Life After Cancer: Lessons in Frivolity

  • We moved to an amazing city where we have a beautiful church, family and friends.
  • We bought the best house and we are making it our own.
  • I am working with an interior designer to curate a beautiful space that fosters conversation, connection and relationships while also being cozy and comfortable.

We got our beautiful chairs yesterday and I’m sitting here crying about it. Why though Abby? I had to ask myself this – Why the heck am I so emotional about all of these things? I realized I’ve been crying with pain but mostly joy-joy-joy over these chairs, this home, this LIFE I didn’t think I’d get to live.

Did I ever think that I was going to have new chairs? Nope. Did I ever think I was going to have a living room that I loved? Nope. Who gets to care about chairs when they’re probably going to die? I’m crying writing this – and I’m getting choked up reading it back but cancer really changes everything.

After I was diagnosed, I honestly never believed that I would have the honor, pleasure and mere ability to allow myself to care about something like this. When you’re struck with illness and disease things that can be seen as frivolity go straight out the window. I am a little over two years removed from cancer and my home is now becoming a place I love and also at the same time, a place I’m finally allowing myself to envision LIVING in rather than dying.

This process has been ever so fulfilling. With each fabric choice, and color selection I am giving myself and most importantly my Savior the gift of my peace and TRUST. I’m giving that to the Lord the only thing he asks of me: to trust wildly and to do so fearlessly. I’m giving to Him what I have not had the ability to give. Since I finished chemo I have been defiantly stomping my foot reminding God that I wanted it my way, and whining how mad I was about not getting just that. {Read more about cancer and faith HERE.}

I imagine it may be difficult for you to equate cushion size to sanctification but for me it’s an act of faith. It is a conscious decision that I can trust the Lord, that He is GOOD and that I don’t have to live in fear. Yes, my cancer is gone but that isn’t why I’m able to feel this way. That is not the reason He is good or that I can live without fear. Believe me, there will always be that thought in the back of my mind – the “what if.” Putting together these pieces that were broken is just my way of praising Him… for it all.

Decorating my house is my way of breathing in the most giant breath of His grace, and then breathing out a desperately long awaited sigh of His praise.

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Psalm 139

It’s been what seems like forever since I wrote honestly, openly, and from my heart. It was nearly a year ago that I wrote this post Broken Hallelujah and really, not too much has changed in my heart and mind. I’m still floundering around in fear and searching for escapes and mind numbing ways to pass time. I still at times find myself searching for my identity in anywhere and everywhere but Christ but nonetheless I keep trying. I keep finding myself longing for closeness with my Father and spending time in quiet devotion with Him.

I was put to the task on one of my last Instagram Posts to write more and I have finally procrastinated and procrasti-cleaned and procrasti-anything’ed my way around doing so. The same little nudge camp up again this morning while reading “Emotionally Healthy Spirituality; Day by day” I was challenged to be and become my true self….

“Vocation does not come from a voice “out there” calling me to become something I am not. It comes from a voice “in here” calling me to be the person I was born to be, to fulfill the original selfhood given to me at birth by God.

It is a strange gift, this birthright of self. Accepting it turns out to be even more demanding than attempting to become someone else! I have sometimes responded to that demand by ignoring the gift, or hiding it, or fleeing from it, or squandering it – and I think I am not alone. There is a Hasidic tale that reveals, with amazing brevity, both the universal tendency to want to be someone else and the ultimate importance of becoming one’s self. Rabbi Zusya. when he was an old man, said, “In the coming world, they will not ask me: ‘Why were you not Moses?’ They will ask me ‘Why were you not Zusya?'”

All I could think about this morning while reading this passage was how I needed to write – how I push and shove against it but doing so helps me become who I am meant to be. Even now, I get a stinking self doubting feeling…thoughts like “I don’t know how to write”, “I don’t know anything about sentence structure and grammar… That is why I went to medical school so I wouldn’t have to write!” as I misspell word after word “Goodness you cant even spell more or less write.”

Here I am though, defying those odds and leaning into what I believe I should be doing much more of. Maybe I should keep this short so I can have the strength to do it again someday soon?

Lord, I come this day inviting you to cut those deeply entrenched chains that keep me from being faithful to my true self in Christ. In doing so, may my life be a blessing to many. In Jesus’ name, amen.

What is there that keeps you from being you? What have you ignored and set aside that might just be a gift from the Lord?

I’d love to learn more about you in the comments below!

My Broken Hallelujah

“I want you to begin when you got diagnosed and talk about what God has done through you and how He has shown Himself mighty to you as you’ve walked this out with a husband and baby”

It’s been something I’ve been meaning to talk about but the introspection it takes to get here is daunting and I tend to avoid it at all costs… but honestly this is why I started the blog, to cathartically get it out there in hopes that maybe I’d speak to someone’s heart, while getting the heavy stuff off my own.

I have this inborn problem of switching to “Stepford Mode.” If you haven’t seen the Stepford Wives movie- do it, it’s cute and encompasses how I was raised and how I deal with problems. “Everything is fine” is my life motto. When I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma my “Stepford Mode” switched into overdrive.

Everything was totally fine, and I’m actually partially thankful I have this error, because I tend to look on the bright side and I try to find the good in bad. See, I just did it. Anyway, cancer sucks and I pretended like I didn’t have it, still worked, still smiled and laughed through the pain and sickness. All the while I was straying further from Christ. First, I leaned in and dug deep wells and sought the Lords strength. After a while though I got bitter and angry and I didn’t even realize it.

I figured out I was sad months into a little bout of depression, only realizing it after weeks of staying in the house in my stretch pants, avoiding calls and friends… and God. I realized I was angry with God not in my head but rather in the worse place: my heart. I fought through this for a bit and tried my best to turn off “Stepford Mode” and to encounter the pain and reality of my cancer but it’s so dang hard for me to do that! Then I was told I relapsed in October of 2017, which was very serious and quite life threatening. This spun me around in circles, and Turned the life I knew and had been working towards for 10 years UPSIDE DOWN.

Since then, I continue to “fake it until I make it,” forcing myself to put in time and leg-work with my first true love, my king, my savior. Francis Chan says that we will not always be on a spiritual high and there will be valleys between the mountains but during those times it’s important to “fake it until you make it” putting in the action and waiting for your heart to change. Discipline isn’t doing what you want, when you want. Rather, it’s doing what you don’t want to do, when you don’t want to do it. Sometimes we have to go against our flesh and get down on our knees.
Doing this blog has helped me force myself to get it down on paper. I struggle deeply with fear of cancers return, death, loss, pain and recurrence. Sometimes this is the devil, sometimes this is my lack of dependence on Christ and his powerful peace.

Here I go again with my positivity problem (and I love it)…walking though this season has been a weird blessing. Encountering your own mortality is a powerful thing. We are all going to die one way or another and good can come through death and disease. I challenge you to find it. In the worst of times, find the hero, the sugar coating, the silver lining. Positive thinking is powerful and God is in the midst of pain. So for now, I’ll be raising my empty hands with my broken hallelujah. .

Puritan prayer from The Valley of Vision

Lord, high and holy, meek and lowly,

Thou has brought me to the valley of vision,

where I live in the depths but see thee in the heights;

hemmed in by mountains of sin I behold Thy glory.

Let me learn by paradox

that the way down is the way up,

that to be low is to be high,

that the broken heart is the healed heart,

that the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit,

that the repenting soul is the victorious soul,

that to have nothing is to possess all,

that to bear the cross is to wear the crown,

that to give is to receive,

that the valley is the place of vision.

Lord, in the daytime stars can be seen from deepest wells,

and the deeper the wells the brighter

Thy stars shine;

Let me find Thy light in my darkness,

Thy life in my death,

Thy joy in my sorrow,

Thy grace in my sin,

Thy riches in my poverty

Thy glory in my valley.


//Don’t forget to be awesome//

Abby

Comparison: Stealing Joy

Psalms 139:13-14

For You formed my inward parts;You wove me in my mother’s womb. I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Your works, And my soul knows it very well.…

Oh hey!! Did you know you were fearfully and wonderfully made? I have the head knowledge but sometimes I forget it in my heart, and maybe you do too.

I have always seen beautiful, skinny, fit girls (you know, the ones who dress to the nines with perfect long hair) and I hold myself to their standard. I see these beautiful girls and I think I’m doing something wrong. Comparison is the thief of all joy right? It is so true.

I get overwhelmed and feel like a failure. Seriously, I’m 31 and I just bought my first hair brush and I’m currently trying to learn how to use a blow dryer. It’s really hard.

Because I am a perfectionist, I see this unobtainable goal and give up. I slap on my yoga pants and pull back my hair until the next morning when I repeat this same cycle. Inevitably causing a sense of defeat day after day.

I am writing this because I am certain that I am not alone. Have you ever felt like this?

Luckily cancer changed everything for me. I don’t care anymore and I don’t think you should either. I am now making an effort to daily love and care for my strong and resilient body and I’m learning how to do so more and more each day. I am embarking on this journey to find my own mom-style, to keep myself accountable and to have fun doing it.

Something I’ve found to be super helpful when I am getting dressed in the morning has been to have awesome basics I can throw on quickly. These are some of my favorite linked below!

Top // Jeans // Shoes // Quick Makeup Tutorial