You know that feeling when you’re apprehensive for something? Nervous and unsure… Way out of your comfort zone… The unsettled [borderline nauseous] stomach and that cold sweat that creeps along just under your skin… And that uncomfortable edge-of-your-seat antsyness?

I feel like I live perpetually there.

I wonder what that discomfort is and what it means? Because while I live there, I also easily recognize my gratitude-infused-contentment of what is. . . I’m not looking to rush out of where I am. I love the slow-down. I enjoy the scenery both literal and figurative. And I deeply value the process before the product.

This both+and, the oxymoron of uncomfortable contentedness (of course not to be confused with contented discomfort), has my brain stumped.

Funny thing….I was getting ready to post this and needed to find a picture to go with it. (Quite the endeavor as I don’t just pick at random.) Anyways, as I considered what picture would go with today’s both+and, it hit me – a puzzle. And then, my brain became a little less stumped. I think it tells a very interesting story to take my post about uncomfortable contentedness and put it together with an undone, incomplete, all-the-pieces-*eventually*-have-their-place puzzle. A puzzle that ends with a picture, a puzzle that takes time and intention to put together, a puzzle that comes together one piece at a time. The process being integral to the complete picture as the puzzle would be no fun if it came completed out of the box. No fun and, well, opposite of the whole purpose of a puzzle!?

*Post 964

Mercy. Please Mercy :: 11/23/17 :: Post 87

I want to sit here and write about gratitude… I want to sit here and feel grateful.

I wish I had energy to put words together.

Today started off ok and has gone massively downhill since then…

I feel beyond awful. And discouraged.

And all I have left is enough to brush my teeth and climb in bed.

Mercy. Please mercy.

Category 5 :: 11/23/18 :: Post 436

Ran into an old friend today….we were close a few years ago and then, well, we weren’t anymore but not for any particular reason…

Anyways, she said she didn’t know what all I’d been through. Didn’t know when I’d been diagnosed. Didn’t know the extent of the battle I’m fighting.

So…I told her.

I’m laying here tonight with a heaviness. Recounting the intensity of diagnosis, surgeries, treatment, what lies ahead……

Some seasons bring smooth sailing.

Some bring hurricanes. Category 5.

Gratitude Month Day 23 :: 11/23/19 :: Post 799

Two years ago – I was sad. Sad because while I wanted to celebrate the gratitude of Thanksgiving, I was struggling that day to be grateful for anything because of how dreadful I felt.

Last year – I was sad. Sad because I had run into a friend and told her all that I’d been through over the past year and recalling all of it had been difficult. I likened it to a Category 5 hurricane.

Tonight – I’m sad. Sad because I miss my marriage from before cancer. Cancer doesn’t just change the patient. Cancer changes everything…. And my heart hurts desperately for what was.

Gratitude Month Day 23 – I’m grateful to be here, for the fight to be alive but I’m going to allow the tears to fall and the sadness to be felt because that’s real, too. So many people are always so focused on the ‘surviving’ (which isn’t a bad thing) that they forget just how hard the surviving is…and at what cost.