The Dark Side

I keep having analogies run through my head...and one of them is Darth Vader.  "Come to the Dark Side, Luke."    Come to the dark side.  Be angry.  Be resentful.  Be frustrated.  Be upset.  Be envious.  Be miserable.   Take out your frustrations, you deserve it.  And I suppose there is a time for some of that... But I do not want the rage and the anxiety to take over my life.

I am finding this struggle to be so much about compartmentalizing my thoughts and emotions.  Cancer over here.  Pool party over there.  It is all too easy to put on my cancer-colored glasses and see everything through a shade of depressing.  So I am learning that there is a lot of mind control that goes into all of this.  I have to choose to find the happy and to enjoy it.  I have to trust that God loves us and will help us through this.

It is easier said than done.  But, a lot easier "done" when Andrew is feeling okay.  When we are not stuck in the hospital.  When he is smiling.   His little bald head and obtrusive painful port keep me from complete denial.  But maybe denial is not such a bad thing?

I had a great week with my boys at home.   We went swimming, we danced with the Wii.  We had fun with our new MarioKart.  Grandma and Grandpa watched Andrew on Memorial Day and John and I went with the two older boys to a pool pary.  Hooray for normal life!  We had a great time, and so did Andrew.

As I sat in church on Sunday I was watching some friends sitting in front of me with their 6 month old baby.  It seems like just yesterday they told us they were pregnant.  Time goes quickly.  And while I want it to go quickly for certain, obvious reasons, I don't want to miss and wish away my baby's whole third year of life.  I still need to  find the beauty in each day, count my blessings and appreciate the life and the joy provided.

The other analogy I think of is Lot's wife.  Don't look back.  Don't think about what was, or what could have been. It is just torture.  If I look around and think about the carefree way my life used to be, it is more difficult to cope.  Gotta look forward (but not too far), gotta keep making the best of things, gotta make the lemonade.

This week Thursday begins the more brutal round of chemo.  Last time it knocked Andrew out for almost a week.  He needed a blood transfusion, morphine, and looked as pale as Val Kilmer's Doc Holiday in the movie Tombstone.  It was so hard to watch.  I may easily slip into the Dark Side next week as I watch my poor little guy suffer in pain.  It makes me raging mad to see him suffer like that.  It may take too much effort to find the bright side, and maybe I won't.  The anxiety and anguish in my gut is already building.

But for now, I can say that we truly had a beautiful week at home.  And that can't be diminished by what may come.

Clinging to the Light.