Hi Tim,
Thank you for the thoughts generated from your candid post
I pondered how I lived before cancer and how it has changed me.
My friends say my grave marker will say "She lived it to the bone" - referring to the deliberate way I lived. Before cancer it was obvious I wanted to live...I took great risks by mosts standards. I have been self-employed atleast half of my life. I found courage to love again after bitter divorces. I was not afraid to really live - it was evident as I rarely passed an opportunity to do just that.
With great risks comes the possibility of great loss thus pain. It is vital to understand my definitions on suffering and pain...pain is nessesary while suffering is not. Pain is a natural product of growth or loss, suffering is what happens when we linger in pain too long. Maybe I have oversimplified this aspect of living, but it has helped me get back to living quicker after a fall while also minimizing my regrets. I have accepted the occaisional pain as a small price to pay for truly living.
The "fearing the unknown" is like the rubber meeting the road for me. As I said, I have taken great risks which always magnified jumping into the great unknown. And this is where my faith comes in. (Forgive if I offend by delving into the heart of my faith, I normally am not one to preach) This life is not the whole enchilada to me - the eternal is where my focus has been. I am to do my best on this earth knowing I have a place in Heaven. What I do here and who I am becoming matter more than what happens to me as it is the means to an end - Heaven...So my "unknown" is reduced to how this part of my life concludes. I'd be lying if I said that doesn't frighten me.
Up to the point in my life when this cancer hit, I was 100% sure I was living, not suffering and not afraid as I was and am sure of the eternal. The only abyss is the unpredictable direction of the cancer. With no clear method known to beat it the choices in dealing with it are murky. This is what the article addresses.
Maybe we face the cancer in the fashion we are living, or by the way we are dying. In the end stages of cancer there are no surefire cures. Some grasp desperately for any hope to continue life regaurdless of the suffering the treatment produces. Some refuse to abandon life as they know it thus refusing anymore treatment accepting the known outcome. Others carefully draw a line in the sand where the quality of life lies. This is living and dying with mets, and what I saw as the crux of the article.
So I am grateful for life as I know it, knew it. Being one who has more than once been called a "deep thinker" - I felt reassured as I pondered how fearlessly I believe I have lived and how little I choose to suffer. I am cognizant of where my lines in the sand are, too.
God Bless, Holly