Christmas Crush_Part 2
If you didn’t read Christmas Crush_Part 1, please take a moment and do so now so that you will have a context for the heart behind our sharing of this story……
December 19th, 2024-
I remember it was a bright, sunny day. I teach fitness classes on the OU campus - a part-time job I truly love. I had just wrapped up a class and was driving home when my cellphone rang and I saw it was my husband. Casually I picked up -
“Hey baby, what’s up?” His response was one that no-one ever-wants-to-hear. No voice - just muffled sobs. Panic shot through me.
“Babe, what’s wrong? Is it one of the kids? Your Mom? What is It?”
“The doctor just called. The test came back. They found tumors in my bladder. He said he’s sure its cancer.“
Anyone who has ever been in one of these moments will understand how simultaneously and suddenly time seems to slow down even while your brain speeds up to try to process the news your ears just heard.
“Ok. Ok. Where are you right now?”
“I’m at work”
“Ok. I’m a few minutes away actually. I’m coming.”
I arrived at the church (where my husband works as the worship pastor/tech director) to find my husband sitting, as one might expect, in shock with tears streaming down his face. We sat there holding one another for several minutes before I asked him to make a very brave choice. His first of many in the days ahead.
“Love, can I go and gather any of the staff that I can find here at the church and let them pray for you right now?”
He nodded yes, and in that moment, we decided that we would live this journey out in the open and invite others into our pain. Grief was a wide ocean at that moment, and others met us in faith and prayer and held us up like nothing we’ve ever experienced before.
Grief was also an ocean that I decided I was not going to wade into as I attempted to be “strong” and available to Brian as he navigated all of the questions and emotions of this diagnosis. Also, the Christmas tornado was in full tilt, and we still had weeks of parties, dinners, and a huge eleven day road-trip planned months in advance to spend time with family and friends back in AZ over Christmas break. Looking back on it now, I can say it was completely overwhelming.
A Christmas crush.
Surgery was scheduled for December 30th and our urologist advised that we go ahead and take our trip as planned as there “wasn’t anything we could do in the meantime”.
Nothing we could do except endlessly try to pretend like everything was “normal” while our minds and hearts screamed out with a million questions:
- How far advanced is this cancer?
- What will the next course of treatment be after surgery?
- What does life look like with bladder cancer?
- What will surgery be like?
- What about recovery?
- What do we tell other people?
- Why didn’t they catch this until now? (Brian had been having “symptoms” for a while that had been dismissed as having other causes)
All of these questions and more ripped through us with hurricane-force strength while we attended Christmas programs, parties, and packed our bags to travel the 15+ hours to Arizona.
I think we both hoped that getting away for a bit would help us along in our process. And I’d love to tell you that that was the case. In reality we started our trip exhausted before we even left, and although we got to celebrate our daughter’s engagement to the love of her life a week before Christmas, it didn’t feel fair to celebrate this amazing news against the backdrop of the unknown cancer in front of us.
The drive was hard, over half of our family ended up getting the flu during the trip (complete with one ER visit) and we literally limped back into Oklahoma City around 1am in the morning on December 30th with Brian’s surgery scheduled for 10am that same day.
A few hours after surgery started, Brian’s urologist called me with the news that the surgery had gone “very well” and that the tumors were small enough for the official staging to be at “0A”, meaning that they hadn’t gone far enough into the lining of the bladder for it be classified as even Stage 1. There would be six weeks of chemotherapy though - bladder “washes” where chemo would be inserted directly into the bladder with the idea that any rogue cells would be killed and flushed out. Oh, and my husband would be coming home with extra recovery tubes that would need to stay in for the better part of a week. Our youngest son Jason was still in the midst of his flu battle, with a high fever, cough, and clogged nose. Our son deals with a nocturnal form of epilepsy that - while controlled on medication - can be exacerbated with breakthrough seizures happening during sickness. I spent the nights trying to “sleep” on the couch while going back and forth between checking on Jason and Brian. This is the part of the story where I remember feeling like the days turned into hazy hours and minutes as we all slogged through. People brought meals and love and covered us with prayers. It was hard and beautiful.
The recovery tubes came out, Jason recovered well from the flu with no breakthrough seizures, and a small semblance of “normal” came back as Brian returned to work and we got ready for the chemo sessions. The end result of all of this was a “clear” test result just before Easter 2025! Brian won’t have to go back for another scan until February 2026. All praise and glory to God!
Walking In The Snow 12 Days After Surgery
So almost a year later, I sit and realize that my heart, that I thought had moved forward like the rest of my life, begs to sit and breathe and reflect and…grieve.
So for anyone dealing with grief in this season - please know that you aren’t alone. And Jesus. Oh Jesus - who is so kind and deep and so-very-present. He-is-Immanuel and sits in grief with us.
Just this morning,I sat with him and let grief spill out of my eyes as I recalled hard things, and Jesus gave me a picture in my mind. I saw a fragile ornament- all thin and glass-like - that was hanging precariously on a branch of a Christmas tree. I knew that if this ornament were to drop, it would easily shatter. I knew that I was that ornament.
And so afraid of breaking.
And then I saw Jesus’s hands reach out and take the ornament down from the tree. Gently. Carefully. And then the scene shifted and I was in a carpenter’s workshop. And I saw Jesus crafting a box out of a wood that was thick and dark and with a beautiful grain. I could smell the wood shavings and hear the sounds of tools crafting and shaping the wood. And I saw it then - a cross shaped box that was unbreakable. And he placed that glass ornament inside the wooden box. The ornament did break then - it had to to be able to fit in the box. But it was ok. The pieces of that ornament were made to fit perfectly and beautifully inside that cross-shaped box.
I’m broken but I’m at rest in Him.
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