HOME TOUR

On Wednesday I had my first breast MRI. With three generations on my maternal side passing away from cancer, I’ve been deemed high risk even though genetic testing was negative for all breast cancer-associated genes. I really wish this wasn’t my story. I’d chose to have my mom and not a family history of cancer any day. I started the preventative care route with yearly check ups at the breast center when I was in my mid 30s and had a baby on my hip. I had my first mammogram in October at 39. It was quick and the results were favorable-no lumps, no areas of concern, no dense breasts. The yearly exam at the breast center has always been uneventful. So really my focus on Wednesday was just powering through a test I knew was going to be harder.

And harder it was. I hated it. As do most. An MRI involves uncomfortable positioning, needing to remain completely motionless, being pushed into a small tube and IV contrast being pumped into your veins. But we do it because preventative care matters and we can do hard things. Everyone I had spoken to warned about it being loud. But I wasn’t prepared for what that actually meant and the range of tones and sounds. It was like a fire alarm going off in your ear for 25 minutes but changing pitch every few minutes as they snapped a different angle. No thank you. I left, took my overwhelmed self to Tatte for cookies and then got a pedicure. An intentional attempt to reframe the day and try to eek out some lovely. It never dawned on me that there was going to be more. I patted myself on the back for being proactive and taking care of myself well and figured I’d revisit this in 6 months.

Early the next morning, I was on my way home from school drop off, so not even 24 hours later, I got a call from the breast center. And the nurse hedged and began to explain how sensitive MRIs can be and how I was probably told it would likely find something. I don’t remember being told that and I listened to her explain they had found a lump on my right breast that would need further testing. I felt surprisingly at peace as I got off the phone and texted my husband but I think it was numbness. Because as the day wore on I got angrier and angrier. And that’s when a case of the “less than’s” began to take hold.

It is really easy to feel less than. We do it when we watch social media and see what we want coming so easily to another. It is easy to feel it when we chat with friends, celebrate other’s victories or just simply exist in a world with so many loud messages being proclaimed over us. It is easy to feel less than. And boy have I sunk into them these last 24 hours. As I got angrier and angrier, the anthem wrecking havoc on my soul was “of course. Of course they found something. Why wouldn’t they?” Because I’m the one person on the planet that always gets the short end of the stick and has to constantly reframe it just to survive. Of course.

I feel like I ALWAYS have to find the lovely. Why can’t it actually just BE lovely. Why am I always searching for some way to make something crappy good? So it’s really hard to not fall into the “less than’s” when you feel like you’ve gotten the shaft in so many ways. When you’re waiting and waiting and nothing is happening. Wait what? You just looked at your husband and got pregnant? Oh my gosh what would that be like. I had to claw my way into pregnancy with every test in the friggin’ book and I wanted it SO badly. Wait, you get pregnant and don’t have a baby with a birth defect? Wait what? You get to go out of town and just drop your kids off at the their loving grandparent’s house? I can’t even imagine what that would look like. Wait, your remaining parent actually talks to you? Wait a second, you put an offer in on a house and you ACTUALLY get it? You mean that happens in real life? Wait a second, you have a dream and you work really hard and you ACTUALLY accomplish it? I just work really hard and it doesn’t happen. Wait, you go in for scans and they actually turn out to be clean? I feel like I have had to claw my way into any good thing we’ve got in this life. And it can FEEL like everyone on the planet has had an easier go at this life thing. But that is just a lie you are believing. It is a lie I AM believing. It is really easy to fall into a case of the less than’s. Remember, everyone has a thing. Every human on this planet.

I just ran 14 miles to worship music to try and leave all this ick at the foot of the cross. Because I don’t know what else to do with it. When life just feels hard, like nothing is turning out the way you had hoped, it is easy to sink. And it IS exhausting to try and find lovely. It is. It is not fun, I don’t want to do it right now, I just want to mope, sit and be angry that of course I have to go in for more testing. Why wouldn’t I have to spend more time in a hospital? Oh that Jackie, we’ll just throw the book at her because she’ll be able to somehow spin it for good. Like there is some cosmic game going on right now to see what will actually break me.

And I would be lying to all of you if I pretended the reframing the narrative in my head was easy. It’s soul-exhausting but we still have to do it.  Because you have to go to work, and you have to parent and you have to be a friend and you have to still exist in this world even when it feels like it is ripping you off. I have some questions for my Maker. But you know what. I believe that Maker went to the cross for me and we are just about to celebrate that. Funny timing actually. I have sat and rattled off all the ways I feel ripped off and instead I could be sitting there rattling off all the abundance that has been poured out over me. Because I actually did get to have babies. And although it was devastating to hand my first over to a surgeon to have his little foot amputated, he’s currently climbing a tree out my window and is more agile than most Americans. It is MY privilege in life to be his mom and watch the resiliency first hand. I am a different person because of it and it has sprouted good in my life like nothing else has. I had five years with my mom after she was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer and she fought hard to see her grand babies. I saw her resiliency first hand. Relationships are hard but this isn’t the end of my story. Someday we might get the house and both be excited about it. Maybe my next test will be clean. I’m not dead yet so the dreams that are collecting dust could theoretically still happen. What do we allow our hearts to rest on? All the ways we feel like we are less than or all the abundance we all have in a million different ways? For me today, I feel like I’ve been standing in the most beautiful of gardens, and all I can see and am pouting about is the mud on my feet and I am forgetting to lift my eyes up to see the flowers. So friend, may today you lift your eyes up and see all the ways you are NOT less than.