Life isn’t fair… but who said everything in life was going to be? At some point we have a choice to accept this, living the life we have, or let our disappointments, struggles and pain affect everything around us. I was a perfectly healthy, mostly vegetarian, athletic 46 year old mom of two when I was diagnosed with stage 2 metastatic breast cancer. Putting my body through a double mastectomy, chemotherapy, radiation and 12 months of treatment wasn’t fair… but it did save my life.
Did you know that in the early 1900’s if you were diagnosed with cancer you were most likely quarantine? Cancer patients were locked in attics for fear of the disease spreading. Did you know that early on, breast cancer patients were given chemotherapy doses 5x’s higher than today because they were testing a, “more is better”, theory? Did you know that we could eliminate about 50% of cancers by avoiding radiation, wearing sunscreen, throwing away cigarettes and getting a HPVP vaccine? It is the other 50% that is mysteriously shows up.
My choice was not to get cancer. My choice was in how I lived and continue to live with cancer. A young man that is dying of brain cancer said, “There is always light in the darkness.” He is right. In my case, cancer is the darkness, the struggle and the uncertainty. It is not pretty or predictable. Life is that way. However, there is always beauty and hope. It is our choice to seek out that beauty and hope. What choices are you making to see the light and what choices are you making to remain in the dark?
My challenge for you today, is to start to think about where the beauty and light shows up in your life? It can be in very small ways. Ask yourself what makes you smile? What makes you forget, if only for a fleeting second, the pain you are suffering from? What makes you breath a little more slowly and deliberately, letting peace settle on your soul? Once you find these beginnings write them down. Cherish them, turn to them when you are feeling the pull of darkness. Pound them into this life with as much energy and enthusiasm as you can muster because these are the choices that will save you.
Make your choices count.