Life is what happens....

I used to think that that song lyric was just clever. Ha ha, it certainly does John ole boy. And then life happened to me: cancer, divorce, grad school too late, etc., etc.

I was sent this article on companies paying for women to freeze their eggs so they can be productive employees and not worry about something like, oh, reproducing mucking up their career.  I'm horrified. I'm creeped out. I don't know if I have a "career" per say, where I'm climbing up the ladder of greater success, but I'm trying to eek out something for myself now that I've found where I want to be. And yes, the thought that I want to get home at a reasonable time each night so I can do homework with Luke, and read to him and actually mother him and enjoy him is present in my thoughts. That leads me to wonder, is this my problem? That I don't want to work until 8pm every night and don't want to work weekends? Or is it a problem with American society? Am I lazy that I don't want that job? That I feel a job should entail 9-5 duties (or 8-4) and not overwork employees so they can enjoy some work/life balance?

And about freezing eggs. These companies make it sound like a pedicure. It's not easy. It's not simple. And it's certainly not fool-proof. When preparing to enter the world of chemo, I was advised to freeze some eggs as we didn't know what state my body would be in when we ended chemo. We had some (but not a clear picture) of how my cancer would react to chemo. Would we need more chemo? Even stronger chemo? (I had a pretty powerful cocktail) I called my insurance company and was given a litany of egg-freezing/harvesting procedures that would be covered and to what extent. This, on TOP of trying to navigate a new world of oncological treatment and all that new vocabulary (white counts! red counts! R-CHOP, drugs upon drugs!). And....not to mention I needed to start chemo, like yesterday. Luckily, my amazing life-saving oncologist put me on Lupron shots to put me into a chemical menopause. (Which was about as fun as it sounds.) It chemically froze my ovaries and protected the eggs. And it worked. Lucas is nothing short of a miracle, a fact that hits me every day. Which makes it a million times harder to say okay to a 50/50 parenting agreement and not have that little miracle sleep under my roof every night.My body went through all that and still produced a miraculous little boy and I have to give him up half the time?

Cancer. The gift that keeps on giving.

Faith, Love, and Harmony

I was raised Christian. More specifically, Christian Reformed. And recently we've been attending services in the church I went to as a girl. There's something comforting about that, especially attending services with someone who like yourself, questions the sanctity of the message sometimes, holds your hand while you pray, and tolerates you giggling when the hymn of the day is the same one that was in an episode of Mr. Bean.

While I question some of the tenets, and struggle with parts of the Bible, I still maintain that someone is keeping an eye on me. How else could I have gotten through cancer, divorce, and parenting a special needs child? (I also think there is no perfect religion that aligns with all of one's checkboxes, and take it with a grain of salt. I've taken a few quizzes on what "kind" of Christian I am and have come up with everything from Quaker to Episcopal to Post-Evangelical.)

To that end, I generally have a real easy time with believing that there's a master plan - it's almost like I have to, to come to terms with what has happened to me so far - both the good and not-so-good.

But sometimes, it's good to have the more concrete reassurances of my loved ones and friends, who can tell me that they've got my back in a no-nonsense sort of way.

Most often when I'm looking for "something" I can find it in the day-to-day: the smile on Luke's face when we're doing something fun together or I've made him laugh; the look Michael will give me across the dinner table as we share the end of our day.....but even more so in music. That's where I find peace and am able to submit myself to something even bigger than myself. Is that seeing God in the everyday? In my loved ones and myself? I dunno. What I do know is that a combo-mixture of all of the above help me get through both the day-to-day and the big stuff. And to me, that's what feeling blessed is all about.

(Another source of media that helps is Lamb, by Christopher Moore. I know it's fiction. But for some reason, that book helps me kind of decipher what religion is and what it means. And it's funny.)

Sometimes it just sucks

I'm generally an optimistic person. I'm usually one who can see the bright side of things. But some days it's just more....convenient to mope or be upset or worried. And when you pile a job search, on top of the capstone course of grad school, on top of working, on top of trying to delicately navigate shared custody....well, a girl can lose her cool. And wonder, "where on earth did I go wrong?"

And sometimes it's okay to just pull the covers over oneself, eat Taco Bell and chocolate, and drown one's sorrows in an episode of Gilmore Girls.