First of all, it’s been a few weeks, but in that time, I got to write a guest blog post for PearlPoint, a cancer support organization. If you haven’t seen it, check out the post here, and also check out the resources PearlPoint has—from helpful blog posts to information on nutrition, diagnoses, clinical trials, and finding support.
Secondly: I submit to you that “getting over” cancer (or other trials) isn’t really a thing.
A few weeks ago, I hung out in downtown Chicago with a friend who was here for a conference. We went to elementary and middle school together as well as high school youth group at church. Through our church, we went on a couple of mission so trips together—one actually to Chicago (we stayed at Wheaton, even more coincidentally).
Lauren and me in front of “Cloudgate” (a.k.a. The Bean) in downtown Chicago
I had a great night all around with Lauren, but I left most blessed by our conversation at dinner. We got to talking about my book, which naturally led to cancer and my experience as well as her own experience of loss. When Lauren was five, her mom passed away unexpectedly. Between her background and mine, we started discussing the idea of “moving on” and how it’s such a misnomer for what happens after times of pain and suffering. You never really move on from trying situations—you may get older and move further along through history as years pass, but the idea of “getting over” something like death, cancer, or other trials is misleading.
If you’ve read any of my past posts, you can probably guess that I tied Jerry Sittser and his book A Grace Disguised into the conversation (of course I did). I loved his assertion that you don’t ever really get over the hard stuff—life moves on, of course, as it should. Still, at times I think the further down the road I get from cancer, the less it should matter or shape my life, the less it should come up in conversation, and yet, I find that it still matters.
Lauren feels the same way—she thought she had “moved on” from her loss until she reached college and came to terms with it once again and many times since then. She’s learned that she will never “get over” the loss of her mom—and that she really shouldn’t. Somewhat similarly, I don’t think about cancer every day, but as I approach the five year “cancerversary” from my final chemo treatment in a few weeks, I am aware that, even five years down the road, I have not “gotten over” it completely.
Here are a few things that Sittser writes on the subject:
“Recovery is a misleading and empty expectation. We recover from broken limbs, not amputations. Catastrophic loss by definition precludes recovery. It will transform us or destroy us, but it will never leave us the same. There is no going back to the past, which is gone forever, only going ahead to the future, which has yet to be discovered. Whatever that future is, it will, and must, include the pain of the past with it. Sorrow never entirely leaves the soul of those who have suffered a severe loss. If anything, it may keep going deeper.”
He continues later:
“The passage of time has mitigated the feeling of pain, panic, and chaos. But it has also increased my awareness of how complex and far-reaching the loss has been. I am still not ‘over’ it; I have still not ‘recovered.’ I still wish my life were different and they were alive. But I have changed and grown….The accident itself bewilders me as much today as it did three years ago. Much good has come from it, but all the good in the world will never make the accident itself good…. The badness of the event and the goodness of the results are related, to be sure, but they are not the same.”
I agree, and based on our conversation, it sounds like Lauren does, too. Time does take the edge off of the pain and chaos. But time also can bewilder when we see how we are still affected by the loss. I think of Miranda Lambert’s song “Over You” which says, “they say I’ll be okay, but I’m not going to ever get over you.” We may end up “okay,” but that doesn’t mean we “get over” loss and trials.
I wrote in my book that, though I can explain lots of reasons why suffering exists, I still don’t fully understand why I had cancer. I can see many good things that have come from it, and I may even be thankful for it, but that doesn’t mean cancer is any less bad. I still hate cancer; it makes me angry, and as I wrote a couple of posts back, I still fear its return. But, it has changed me and grown me, and I think it would be wrong to “get over it” and move on, unaffected.
My rambling has a point: instead of viewing our trials and pain as something we have to move beyond, to get over, it can be freeing to rest in the fact that they still affect us. It’s like I’m part of a recovery program: “My name is Hannah, and I am still affected by hard stuff in my life”—and not just cancer. Getting kicked off of a volleyball team during my junior year of high school—10 years ago!—somehow still lives in my memory as a time of both great challenge and growth in my faith. I’m no longer so wounded by it and other trials from my past—time has mitigated the pain—but these things still affect me, and I’m okay with that.
So, let’s get rid of the question: “Do you feel like you’ve gotten over [insert challenging situation]?” I’m guilty of asking it. Yet I can testify to its inadequacy. Instead, I rest in the fact that I’m not over painful situations in my life because they have taught me to feel things deeply, to care in a way I didn’t before, and to understand God’s sovereignty compared to my limitations.
On Christ the solid Rock I stand,
Hannah