Well, it is Saturday night in Nome, and I thought I would muse here a bit before I head for bed.   Today was a wonderful adventure.   My brother Nathan has been renting a cherokee 140 aka single engine prop plane to increase his hours, as well as flying friends to the villages, etc.  

Today we got a sitter for the children and Nathan flew Dani, Nathaniel, and I to the village of White Mountain. We played the grocer by delivering eggs, yogurt, and sour cream to the pastor’s family there.   It was such a delight to see them, and a joy to see our country side from the air.   Nate is a super pilot, and I felt so safe with him.   We had such fun!

It has been a fairly smooth transition home, with a few hiccups along the way.   It has been wonderful to catch up with our dear friends here, and our weather has been cool but sunny.

We’ve been battling a stomach flu that has hit almost all of us through the week here and there.   It is gratefully rather short lived, but it’s a bummer to be up through the night with very miserable children.   Last night went well, so I hope we’re over it. (Quick alert - it’s almost 2 AM and I just jumped back on to say that Noah was just throwing up again... he had been sick two nights ago, but was fine last night.  Nathaniel is also feeling queasy, Wes is up and crying that his “blum” or tummy hurts. Please pray that we will be well and get some sleep, all this “kah-kah juice” as they call it happens at night.   Aaugh!)

Last Saturday, May 29, was the one year anniversary of my cancer diagnosis and I was unprepared for the onslaught of emotions that came with it.   I think I am usually a fairly reasonable person, but I was a MESS on saturday!   I cried almost constantly all morning, I just could not get a grip!

Memories of sitting down and hearing the doctor say I had a “big, bad cancer,”  Parking at Lake Hood while Nathaniel called my Mom and Dad to tell them, sobbing to sleep in each other’s arms... everything that made up that first horrible day with cancer felt so close and devastating.

I went to my room for a little while, praying and crying.  I felt like God spoke to my heart that today was not a day for questions or “what ifs.”   It was a day to kneel at His throne and submit to His hand and purpose in my life through the gift of cancer.   I was at peace when I got off my knees, and I thought it was settled.

But it wasn’t five minutes before the turmoil was back, and I must have knelt in my heart twenty times before I was done with the turbulence.   It was a battle that took hours.  Maybe it took that many times until the submission was genuine.

Just like an old friend who knows you’re having a hard day and does something to cheer you up, God pulled a kind-hearted miracle with my new table.   We had shipped it parcel post from Anchorage, so we weren’t expecting it any time soon.   The annex where we pick up our large packages is closed on Saturday, but we were driving by, so Nate swung in.   Our friendly postal lady was having a hard time starting her truck, and while Nathan helped her, we saw to our amazement that our packages were in!   I can just hear God’s conversation with the angels, “Saturday is going to be rough for Carlee, could we put a rush on that table for her, it would really make her smile!”

And that is the coin toss of my life.   This coin that has the face of grief on one side.   When that side lands up I find I just can’t fight the tears, and that the weight of what happened on these exact days one year ago just about chokes me.   I’m so much better and stronger than I was during chemo and radiation, but compared to one year ago... the scars and pain and “stuff” my body will always deal with is heavy load.   It’s like a dream I wish I could wake up from.

But there is a flip side to this coin, the face of gratitude.   Oh, I love when the coin toss brings me this one!   I look at my children, sweet little faces and lives that I am still sharing!    To be home with them and Nathaniel again sometimes makes me feel like I could burst.   We spent Monday out at our friend’s cabin, and what a joy to be well and together!  

There are SO many reasons for gratitude... I am well, we are home, God has been near and is encouraging us through His people and His word.   That is probably the greatest reason to be grateful.  

The silence of God is something I do not understand, but it was our lonely companion for almost six months of this journey, and was perhaps the greatest trial of all.   Nathaniel and I have both felt His nearness and been blessed to see His hand once again.   I do not doubt that He has always been near, but for some reason He chose to shroud His presence in a thick blackness for a while.

So you see the flip flop - gratitude and grief, and sometimes I don’t know how the coin will fall.   In the happiest of moments I will suddenly be fighting back tears, and in moments of quiet reflection I will feel like laughing aloud with delight at this “second chance“ that I have been given to live our little life in Nome with my sweet family.

Earlier in this post I referred to the “gift” of cancer.   It is a hard statement to make, to call my curse a blessing.   I say it in faith, though, and I mean it.   Once again I go back NOT to what I can see, but to what I know about God.  If He could fulfill His purposes and glory the most by releasing me from this last year of cancer, I believe He would have.   But He did not, and the default answer is that it is for some reason that matters, if not here, in eternity.

On my one year cancer  anniversary, I went digging through my old blogs to find a quote I knew I had written there.   Sure enough, in my July 11 post I found it.   The GREAT PURPOSE quote.   So I close with that, and I think I can go to sleep tonight with my grief side of the coin buried for a while, and my face of gratitude smiling to the heavens.

“There is nothing - no circumstance, no trouble, no testing --

that can ever touch me until, first of all,

it has gone past God and past Christ, right through to me.  

If it has come that far, it has come with a GREAT PURPOSE,

which I may not understand at the moment.  

But as I refuse to become panicky,

as I lift up my eyes to Him

and accept it as coming from the throne of God

for some great purpose of blessing to my own heart,

no sorrow will ever disturb me,

no trial will ever disarm me,

no circumstance will cause me to fret,

for I shall rest in the joy of what my Lord is.  

That is the rest of victory."