What Is Normal?

From the very beginning of this journey I have craved the day where I could and would be "back to normal". No more doctor visits, chemo treatments, scans, radiation treatments, or surgeries. My hair would grow back and my scars would be healed. Cancer would just be thought of as that time I was 39 and the awful terrible I had to go through. I was essentially expecting my back to normal to look like my life B.C (before cancer). But that is a far cry from reality. The reality is, going through something like cancer changes your life forever. You are no longer the same mentally, physically, or emotionally. A new normal is born from the ashes of your former life that cancer burned down. You can rise like a phoenix from those ashes, but the colors of your feathers are different, your song has a new cadence, and your wings operate differently against the winds of time.

My new physical normal glares back at me in my bathroom mirror riddled with toothpaste stains and fog streaks like a bully waiting with a smirk for me. It sits on my shoulder whispering and pointing out all of my new negative attributes. Each scar is pronounced like a protruding neon flashing sign in the desert...there is no missing or mistaking them for what they are and the message they contain. The once youthful, although fake, color of my hair fights to take up residence on my scalp. It is overran with the colorless strands of grey that luminate my head and age me 30 years. My hands refuse to operate the same and lose feeling with any minimal effort to raise them vertically. The loss of feeling on my right side is like a permanent tattooed reminder of 2024. They say that cancer ages you....I just didn't expect to feel like I'm 80.

My new mental normal reminds me of Hey Hey from Moana. It's erratic and doesn't make sense at times. I was so positive over the last year. I refused to let negativity or fear break me. Just like a long distance hurdler, I ran and jumped over every hurdle with the next one in my sights to conquer in the strides ahead. The finish line remained in my sights and nothing was going to trip me up or slow me down. Racers train their whole lives sometimes for the one opportunity to place the gold medal around their necks. But what happens once the race is done and there are no more ribbons to run through and drag around the track as you take your victory lap with the crowd cheering you on? My mental state is stuck at the place where the race is over, the medal ceremony has concluded, the crowd has dispersed, and I'm left alone to change out of my running gear with no more finish lines ahead and no idea what I'm supposed to do with all of the training and memories still coursing through my brain. The jump from is a champion to was a champion is probably much the same as the jump from is a cancer patient to was a cancer patient. Now what?

I'm all over the place emotionally. On one hand, I'm so ecstatic to be at this point. Like the racer, I still have one foot left on the podium soaking in the last of the cheers and roars from the crowd as they celebrate my victory. The other foot is being drug back to reality. Prior to the blizzard, I was originally supposed to return to work this week...in person. I had and still do have a lot of mixed emotions about the transition back to work. I have been out of the loop with coworkers and the things going on in their lives as I have been focused on just literally making sure I'm living. I crave the fellowship with other adults and conversations about work and life. I have professional goals I would like to accomplish that require me to be in office for training and development. While it isn't that big of a deal to physically go to the office...emotionally it is. It is the final reminder that I'm somehow supposed to figure out a new normal after this major life changing event. If that isn't emotionally hard enough, I'm also emotionally distraught over my new "look" that I will debut to coworkers that I haven't seen in a year and don't follow me on social media. I'm surely bound to deliver shock and awe on my first day back with my appearance.

I just can't shake the feeling that I'm supposed to be doing something more with this whole experience. Until you have personally been through cancer, you just really have no idea how life changing it truly is. So much of me has changed. I am not the same person I was 365 days ago. I am forever altered. So how does that translate into my new normal? That is the fork in the road that I am staring at. I can't for the life of me believe that I was meant to go through all of these hard things to just go through them and go back to the same life I was living. There has to be a greater purpose. A purpose for my pain. While the purpose is not clear at this time, I truly believe that something greater is on the horizon. I think I'm missing something in order to move onward and forward. I have no idea what it is, but I'm trying my hardest to do everything in my power to listen and respond to every urge God gives me.

I think the true reason for my discomfort is the unknown. I don't know for sure that there is no more cancer floating around my body. I don't know for sure that this nightmare is really done and that it's safe to let my eyes flutter open. I also don't know if I will ever know for sure unless more scans are ordered. It's a real mind game for me to sit and wonder. The "what if's" have taken up residence in my head pounding away on their drums of fear and torture.

I'll never be the same person I was before cancer. I finally understand that now. I also understand that we aren't called to be the same person from day to day. Each day brings new grace and new opportunities to live for Christ. Ephesians 4:20-24 says, "That, however, is not the way of life you learned when you heard about Christ and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. You were taught with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness." I'll never be the same person I was before cancer, but I also will never be the same person I was before I was saved by grace. I am called to be new each day. To live for him and try to emulate him daily. So as I wait, not so patiently, for which direction He will lead me, I will hold Romans 8:28 close to my heart. No matter what, if I am living for him, He will turn everything for my good. There is a purpose in my pain. I may never fully understand it all or even hear how my pain has impacted others, but I do know that regardless of my own knowledge of my purpose, God can use it.

Just for today, I am grateful for what I learned crossing each hurdle of this journey. Just for today, I will not dwell on the physical changes that I have incurred. Just for today, I will patiently wait on when and how to act on the purposes God has for the pains I have endured. Just for today, I will have hope that the race really is over.

E