The Big “C”

This past week, on Friday the 13th no less, I again had the opportunity to speak and even have my first official book signing; and I was able to do both at one of my very favorite places on the planet.  The venue was The Olde English Tea Room in Wake Forest, NC, one of the stores where paper copies of my memoir are available.  The tea room was pretty close to full, so all of those involved seemed quite pleased with the event.  I left the event rather conflicted, though; and, as usual, it took me a while to process all that was going on inside of me so that I could figure out what the root of the conflict within me actually was (and still is really).  Well, here it is (a real shocker)–cancer makes me uncomfortable.

Yes, even after living through cancer and then writing about it, I’m still uncomfortable with it.  The very word doesn’t even feel right on my lips, though I’ve had years of practice with it at this point.  If I were to personify cancer, I might well describe it as a person who hurt me more than just about any other, a person to whom I really don’t care to give any more “press.”  As I realized what was going on inside of me, I saw a parallel between how I felt after my Friday night talk and how I feel when most any type of tragedy strikes.  I don’t want to see the person on the 6:00 news who took several lives that were not his or hers to take; I want to instead see the hero of the story.  I want to learn all that I can about the person who lost his or her life intervening so that countless other lives were saved.  And for me, in some strange way, it’s the same with cancer.  I really don’t want to focus on all of the horrible things that the villain (multiple myeloma and/or the treatment for it) did to me; I want to instead focus on the hero of the story, the one who loved me and taught me all the way through it and who spared my life, not just for now, for all eternity.  In other words, I want Christ, the hero, to get the “press;” or, as my friend Jane used to say, I want to always give my attention to the big “C” (with cancer of course being the small “c”).

There’s something else I realized.  Cancer will always be outside of my comfort zone.  In fact, I kind of want it to be.  I don’t ever really want to find myself comfortable with something so ugly.  There are days now still when I can barely stand to be in the room with the word.  No, the very word “cancer” will never feel right on my lips, and that’s because it’s not.  There’s nothing at all right about it.  It was never supposed to be.  None of the “bad” here was ever supposed to be.  I was made for so much more, for something so much better.  We all were.  Yes, cancer is uncomfortable for good reason.  Even so, I will relentlessly fight the urge to run away from it, to act like it doesn’t exist, to cling to the comfortable.

On the other side of this small “c” who has hurt me so, I can no longer find any way to spend my life staying away from what’s uncomfortable.  My role model, after all, is Jesus, the Christ of God.  And I’m pretty confident in asserting that there was nothing at all comfortable about the cross he carried, allowed himself to be nailed to, and then suffered and died upon; yet, he did it for me, his daughter.  And unlike many churches today, Jesus, in one sense at least, was not a numbers guy.  Even if I had been the only child of his down here, his storyline, his willingness to suffer through the unthinkable, would not have changed at all.  Thus, is there anything that I shouldn’t be willing to do for him?  I think not.

So, I will continue to talk about cancer, and about anything else uncomfortable for that matter, if that’s what it takes for me to be able to make a real connection with people, if that’s what it takes for me to be able to really encourage people, if that’s what it takes for me to be able to give people real hope–hope for a future so very bright that the word “cancer” never falls on anyone’s lips ever again.  That future exists already; we just can’t see it yet.  But it’s right there for the taking, thanks to that big “C.”