Setting the Record Straight

I keep hearing people talk about how brave or strong I am in this situation right now. Well today I want to set the record straight. I am neither brave nor strong. I have cancer growing in my chest and a baby growing in my belly. This situation does not leave room for much more than just blind desperation, which right now I have lots of.

Bravery or strength at a time like this isn’t something that you choose. I have not made an active choice to not melt down every time I have a spare moment to think about what I’m going through. When I was hospitalized that very first day, when I was told how big the growth was, when I was told the various things they thought it might be, I was scared. Of course I was scared. I knew that any number of the procedures they might have to do could harm my baby. I was scared for my baby.

Yet somehow, I also always felt peace. I had no idea how long I was going to be stuck in that hospital room (it almost ended up being two full weeks), and I had no idea what the outcome of the tests would be. But every night in that hospital before going to bed, Daniel and I prayed together. I didn’t pray for a specific diagnosis. I didn’t pray for anything except for my baby. I begged for the life of my child, however that had to come about.

It’s desperation. And it’s the grace of God.

Everything I went through in that hospital, the CT’s, the biopsies, the MRI, all of it was because I knew that the doctors had to know what they were dealing with to make sure the baby and I make it through this alive.

It was terrifying. I went into all of it with as good an attitude as I could, but inside I was crying with fear. There were times that I cried before the tests were administered. I screamed during the bone marrow biopsy. I cried when they tried to put a feeding tube in me and couldn’t because the mass in my throat was too big.

But during all of that, there was a song playing in my head. You see, I was in Jazz Band at MidAmerica Nazarene University. I was a singer. We did this song, which I believe was an old spiritual. I had a solo at the beginning, and the words simply went like this:

I want Jesus to walk with me.      
I want Jesus to talk with me.
All along this pilgrim journey.
Oh I want my Jesus to walk with me.

I held onto this song and those words as if I were drowning and they were my lifeline. I still play it in my head anytime I feel the panic rising in me. There is so much uncertainty and so much to worry about right now, and all I can really think to ask for right now is simply that Jesus be here through all of this, protecting both me and the baby.

I’m not brave. I’m a mom. And I’m desperate.