This week was a week. An unexpected rocking, roller coaster of a week.
It may have best been summed up in the words of my newest surgeon for my newest medical adventure, “You seem like a lovely woman, Mrs. Cormany. I really don’t want to kill you.”
I know, I know.
Who says that, right? And during Holy week? I tell you.
Bless my heart and apparently everything else.
But really---and I mean really--- this man who I kind of already adore was just telling me the truth I already knew. He looked at all the hard, broken things about my disease and weighed the risks and simply told the blessed truth.
Even now as I sit here under the weight of those words, I am inclined to follow his lead. I have tried and failed so many times to write this week. To speak of the things connected to this day and the jumble of emotions that come so quietly with it.
But tonight, as the quiet begins to settle in, I can only hear two words, “Be real.”
And so I will be.
This was not a week of quiet reflection and beautiful words. It was week of poop on the floor and Sharpie on the wall. It was a week where we were “those people” at Target and Walmart and Price Chopper.
We wailed, we dropped things, we lost our minds. We could not hold it together if our lives had depended on it. We were so incredibly messy it hurt.
And then this morning came.
The kids were piling out of the van covered in powdered sugar from our donut “brunch.” (Yes, I know.) And bless it, I just needed a moment.
So I shut the sliding doors, turned to a grown-up Jesus song and closed my eyes.
Just for a moment...
But then her little voice came from the back seat, “You okay, mama?”
It was only then I realized I was sobbing uncontrollably. Sobbing even as I tried to answer back in a slightly sincere, “No, I’m not, baby but I’m gonna be.” Sobbing because in that strange little moment of peace, my smelly, messy minivan had become my Gethsemane.
I knew in my heart the hard that was coming. I knew the risks. I knew the what-ifs.
I knew.
And my heart felt lost and broken and beat up under the weight of it. But as I sat there reminded that He chose suffering so that I would never be alone in mine, I could feel my heart letting go of it all.
The anger. The frustration. The weight.
So instead I scraped and clawed to hold on to the truth that today, He chose me.
He chose my hard and my messy and my broken. He chose it knowing I would doubt and wrestle and flail. He chose it all so death would be done and love, won.
And this?
This wrecks my very soul.
Because it was more than nails and a Cross, more than the sword, more than the blood spilled. It was the choice to trade whole for broken. It was His chance to see me for exactly who I am and love me completely so I could have a chance at forever.
This is where I sob.
This is where I end.
Because this is where I can say even in the middle of my wrecked up, broken, real kind of week, “It may not be okay but I know I’m gonna be.”