A Day-Off For My Unicorns
I really thought we were in the clear. I had no reason to think otherwise. We came away from Chris’s last routine MRI at his neurosurgeon’s office in April with such successful news! Not having to return for a year since the tumor was shrinking so quickly! That was awesome! We drove away exhaling deeply and putting Brain Time even further back in our minds.
So, when Chris told me a week ago that he had been suffering from headaches and trouble with his vision in his left eye, it really threw me for a loop. His tumor, albeit much smaller, still exists on the left side within proximity to his optic nerves. We visited the eye doctor in hopes of easily finding the culprit for his vision troubles. And when she couldn’t find one and ordered an MRI of his eye orbits and brain, our heads and hearts fell pretty deeply.
Then, when the Imaging office couldn’t get him in for his scan until this week Wednesday, well, we reluctantly and with extreme heaviness succumbed to play the waiting game.
And the waiting game is not an easy one to win, or even take the lead in for that matter. I’m telling you what, I had a mighty epiphany about how to defeat fear last week and posted a triumphant bit about it on my Instagram feed just moments before Chris filled me in on his eye business. Certainly that must not have been coincidence. I had written about how my favorite thing Andrew McCarthy ever said to me (Oh, ok fine, not just to me, unfortunately, but to an auditorium of listeners) was that “Fear is a cunning opponent. It keeps coming back.”
I’m not aware that has ever rang truer. I wrote about how easy it aught to be to defeat fear…all you have to do is turn your back on it and look forward into life with stars in your eyes…you know, flowers and rainbows…that kind of thing.
That was all before finding out that my upcoming days had big, fat question marks on them! Now it feels like fear is right before me chuckling and calling me, sucker!
I find myself more and more within the memories of Brain Time and looking back I can’t believe how naive i was! How could I not have been fearful? I was fearful during his seizure, obviously, but i was never afraid of cancer or mortality or the outcome of his brain surgery being nothing other than perfect wholeness. And, neither was he! We just took each day as it came! Our faith in Jesus played the biggest part in our peace and vision of hope, but I honestly think our faith is even stronger now than back then! So I ask myself what my problem is right now? When I feel afraid I just call out Jesus’s name, but then it’s not long after that fear pulls at me again. It’s an ongoing battle, if I’m being honest, and one I’m struggling to stay on the winning side of!
I’ve only been aware of Chris’s new development for six days and I think I’m in worse shape than I was in the midst of anticipating brain surgery! It’s been a year and a half since then, and through that time, I’ve become so much more aware of how lucky we are…how Chris’s outcome was the best answer to prayer, ever. No cancer. No brain damage. Fully functioning. But it’s what we’ve learned in the interim about not-so-successful stories and the reality of how fragile life is that puts me on edge. What a bubble we lived in prior to Brain Time. And, I wish that bubble was never popped. I liked feeling safe inside it.
I’d like my naivete back, please.
And, yes, I am writing from a place of unrest, even though I am glaringly aware of the disservice worrying does for me. It goes against the person that I strive to be. You know, the happy one, with fear management and a fleet of butterflies and unicorns around me.
Life isn’t always like that. I’m not interested in loitering in a place of fear, but for the moment, that’s kind of what’s real. Until I have the news (that I’m praying for) Wednesday afternoon that there is nothing wrong with Chris’s brain and that there is an easy fix for the culprit causing his vision trouble, I may give my butterflies and unicorns a couple days off.
So beautifully written on such a deep subject. You are REAL, perfect, whole and true. Sending you lots of love and blessings. Everyday we have things to be thankful for and you are so right about our relationship with fear. I too want rainbows and unicorns