Tuesday, May 17, 2011

:( This hurts a little

Dear John and Hillary,
Thank you so much for filling out the pre-application to our agency. After careful consideration our agency and social services department will not be able to approve your application based your recent history of cancer. Even when cancer is in remission, we typically want to see at least 5 years of stability prior to starting an adoption. Some foreign governments require at least ten years. You may be able to consider a domestic adoption in the meantime.

(not that I blame them really though...) And in case you were wondering, we weren't really applying to start the process now.  It was just the pre-application that you have to do to even start thinking about it.  I guess it's best that I found out to stop thinking about it now rather than later. 

John says that it is altogether possible that I got cancer when I did because God wanted a way to really determine the next 5 years of our life, and that this could be His way of saying that He wants us to really focus on the college students that John will be working with.  Maybe college students are the only ones that we are supposed to be "adopting" in the future.  I just feel like it's this club that I'll never really be part of.  You know... the mom club.

Monday, May 16, 2011

Great day today! Big day tomorrow...

Well, it's almost 1:30 and I can't sleep.  I think it's a mixture of 2 reasons: all the caffeine I had this afternoon in celebration of the END of chemo!!! It was such a lovely party.  I couldn't have asked for more.  So that is one possible reason.  The other is ironically the opposite, and that is the fact that my next PET scan is tomorrow.  My head is fine.  My head says "No sweat!"  My body says, nausea, shake, freak freak freak out...  I wish I could quiet my body up.  It's the emotional teenager, and my brain is the calm collected adult that tries to quell the mass hysteria as much as possible.  I remember the last few PET scans I got.  I couldn't sleep before them either.  Why would today be any different? And do I have to go through this insomnia twice, since I have to wait till Wednesday to get the results?  I'm glad we had the party when we did, so that even if I get not so great news, we at lease got to formally celebrate the end of chapter 1. 

My old pastor, Britt Merrick, has a little girl who has been battling some gnarly cancer for a while.   One of his most recent posts sums up my thoughts exactly.  They were going in to get her next scan.  He wrote "If it shows that she has no more cancer, we will praise the Lord!  If it shows that does still have cancer... we will praise the Lord."

I know I've said this verse before, but I really mean it.  I'm too tired to look up where, but it's in Job when his wife is telling him to "curse God and die" from all the crap he was experiencing.  To which Job replies "Shall we accept good from the Lord, and not evil?  The Lord gives and the Lord takes away.  Blessed be the name of the Lord."

It is what it is, and it will be what it will be.  I hope and pray that I am all clear, all healthy, and well on the path to start dancing again!  But if not, then that is OK too.  I have more to learn.  And if anyone knows me at all, they know one thing: I LOVE to learn!

Here's a picture I took tonight of some Tulips that someone gave me.  I'd like to think that it doesn't represent me.  I'll have to think of some other explanation than the obvious.  I welcome other captions and interpretations!!  Bring em on!

Anyway, I call it the defeated tulip.  Poor little guy looked so sad.  I had to photograph him!