My Boys-Part.1

I know what you may be thinking...
wait.
That title doesn't have to do with cancer?!

In all the craziness of this past couple of months literally REVOLVING around me and 'my cancer', it's time...it's PAST time, in fact, that I take some steps back again...and I encourage ALL OF YOU to take some steps back WITH me.

Don't get me wrong. The cards, the meals, the gifts, the gestures...all in response to ME and how I've somehow 'inspired' you all...they are beautiful. They are beyond just thanks, quite honestly. Humbling...
as I keep saying.

But in the mix of all this mess that is now life and in fact the fight FOR life are MY life's most prized gifts, still there, still 'being' what they always have been......

My. Boys.



My husband will never speak aloud what true sides of me there are; what he sees and experiences of me that almost no others around me, do.
The fire that matches the red wig, quite honestly. ;)

He has and will never use my short-comings to lash out, or 'get back' at me for things that are very honest truths in the way that my firey-femaleness tends to do, him.
He has and will never make me feel less than beautiful enough---even when I'm one giant broken-out BOIL from head to to---I'm 'still just as beautiful to him.'
He is these things to me because he loves me, and perhaps he loves me in a signifcantly deeper, more mature love than I myself have yet to learn.

Since cancer entered our lives, Aaron has continued...gone about, WITHOUT COMPLAINT, supporting our household, swallowing his real stresses, working over-time to provide and protect us from any further pressures than are already sitting on our daily lives. He has gotten up (he's never been nor will ever be a morning person) in the early hours to get over to the clinic on a daily basis---even seeing patients before he's technically open---doing 'whatever it takes' and all the while hoping he's fooling me that he and every thing is still completely under control.


Something I've always loved about our relationship is...no matter HOW DISCONNECTED we get just in the craziness that is life, week-to-week... I know him.
I know when 'all is not fine' ..and we know that about each other. We don't require words anymore. Not that we don't use them or need them.. They just aren't imperative in communicating the crucial stuff. There is no hiding. There is no successful pretending.
WE ARE RAW.

We don't count 'partial anniversaries' or sit eager by the front door, waiting for the other to come home. Those were the newlywed days that, though once upon a time we vowed we'd never 'get old in', translating it as a sign that we'd forgotten how to love...it is, in fact, quite the opposite.
Our love is too mature--we grew out of those things when the memories of EACH CHAPTER became far more meaningful than just a date on a calendar and realizing, still, that these memories are being written every MOMENT of every day that we are allotted.

And we're still learning.

I'm learning that Aaron's love for me runs much deeper than how many projects I can get him to accomplish for/with me, while Aaron is learning how to enjoy accomplishing some of the necessary ones... not 'for' me but WITH me. ;)

You see...
I'm learning, right this very second as I'm typing, even, that relationships aren't about the 'I' or the 'Me' or the 'My' AT ALL. They never were. THE VERY DAY we said 'I DO'...
'me' became 'we.'

I am not going through cancer. I am not fighting a battle for my life.
WE are battling for our life to continue...TOGETHER!!! This victory will be OURS because my life IS his, as his is mine.
The unification of marriage that Christ talks about is acting and is very, very REAL. The oneness of the man and the woman, when married, is not metaphorical and is, in fact, CRUCIAL to a marriage's survival.
No, I'm not turning this into a marriage-help blog. I mean, certainly, if you gain any good reminders from this entry, great. But this is me preaching to well, me..this is God TEACHING ME to LET GO OF 'ME.'

When you see your spouse today, don't just 'do something nice' for him/her... don't just 'leave little notes around the house'........sure, those are all beautiful gestures and very sentimental.
But God's love for us...His DESIRE for us is to step back from sentimental and just the temporary shedding of 'me' and instead stride forward, into Him,....our spouse tied three-legged race-style to our side, forgetting all about the 'me' ever existing.

This really is where WE, ALL thrive.

My marriage to Aaron is far from perfect---he and I both know that. God is currently, in fact, using cancer to continue to fix many of our previous problems. Funny how that works. ;-P
But it shouldn't take cancer. It doesn't.
It just takes wanting to be in God's awesome presence of Joy and Grace...and once you've had even the most menial taste of that kind of thriving, letting go of 'me' is an equal joy to gaining the 'we'~