Spring

If you can believe it, I wrote this post last Wednesday approximately an hour before I got the news that my dad would be having open heart surgery. Oh, the irony. Every word is still true, though, and I decided to go ahead and post it.

Most people look forward to spring, and until this year, I would have counted myself as one of them. But this year I find myself a little apprehensive as temperatures warm up and baseball season begins. In spring 2011, we were preparing to move to Texas to help plant a church when I unexpectedly had major surgery, spent 9 days in the hospital and was diagnosed with stage 3c ovarian cancer. In spring 2012, we were once again forging ahead with plans to move to Texas to help plant a church when I had major surgery, spent 8 days in the hospital, and found out my cancer was still hanging around my abdominal wall and liver. Both spring 2011 and spring 2012 I missed a good portion of baseball season. 

You see why spring feels as if it brings bad, bad things for our family?

And here we are in spring 2013, and I find myself settling into a routine that does not involve regular trips to Nashville for doctor's visits and chemo. Despite reservations about what our schedule could look like if chemo resumes again soon, we signed Camden up for baseball. I made the monumental decision (yes, monumental in my life) to use a local hair salon instead of Alicia, my Nashville stylist who was with me when both Camden and Rory came home from Korea, who cut my long hair off to send to Locks of Love when Becky was diagnosed with cancer, who cut my long hair off again when I prepared for chemo, and who shaved my head after chemo began. It's a big deal to move on to someone who does not know I have cancer. To schedule an appointment with a new stylist when I could start chemo again and be bald within a few weeks time.

We're making spring break plans. We're making lots of summer plans.

I bought the good skincare (Merle Norman is my skincare of choice for the past several years) and new shoes last week. Something I haven't done since my last surgery because, quite honestly, it felt silly to spend money on luxury items that I might not be around to enjoy. Who needs good skin or cute shoes if you're going to die of cancer?

And while I know that saying these things (or writing them, in my case) doesn't jinx the good flow we've got going on here, it *feels* as if making future plans can jinx our current healthy trend we've got going on.

I was reminded just this week that whatever happens is going to happen. Only God knows what our future holds. It's hard to get out of the habit of not making plans because we're never sure what the next month holds for us. Truth is that we live and breathe by that little CA125 number every 4 weeks, and our life could change drastically with one bad test. But it is most definitely time to start moving forward. I can't wait to watch Camden's baseball games, to spend spring break with Brian, to go home to Illinois in a couple of months, to buy new summer clothes.

"God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God's work from beginning to end. So I concluded that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to enjoy themselves as long as they can." Ecclesiastes 3:11-12