Welcome to this week’s Womanly Wednesday! Today’s guest poster, Sierra, is a dear friend with whom I led Young Life at Davidson. She is one of the most thoughtful, loving, and wise people I know and when she offered to share about what it’s been like to walk through cancer with her dad, I jumped at the chance to share her story. Sierra, your heart is beautiful and I’m honored to join the many people praying for your dad’s health and joy.
On a beautiful, warm Friday in June, I was at a friend’s house, getting ready for her rehearsal dinner. As one of the bridesmaids, I moved from room to room upstairs, pulling on my dress, doing my makeup, asking a friend to help with my hair. I held my phone close, waiting for a call from my parents with the results from a biopsy my dad had gotten earlier that week. They had assured me that it was probably nothing. The friends I had told echoed them, certain that it was just a lump and nothing to worry about.
When my dad’s face popped up on the screen, I answered the phone and stepped into the other room, a quiet place away from the beautiful chaos of pre-wedding preparations. My incredible dad was calling to tell me that he had cancer and he would start chemo later that week. As he told me details of how I didn’t need to worry, it was a “not that bad” kind of cancer, they had a wonderful doctor, I curled into a ball on the ground, smearing my makeup and wrinkling my dress.
After hanging up the phone, I choked the words out to my best friend and she held me and told me I didn’t need to go to the rehearsal but at that moment I just needed some normalcy. I needed to pretend like things were okay even though they really weren’t. I put on some new mascara and I walked outside. I cried again watching my friend’s dad walk her down the aisle, and even more the next night when they danced together. It didn’t feel fair, and I wanted a way to make the big, hard feelings that I couldn’t put words to stop.
I was frustrated and I thought, “This isn’t how life is supposed to be”. I was mad that I was an only child, because maybe if I had a sibling, then the burden would be lighter because at least I’d be sharing it with someone else.
I started to tell more people around me, hopeful that they would help make the hurting stop. The words exploded out of me ungracefully out of me to my roommates, I ugly-cried on the shoulder of a friend at a Chinese restaurant that night, I tearfully called friends and asked my bestie to tell the people I couldn’t.
All these people loved me so well. They cried with me, they played with my hair as I lay on their laps, they gave me beautiful poems, they sent me packages, they paid for me to get a flight home.
But even with all these beautiful, wonderful things that made me feel so loved, the heaviness wouldn’t go away. The ache of “everything is different now” wouldn’t stop.
I felt like when I told people, maybe they would take some of that heavy burden. Maybe by telling them the big pile of rocks I felt like I was carrying would get a little lighter, that with each person I told it would feel like one fewer rock to carry. But the truth is, that while the people around me loved me & my parents incredibly well, they couldn’t take the burden from me.
Ultimately, I needed to turn to Jesus. He is the only one who can truly give me rest, who offers a lighter burden to carry.
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)
I don’t have this figured out. It is a long process and it is also a freeing process. It has allowed me to talk to people about it without feeling like they’re not doing enough, saying enough to get rid of the burdens. It has allowed me to say to people, “actually, I just really don’t want to talk about it right now”.
I can’t always conceptualize the feelings surrounding this season, and that makes it even harder to verbalize them. A lot of times I honestly don’t know how to name them. They’re bigger than “sad” or “angry” or “frustrated” and more complex than any one word allows, and I think that’s okay. Because I can sit in their messy existence with Jesus and I can name a few of them and a lot of them get to be free from being named. Sometimes being vulnerable just means saying, “Today is hard. Watching that movie was hard, and I can’t explain why. It just was.” I think that is where real life is found. Real life is found in being able to talk about it and being able to not talk about it. Real life is found in not having to have the perfect name for all the feelings or the perfect bow to tie on the situation.
I also think that God is constantly leading us into seasons in life. Sometimes it’s a season of your dad having cancer. Sometimes it’s a season of waiting and hoping that the chemo will work on just the cancer cells and not hurt any of the other cells. Sometimes it’s a season of God teaching you to put your burdens on Him. Sometimes it’s a season of healing. And sometimes it’s a season of not having the words to describe anything. But the beautiful thing about seasons is they don’t last forever. They change and they mature and they are all necessary even when some of them are really hard, and that gives me such hope in the face of all the hard things we see in this world.
Sierra is a small-town Colorado native living in North Carolina. She shares an amazing house with 6 fantastic roomies and gets to work for Young Life. She’s passionate about people, adventures, all things Christmas, and Jesus.
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