Five years ago today I had my surgery for breast cancer. That means I am now 5 years out from my cancer diagnosis. In the cancer world, this is a big milestone, and one that fellow survivors encourage you to celebrate.
To be honest, this day actually scares me a bit. There's that old superstitious fear that I will "jinx" things if I get too excited about it. But there also some reasons why I don't feel like celebrating today:
1. Cancer was a bad thing that happened to me and my family. Physically and emotionally it was one of the hardest things I ever faced.
2. Cancer has made me feel the ugliest I have ever felt in my life because of the surgery required and the long term effects of chemo.
3. Cancer sometimes makes me feel scared and nervous about my future instead of excited and hopeful. There is nothing magical that happens at the 5 year mark that makes it "for sure" the cancer will not come back. There is always the struggle between making life plans like it never happened or making life plans differently because it did happen.
But there are things I do feel like celebrating because of my cancer journey:
1. I'm alive! I could have had a much worse diagnosis than Stage 1 and could have been given a much worse prognosis.
2. Cancer made me realize not to sweat the small stuff in life and not to worry so much about what others think of me.
3. Cancer made me feel so loved by so many people. My family and friends were amazing in how they pitched in and helped.
3. Spiritually, my cancer journey made my faith in Christ grow by leaps and bounds! It was an incredible faith experience. I know the Lord is the ONLY thing I can be sure of in this life.
Through the Lord's help, I try every day to not let the first list become more of a focus than this second list. Every once in a while, I have to take some time to be down about how this cancer journey has changed my life in hard ways. But every day, I try to ask the Lord for strength to appreciate how cancer has changed my life in good ways.
So today is a day of celebration and contemplation. I am happy to be at this point of 5 years out- when I was in the middle of treatment, this day seemed like it would never happen. But WE made it- I couldn't have done it without my wonderful family and friends and my wonderful doctor and nurses, and of course my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
So in the end, I am ending up where I should have probably started in the first place- with a spirit of thankfulness. Thankful for making it through the difficult things, and thankful for the good that came out of it.
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