Today we thought we’d talk about miracles. We’ve heard that word thrown around a lot since we started living with cancer in our lives. Especially since we decided to discontinue treatment and let cancer take its natural course. There is this idea that we should fighting cancer to the bitter end, waiting for the BIG ultimate miracle — being cancer free. Like life without cancer is somehow superior or valid or more favorable, than life with cancer.
It has been interesting to note people’s reactions to mortality when it’s staring them in the face, when it’s someone you know. Like people telling us, ‘Keep fighting, don’t give up. Why are you stopping treatment? You have to keep fighting. You have to fight and you have to pray for the miracle.’
We found it interesting the use of the word miracle… Like a miracle is only a miracle when it gives you the unbelievable. When it results in something no one foresaw — where all you could do was hope and pray that this result would happen. But you have to keep praying for it because… you never know… it could happen.
And you have to battle reality to get there. This whole idea of cancer as a battle to be fought cheats you of seeing it — the way we’ve chosen to — as a dance with life when cancer is part of it.
If what life has brought us is cancer, and we resist — make a battle out of it, thinking we can force the outcome we want — we cheat ourselves from accepting, wholeheartedly, the actuality of living with cancer — embracing each step we’re guided toward, be it operations, immunotherapy, chemo — and no more treatment, and being fully present and together, sharing each moment exactly as it is.
This is what we have chosen to do, from the first moment of recognizing something was amiss, to the current acceptance that treatment is no longer viable for us — we’ve chosen to accept and love what we have, being present to the joys, frustrations, pains, awarenesses and the love we share, appreciating each moment.
That is the MIRACLE we’ve been living in!!!
Why would we waste one moment of the life we have right now, hoping for something in the future that’s going to change everything, when we’re experiencing miracles on a daily basis, of acceptance and love and joy and peace — and living LIFE!
That’s what living the yummy way is. The miracle of looking at what life gives us, like grief and change and forgiving… and looking at it with love.
The miracle is being able to look at it, put aside resentments and false personas we been carrying with us all this time, and realize ‘oh, I don’t have to carry that any more.’
Do I want to keep parceling out forgiveness, holding onto a self-righteous grudge, when I could let it go right now — and be at peace?
It just so happens that cancer is the catalyst that brought home to us, to present choice: ‘if I’m going to do this, it might as well be right now!’
This moment could be your catalyst moment, a moment of urgency to ask yourself, why am I carrying around self-righteous grudges when I could be at peace. Be honest. It might seem to feel good for a quick cheap hit of superiority. But it doesn’t really feel yummy. Or peaceful.
The miracle is choosing to shift from resentment to love. From personas to authenticity. The miracle is seeing that everything that happens, there is a way to look at it with love and appreciation. The miracle is being seeing that it couldn’t go any other way than the way its it.
And loving reality just as it is.
Thank you for joining us for another yummy conversation about living the yummy way — joyously loving each moment in reality as it is, right here, right now.