Christmas was, as I had expected, the best Christmas ever and it was so good to see everyone! We loved every minute of it, so I won’t mention a single one in case it takes precedence over any other! It was all wonderful.
Unfortunately, it came to an end, and the family all started going its separate ways back home. That means farewells, and they always hurt. Libby and I dropped Simon off at the airport and, the minute I started to hug him, I started crying.
When I was young, I was always told that big boys don’t cry and for a lot of my life I have obeyed that idiotic doctrine, probably causing a lot of pain for me and the people around me. How many emotions have been stifled or crushed? How many hearts have been hurt because people thought I didn’t care? How much pain and upset has been squashed into corners of my memories instead of being dealt with at the time?
Big boys don’t cry.
Well, actually they do. They might not cry outside, but they scream inside. The wise ones cry. A tear is never, ever wasted.
You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle.
You have recorded each one in your book.
(Psalm 56:8)
I think of the people of Ukraine in the fight they have. There must have been so many tears there in the last year and I cannot even start to imagine the pain. The soldiers will have been through so much that tears are flowing constantly. But tears are not the mark of a coward. They are the mark of a human, the sign that the soldier cares and knows that life is important. Not a single tear is wasted.
As I said, my tears started when I hugged Simon at the airport. They have barely stopped.
My second session of chemo was the Thursday after Christmas. It went OK and because I had survived the first session it was a lot faster. The next session should be even faster. The side effects were different, though, and the biggest change was tiredness. I slept for the first two days after the session! That sleepiness has continued and seems to hit me every morning after I have had my coffee, shower and breakfast. Bang! I’m out cold. I have started calling it my chemo coma, because I have no control of it.
And that is what has given me a real problem – I have no control. For most of my life, I have been mostly in control. But not this time! Because of that, I have also totally lost control of my emotions, my confidence, my ability to recover and reset, my hope, my faith. Everything!
I don’t even know what I feel anymore. I have had faith and hope that this is an illness which might be OK. The doctors have told me that it is terminal, but I knew that my God will look after me, one way or another. Last night that just fell to bits. My faith was in shreds on the floor. Can faith and hope disappear that easily? People have told me that they admire me for my strength and attitude in all of this – was I acting it all out? Am I real?
More tears flowed. I was lost. What does the future hold? Will I be able to cope? Nope!
I messaged friends to pray for me, saying how desperate I was. They did and I started to feel better as the night moved on.
The biggest difference was in the messages I got from two friends who have been and are still on the journey through cancer. They could say to me I know how you feel because they do – because they have had exactly the same what-if thoughts as I have had. They have been at the bottom of the valley that I’m in. They have felt what I have felt. Just hearing what they say, just remembering that they have been there and come out the other side, these are the things that make a difference. I felt so much better.
I still feel better.
Tears are not the mark of failure. Running out of faith isn’t the mark of failure. They are both the sign that we need help. It’s the type of help that we get that changes things though. Telling someone to have faith isn’t going to change things – it’s just the same as telling a man not to cry – it’s not addressing the issue.
But being able to honestly say to someone that you know how they feel, being able to show that you were where they are and to then tell them that you got through it – that is how lives are changed and saved. There will have been things in your life which fall into that category – don’t waste the tears – share them and help someone.
Yesterday was my cry for help. I got a lot of it. I’m not out of the tunnel yet, and I shall need a lot of support in the coming days, but at least I now know that there is an end to the tunnel. At least I know that the bright light ahead of me isn’t a train coming the other way to mow me down.
The bright light ahead of me is faith.