Chasing down normal

Normal day,

let me be aware of the treasure you are.

Let me learn from you, love you,

bless you before you depart.

Let me not pass by in quest

of some rare and perfect tomorrow.

Let me hold you while I may,

for it may not always be so.

One day I shall dig my nails into the earth,

or bury my face in the pillow,

or stretch myself taut,

or raise my hands to the sky and want,

more than all the world, your return.

Mary Jean Iron

I've decided coming off chemo is a little bit like losing a job. All of the trips to Roger Maris, the clinic, the lab, the infusion center kept me heavily scheduled.  Anticipating the 2-4 days of down time after each treatment kept me hovering somewhere between the my home mini-pharmacy and bed. Then there were those few days in between when I felt the urgency to accomplish everything and then some while I felt good.  


So now I've been set loose.  Freed from the heavy schedule of cancer.  And after 15 months of having my entire existence revolve around that schedule... I hardly know what to do with myself.  


I feel as though I am straddling two worlds. The cancer hasn't changed.  My prognosis- well statistically it still stinks.  But I have never let the statistics try to define me.  It doesn't mean those numbers don't hover over threatening at times to descend upon me and smother me.  I'm just learning to live fully in my moments, in spite of  the cancer. 


But what is different, is that we're not peeking in on the cancer as much.  We're not poking, prodding, mapping and sizing as much.  We simply don't know, and aren't try to know right now.  We're trusting.  I'm trusting.  Both in him, my doctor and Him, my Father.  I have to keep stepping forward in faith, even when I can't see.  Especially when I can't see.  


And what I can't see now?  Is what "normal" looks like.  I have such new eyes, I doubt my life will ever really go back to pre-diagnosis.  But in this reprieve I've been given, life can certainly take on a new flavor.  A new direction.  A semblance of old, with a dash of new sprinkled in.  


My faith grown out of the hard and uncertain, shapeshifting into a faith for the every day.  


It probably looks a lot like last night.  I know it felt right.  Sitting in the stands with friends, the golden rays of the sunshine streaming through the dust of the ball field.  Watching our 9 year old sons smack the ball around, attempt double plays, and spit sunflower seeds.


Normal