February Feels
If a Window Could Say 1,000 Words
I looked out my window, the snow hadn’t started yet. Would it come at all? Would it complicate my husband’s arrival for my discharge? Every couple hours the babe woke up to tummy grumbles, and I gazed out my window waiting for the snow to fall.
The dark sky illuminated by lamp posts highlighted the flakes beginning to fall. As daylight began to peak through the room, my gaze cut through the pouring of snow and onto the building across from the hospital.
The building directly across from my room, I knew of it, but I didn't know a thing about it. Sure, I’d been there before to survey a breastfeeding infection gone wrong with my middle child. Come to find out, I had no concept as to what that cancer building represented.
I held my newly arrived babe, and waited for my hubby to pick us up. I looked out that window and praised God for a healthy life. One that the people across the street from my room were ferociously fighting for.
Fast forward three years to the day, I admitted myself for my stem cell transplant, and my room had the same exact view. Nonetheless, I knew exactly what was beaming across the street.
The place I turned into a radioactive hazard.
The machine that decided my cancer was stage four, from my neck to my sacrum.
The office of my oncologist.
The place my kiddos came with me to get my white blood cell boost shot.
My newfound bestie and confidant Sarah injected me with poison and embraced me with a hug.
The best parking garage in the world because of its bright lights and greenery.
It’s the place my hubby met me, sat with me, and swept me out of my wheelchair after a day's worth of chemo.
The place my hubby would fight my oncologist to do better.
The crevices spread throughout the building where I attempted to make sense of my upside down world and fall short.
What’s more, God knows all too well, if it was the only time, I’d embrace my kids jumping for my gaze completely out of reach.
Avoiding Nausea or a Lack Thereof
This year, it was my mission to avoid being at the hospital on Valentine’s Day. Better yet, it was on my agenda to redeem a day that has captured a lot of heartbreak in my life.
Humiliation
Breakups
Career Rejection
Career Changes
Foreign Travels
Winter Weather and a Broken Furnace
Mostly, an expensive night's stay alone with terrible room service, was the thread I hoped would come to an end. Three out of the last four February fourteenths were just that: insurance charges and hospital cafeteria food. A cesarean delivery, NICU stay, a lung biopsy performed by a thoracic surgeon, and inpatient chemotherapy to kickoff a stem cell transplant were all reasons this year’s superficial holiday would be all things ruby red.
I dreamed of getting out and doing something fun that my hubby and I never do: skiing, or rollerblading. However, I quickly realized both of those could potentially warrant a hospital visit. So, we set our sights way out there and dreamed of life on the water at the nearby boat show.
Figuratively speaking, I didn’t even avoid nausea!
Redeeming What Was Stolen
With a babysitter set a month in advance, and the hopes for a fun time outside of reality and the boundaries of a hospital alarm bracelet, we ate a quick dinner and immersed ourselves in living on a boat. Luckily, all of the boats were outside of our school district, and the ability for my body to feel the slightest waves allowed us to leave with our money in hand.
I wanted this date to be perfect. Honestly, I had high expectations to be free of fasting liquids and foods, and tearing up my husband and kids’ lives. Walking around the event space, I had seen exactly what God had done. He impressed on me the sacrifice my husband had made all those years.
That’s what Valentine’s Day evolved into. Not a measure of love, but the immense sacrifice my husband has made between raising children and overcoming cancer.
The exact location where the boat show took place, was the spot my hubby served me wearing a mask against all of his might because he didn’t want to expose my chemo whelmed body to the masses of people he would interact with at the home show he participated in for work.
It was the spot he previously walked the aisles of viewing his wife’s dream of a camper and not knowing if she’d survive long enough to one day enjoy it.
It was the spot where he prepared his team’s booth for the upcoming home show, and abandoned his passion to meet customers over the span of four days because his wife was in isolation. (Thank you God for an employer that is more like family. A place Tim is valued and poured on with grace in the midst of treading water in the cancer pool: appointments, school transportation, and hospitalizations.)
God’s ultimate sacrifice when He sent His son to die on the cross for our sin and the things that break our heart is the greatest redemption story of all. The one true love story. “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13 NIV).
Love day magnified the depths of my soul and the aches of my heart. Where I’ve been, and where I was going. Sometimes, it didn’t match up with my desirable life goals. At the same time, the cries of my heart projected the trajectory of my life.
Here’s to many years of life changing February fourteenths!
