ahead isn’t going to happen.  I just need to wait.  Or my kids.  It’s really clear that I need to give them time, usually because they’re yelling “mom” every 30 seconds.  But the large belly and the mammary glands really gave that one away.  It was a clear sign.

But you know, not all signs are clear.  Do you take a job, do you not.  Do you wait for a decision, do you not?  Do you move or do you go?  I was reading in 2 Thessalonians and I think I’ve decided something.  There is some gray matter here.  But sometimes there is not.

I think God is pretty clear that we’re not to let time slip away on some things.  Like doing good.  1 Thessalonians 3:13 says “brothers and sisters, never tire of doing good.” 

Or loving justice.  Micah 6:8 says this:

“Now, O people, the Lord has told you what is good,
      and this is what he requires of you:
   to do what is right, to love mercy,
      and to walk humbly with your God.” 

The Bible also has a lot to say about patience.  Which is interesting to me. because when I look at scripture in terms of what it says about patience and waiting, it’s always when you’re on the receiving end.  But when you’re the one making the shots, making the decision, you’re not to wait around.  Like in the above verses.  I think when we see injustice, we’re not supposed to just wait around.  When we forgive, we’re supposed to do it…..and although sometimes it does take time, God really doesn’t ever describe forgiveness in the Bible as something we should do when we feel like getting around to it.  We need to do it as soon as possible.  Justice is the same way.  When we know what is right and we look away, it’s sinning.  Pure and simple.

I’ve had some tough decisions to make lately.  Something happened to someone and I chose not to step in.  Well, I did, but only partially.  I still haven’t figured out the “right” way to deal with the issue, but I know I need to say something, to do something.  I need to love justice and I need to respond.  To not respond is to ignore the goodness of God. 

What things are you letting slip by that need a “just” response?  We like the gray sometimes.  It’s a safer place there.  It’s easier than stepping out and taking risks.  But Christ doesn’t call us to be comfortable does He?  He calls us to grow weary (never tire) with justice and he doesn’t expect us to wait till we feel like it or everybody is comfortable.

Sometimes I feel like if I made it through cancer, I can make it through anything.  And then, sometimes not.  Sometimes I forget that I am strong.  Sometimes I forget the foundation I have in Christ.  Sometimes the business of life gets going and I forget that God made me, and I am His.  I forget that I am a “daughter of the light.”  He lives and me, he is a part of me.  It is being in him that makes me strong.

I’ve been reading through Thessalonians right now.  What an amazingly encouraging book of the Bible.  I forget sometimes that Paul could be so encouraging!  Even in Jail.  (Thessalonians as a book of the Bible is really a letter Paul wrote to the people of  Thessalonica.  He was a follower of Christ who initially persecuted Christians but then became a follower himself and was jailed for his public faith at times).

So this past couple weeks has been pretty difficult.  We got some news in our family that we didn’t really want to hear.  It was bad news.  It was difficult news.  It’s the kind of news that takes your breath away and question if God really knows what he’s doing.  

Then, my own calling as a pastor was questioned again.   This happens quite often as a female pastor in an evangelical denomination, but it’s happened again.  It tries my patience and discourages me deeply. 

Check this out:

Convictions of Steel

 ^2-5Every time we think of you, we thank God for you. Day and night you’re in our prayers as we call to mind your work of faith, your labor of love, and your patience of hope in following our Master, Jesus Christ, before God our Father. It is clear to us, friends, that God not only loves you very much but also has put his hand on you for something special. When the Message we preached came to you, it wasn’t just words. Something happened in you. The Holy Spirit put steel in your convictions.”

I love the use of the word steel here.  It’s about the strongest substance you can find.  The most secure.  The stuff skyscrapers are made of.  Ships battle storms on the high sea’s and they’re made of steel.  Strong stuff.

So cancer was tough.  Life is tough.  But Christ lives in me and that makes me….well, stronger.

I went to the 19th floor of “the castle” as I like to call it. It’s just the Northwestern mega-plex in the city. I don’t know why, but going in to the city always makes me nervous. It’s silly really because I lived in a Chicago suburb for a while and I lived in the city of Baltimore. Maybe it’s the three hour drive there? Maybe it’s the anticipation? Maybe it’s the reason I’m there? I don’t know. But Jeremy came with me this time, and it helped. Although he did tell me I was super chatty….but this is my usual response to nervousness.

So this time I came with a list of questions. What to do about my breasts? I’m happy to say, Dr. D offered a plan. This is very good. Because I need a plan. I very rarely do life without a plan. I like plans. It puts me at ease. Just to know he can try a few more things makes me happy. So on December 14th, he’s going to nip and tuck. (I’ve always wanted to say this….lol). But seriously….he’s going to nip…..or maybe tuck digger. Whatever it’s called….I’m just glad he thinks he can fill it in so there’s no indentation. And he’s gong to lift my breast flaps a bit. I can’t really explain why and wish I could show you how this will help, but I can’t show you, so just go ahead and take my word for it. I really think it will look better.

Then Dr. D had me go take some pictures. I really can say the before and current difference is truly amazing. I’m really surprised he takes my complaining so well because I’m telling you….I look AMAZING compared to my pre-reconstruction pictures.

He’s always such a good sport. He even called me clergygirl today….lol!

The neighbor girl came down this morning while I was in the shower.  As I opened the bathroom door, my 5 year old yelled “don’t show Nellie your boobie!”  Now, sensitive that I am, I felt a bit sad for a second, because although I wouldn’t go prancing out to show the neighbor girl my reconstructed breast, it did make me sad that my daughter was so embarrassed by my new breasts that she would yell that quickly to remain out of sight, so as not to be embarrassed by me.  Sigh…..

But then I realized that “boobie” is not a term we use in our home usually.  So I yelled down the hall.  Did you say “bootie” or “boobie?”  She yelled back “don’t show Nellie your butt!” 

Ohhhhh.  What a relief. 

I’m still waiting for the day my daughters are repulsed by my breasts…..but you know, it hasn’t happened yet.  They may surprise me.

Mastectomy.  One of the most vile words in the English language.  At least that’s how I feel about it.  Not a pleasant thought comes to mind when someone says this word.  But here’s the deal.  I’ve been hearing from women lately who are about ready to have mastectomies.  So here are my few words of encouragement for you.

1.  You are very brave.  You may feel like you don’t have a decision in the matter, but you do.  You could seriously tell them to get lost.  But you will be brave, and you will go and you will lay down, and you will allow them to put needles in you and allow them to drug you, so they can do their job…..and just the fact that you arrived at the hospital means you are very, very brave.

2.  The wait is excruciating.  I can’t say this is the worst part, because you will have an incredible amount of pain afterwords, but anticipating deformity is nothing anyone finds especially kind on the emotional well-being.  Once it is over, you can get busy getting better.  Of course, I waited 6 months for my surgery because IBC is treated with chemo first.  So my wait was a bit longer than normal, so I remember it well.

3.  Your armpits and shoulders will be incredibly tight and sore, where they aren’t numb.  My friend Mary came to visit me the day after my mastectomies.  She had a mastectomy a few years earlier and she graciously swung her arms around for me to show me that complete movement was attainable.  You will need to be diligent and you will probably need to request physical therapy.  For some reason doctors don’t really offer this up.  It should be as standard as talk about reconstruction but you know our culture…..looks above anything else!  I had barely any movement in my arms after my surgery, and just a few days ago Mary and I were talking about that tight muscle or tendon in the armpit that was excruciatingly tight after the surgery.  We were commiserating together.  Her answer was massage.  Gentle yoga is also really great.  You can get complete movement back, just give it time and keep stretching!  And a lot of the numbness in the armpits will decrease as well. 

4.  Don’t wait too long to look.  My doctor quickly took off my gauze and I was a little angry at her because this was only a day after my surgery.  I really felt like I wasn’t ready to see.  But now I look back on it and I do believe she knew what she was doing.  She was giving me a glimpse of my new reality.  And I needed to come to grip with my new reality.  I needed to see and accept the change in my appearance.  There’s no sense waiting around to emotionally accept your new normal.

5.  Lymphedema is not as common as it sounds on the internet.  I don’t know the statistics, but I remember reading on the internet about how it was so common and looking at gruesome pictures that made me SO scared!  And no one can promise you that you won’t get lymphedema  Sometimes there’s no rhyme or reason and it will just show up.  But you can keep your weight down, exercise and take precautions, and hopefully it won’t happen.  I know very few women who have serious lymphedema after mastectomies, so I hope this brings you some peace of mind.

I’ve scheduled my next breast upgrade.  I’m still unsure about it, but I meet with Dr. D next Wednesday, so hopefully it will bring some clarity to my situation.  I’ve had some restlessness lately about my breasts.  I decided last week that my breasts should look better than they do and I went to meet with another plastic surgeon here in Kalamazoo.  I just wanted a second opinion.  He had a few hopeful things to say but mostly it was the same.  I think the bottom line is that I had inflammatory breast cancer, massive amounts of radiation over a large area and there isn’t a lot of hope I can look better, at least with my clothes off.  Which really doesn’t matter to anybody but Jeremy, and to be honest, it doesn’t matter to him.  But it matters to me, so I continue to push back on the issue and hopefully one day those plastic surgeons will come up with a miraculous way to make my breasts look perfectly normal. 

So the second opinion……

There are two reasons I sought a second opinion.  None of which had anything to do with my dear plastic surgeon over in Chicago.  The first reason has to do with nothing more than total envy.  Last month our “Partners in Pink” support group started (BTW….it meets again tomorrow) and after the meeting we were doing show and tell in the bathroom.  Don’t worry, this is not required, but a few of us hadn’t seen each other in a while…..since reconstruction…..and we like to show-and-tell.  I’m telling you….once you’ve had breast cancer you are so used to going topless it is NOTHING NEW to show just about anyone who remotely wants to see.   So at show and tell, one of my dear friends looked absolutely fabulous.  I won’t give her name out of respect for her new beautiful bosoms, but they were perfect.  I’m telling you……they looked real, felt real, and were totally perfect minus the nipples.  I thought….wow….I need to find her doctor.  I was so envious of her breasts!  I wanted a pair of my own….lol!  But when I went to visit her doctor, he told me about the same thing.  And again…..I have to throw up my hands and say “why, why inflammatory!”  I get angry again…..why couldn’t I have had a normal breast cancer where I could have had skin sparing?  Ughhhh!

The second reason I sought a second opinion is because I do believe I am in the bargaining stage of grief right now.  I think you’ve heard me talk about the stages of grief before. Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance.  What you may not realize, that I have come to realize about this process, is that every time something happens on this cancer journey, I get to travel through this path over and over again.  When I was diagnosed, when I was disfigured through mastectomies, when I went through radiation, and when I was reconstructed.  It’s all about grief and loss and acceptance, and I get to travel this path every time the doctors do something new.  So here’s what I think.  I think that somehow I came ROARING into the bargaining stage last week.  Because I got a second opinion and then tried to bargain with my plastic surgeon.  I’m still TRYING to get someone to promise me my old breasts but IT IS NOT WORKING! 

So there’s the honest answer about where I am with my breasts right now.  Still hoping they can make them look and feel better, but trying to accept what may never be.

I did it!  I ran my first official 5k today in Chicago.  It was the Hot Chocolate 5k downtown.  I did pretty well.  I decided to position myself with the 10 minute mile folks, which was a huge mistake, because after about a half mile I spent the next mile dodging walkers.  Maybe because I ran track and cross-country in high school and college I know the rules of running, but common sense would tell you to MOVE TO THE SIDE if you stop and walk.  My time was right at 30 minutes, but I’m pretty sure it would have been better had I not had to do the dodging.   At about a mile-and-a-half I found a couple girls who were going just a bit above my pace so I decided to stick with them.  One of them fell back a bit, but the other I was able to follow till about the last half mile.  She was good at the fast little bursts around people and I couldn’t keep doing it, so I lost her at the end.  But to the woman with the green Fleet Feet t-shirt (I had plenty of time to read her shirt….lol)….thanks for the pace:)  Anyway.  I got a really fun jacket but I traded my brother-in-law for the sweatshirt which says “will run for chocolate” on the front.  I love it:) 

Here’s my sweaty, tired and happy self taken by Jeremy after the race:)

Sometimes you probably get sick of me posting all the current research.  But this article is pretty good and worth a read.  Especially if you want to avoid cancer.

I dated a lot when I was younger.  Of course, if you wait till you’re 27 to get married like I did, you’re bound to have a few dates.  I went through a lot of frogs before I found my prince charming.  And when I found Jeremy, or he found me as I’d like to think, he was quite a bit younger than me.  I like to say he’s three years younger than me but for 6 months of the year it sounds like he’s 4 years younger than me.  I know, it sounds horrible doesn’t it.  I was a senior in high school when he was in eighth grade. 

Here are some things he likes to tease me about.  And I say tease, because it was our deal when I agreed to marry him that he would never ever, under no circumstances tease me about being older than him…..and well, that did me a lot of good now didn’t it!  He teases me all the time.  So one thing that happens quite often in the car is that we’ll hear a song I loved in middle school, and I’ll say “oh I love this song” and I’ll turn it up and then I’ll turn to him and he’ll have this blank stare on his face, like “I’ve never heard this song?”  And this is because he was in first grade and WHO REALLY REMEMBERS ANYTHING ON THE RADIO IN FIRST GRADE!  And I’ll be reminded of how old I am.  The second thing that COULD happen is that he has heard of the song because of some retro station from the 80’s or because he just knows more music than I do.  But anyway, music can say a lot about your age.  And the other thing that happens is that I will have some memory of being some place and I’ll say “when have we been here before?” or “why do I remember this?”  And he’ll groan and say…..”Jen, that was with XYZ boyfriend!”  And we’ll both laugh because we both know that I dated a lot, especially for some reason in my 20’s…..I suppose I was trying to narrow in on the kill, but still, he thinks it’s funny.  Partially because sometimes I say “oh, I went here with so-in-so.”  Or something to that effect.  Jeremy didn’t date as much, although he had a lot of “girl” friends…..you know…..or so he likes to say. 

This is going someplace, I promise.  So I dated a lot in my 20’s.  And here’s maybe the reason why I dated so much.  I was in my 20’s when I was in seminary (Jeremy is not a pastor nor did he go to seminary in case you were wondering), and I was a single woman on a campus with a 3 to 1 ratio of men versus women.  Need I say more.  There were lots of men to choose from and not so many women.  And a good portion of those women were second degree students who were coming back to school as older adults.  And a good portion of the men were younger and out of college.  So if you were remotely attractive, you were KNOWN on campus.  And because every man knows he needs a wife to be in ministry…..I mean who else is going to play the piano for you if you get placed in an old country church…..lol….and be the part-time church secretary.  OK…I’m totally stereotyping here, but unfortunately that is the way it WAS for a long time.  Thankfully not so much anymore.

So one day I hear word that a “Beeson Pastor” has been asking around about me.  It’s a small campus and a friend of mine was a Beeson pastor.  Now a Beeson pastor was an elite group of 20 pastors on campus that were invited to come and get their doctorate in a one-year type program.  They were paid, given an apartment, and flown all over the world to see churches that were pace-setters, so-to-speak.  So this guy just happened to be single, and seeing that he was a Beeson pastor, and decent looking, I gave word back that I MIGHT be interested.  You have to play cool ya’know!  So he calls me and we went on a date.  For about a month, things seemed to progress.  He seemed like a really nice guy.  Then all of a sudden, I quit hearing from him.  I think maybe I saw him around campus a bit and he just seemed to be aloof.  At first I was sad.  I moped around for a few days.  I ate ice cream and didn’t care what I looked like.  But after a few days I picked up the pieces of my semi-broken heart and got back in to living.  In fact, for several days I purposely thought…..this man is NOT going to see me looking bad and I did my hair extra well, and dressed up.  I not only looked better, but I felt better. 

And so it is with cancer.  I am putting cancer behind me.  I’ve been looking good and feeling good.  I dress up and do my hair because I can.  I have hair and I have the energy to do it.  I have a pair of red shoes that I love to wear.  I have enough black and grey in my closet to last me a week, I live in neutrals, but lately I’ve been wearing my red shoes a bit more.  I even bought some red lipstick.  I’m feeling more bold.  I’m feeling more courageous.  I’m not as scared that cancer’s going to sneak up on me.  I like my new breasts.  I feel like I am beginning to resemble the woman I looked like prior to cancer….something I wondered might never happen.  I’m feeling strong enough to pursue what it might mean to make myself feel whole again (I’m talking my breasts here and future surgeries to improve my breasts).  Those red shoes represent strength and courage and my ability to recover.  They remind me that I am no longer the wall-flower that I wanted to be when I didn’t have hair and wanted to sink in to the floor every time someone looked at me longer than 2 seconds.

I don’t know where you are in the process.  Cancer is an awful diagnosis.  I can’t promise that you will ever feel completely whole again.  I can’t promise that you can or will move on.  But I hope that at some point you will.  I hope at some point you can pull out those red shoes and stand tall and strong.  I’m amazed that I can, but I am!