Getting Back

I’ve not used this as a blog much anymore since the second surgery and I say I will start using it again, but it doesn’t ever happen. But that stops tonight. Because this is the place that I process. This is the place where I don’t read anything back over. Unedited. Semi-uncensored. Real. Raw. I started this blog before my first brain surgery. I would read back over my post, but that would break my cardinal rule! =0)

I didn’t understand at the time the ramifications “brain tumor” would have on my life. Some would say I was in denial. But I’ve processed things at my own pace, along and along. I didn’t look up what type of tumor I had until the December after I had the first surgery in June. When the tumor increased in grade, I didn’t process it (what with the radiation, chemo, speech, occupational, and physical therapy) until a transatlantic flight to the Ukraine. Still then, I didn’t share it with anyone until March. That the movie “Stuck in Love” let me know I want to see Enoch and Evy go to college. That’s the age group I spend my life working with so I will hope beyond hope that I get to see it happen.

Evy asked me on Tuesday if I would be around when she is a grown up and I said honestly, “I hope so.”

I’ve been hesitant to share openly, honestly and vulnerably on here because this is a public forum whether I post these blogs on facebook or twitter or not. I began working a new job two years ago and I didn’t want them to judge me as weak, broken, or not enough, especially after the second surgery at the end of the first year I was here. I KNOW that’s not what most people thought, but that’s how I felt. I tell my students all the time don’t wear masks, don’t hide who you are, and I feel like I’ve had a mask on here. I don’t mind posting sermons or speaking gigs, but I’m hesitant to share the day to day because it’s filled with all of the challenges and I feel like if I don’t write them down and just shake them off or zip past them than I’m not dwelling on them, but as my mom reminded me this past week, what a wonderful testimony of what God can do. I’ve received my share of challenges, but God’s grace and love and peace and strength is ever sufficient for all my needs. Mom often hears the Mother Teresa quote, “I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish that He didn’t trust me so much.” I do not even begin to think of myself as Mother Teresa, I’m not that saintly and I like tv shows too much, but I can do the best I can to be as authentic as I can be. Sharing the good times and the bad, the mountain tops and the valleys.

PS – I did the title based off an old Silers Bald song.