Awareness month.

September is childhood cancer awareness month. An awareness month most people don’t know exists unless you’re somehow forced into awareness. Cancer touches you and suddenly this “c” word is a normal part of your vocabulary and it becomes the lens through which you see life. I never in a million years imagined this would be my life, my boy, my motherhood.

I have longed to share our story. But in the thick of it, words were not found. I had to simply sit in the murky grief, taking one step at a time as I cared for my boy. As I saw September creeping on the calendar, I knew I wanted to share more. There have been many moments where words didn’t suffice. In the moment, the response to “how are you?” felt so complicated and nuanced that answering even as genuinely as I could, barely scratched the surface.

So I’ve decided to write during the month of September. Awareness month. I desire to process and explain what the past 8 months have been like for us, as much as I can. I share because I want friends to know - to be in the loop on our story and not be afraid of it. To ask, to pray, to sit with it if you wish.

Early on in diagnosis, I felt the Lord impress on me that whatever is given to me is for the good of the body. This story and the lessons we’ve learned are not for us to hold closely and never share. The goodness of God is and will continue to be written all over our story, and it is meant to be shared.

So, during the month, I will write about diagnosis, about childhood leukemia, about anxiety and God. About fear, about hope, about chemo and cancer in a pandemic. For some reason, it feels a bit scary, nerve-wracking to first of all, put words to all of this and second of all, to challenge myself to share it with others. But it also feels like obedience. It feels like healing. It feels like remembering that God has had us all along. I don’t know what’s going to come out, but I hope that through this, you feel welcomed into our story.