Sunday Stroke Survival: If Not Me

So many people have offered me condolences for what I've been going through...the death of my beloved, my heart issue, living post strokes, and now dealing with cancer again. I understand. They can't think of anything else to say with any sincerity. They really do care.

Part of what the Murphey Saga is all about is telling it like it is. In reading my posts, a small part of them says, "Whew! I'm glad it isn't me!" or as bad as it gets, "Wow! Look at her go. What an affirmation and inspiration!" But in reality, that's why I keep writing. I'll respond with it's "Murphy's Law and I'm Murphey," or Neitzsche 's "that which doesn't kill us...",or "Trouble with Tribbles," or even "If not me, then someone else."

In fact, it's the last one, "If not me, then someone else" that spurs me on. I can't imagine all of this happening to someone else. So I'd rather it be me. I know where my strength lies and comes from. Even though it might devastate someone else, I have the ability, through God's Grace, the weather this storm. No matter what comes. I have faith that one way or another, it will be alright. God will always be praised. Through Him, my strength is magnified. If you don't believe in a higher power, then I feel sorry for you. Someone else may not have the inner strength, fortitude, or faith to carry them through as I do.

In the grand scheme of life, this is a bump in the road. Every mishap in life is but a moment. My husband living ten years after the doctors all said any time now he's going to die. Even ten years out of the 66 years of his life was a drop in the bucket of his life. Every "bad" thing that's happened in my life are just drops. The abundant joy I've lived is appreciated more than all those bumps or detours in the road or drops in my bucket in my life. Not everyone feels this way or even knows about this.

For as bad as it can get for me, it is worse for others out there. Remember, it can always be worse. Remember I once compared myself, after my stroke, to my friend who was left with no arms after a car accident with three small kids? The same thing applies with me facing cancer again. I'm friends with an elderly couple in their 80s. He was diagnosed with cancer. It hit his lymph nodes and spread like wild fire. He beat a different cancer just a year ago. Now he's going through heavy duty chemo to beat his cancer back a few months. Not curing it mind you just to survive a few months more with his wife. He just celebrated his 83rd birthday. No hope of surgery or cure because its spread throughout his body. The happy times are remembered and carry the rest of us through.

Not that my cancer hasn't spread but I don't know that yet. Mine may have. It's a tragedy of errors that has plagued my life so far. But still, I'm counseling to this couple to enjoy every moment that they have. It's similar to the way I talk to couples who aren't undergoing calamities in their life. Even though my beloved and I had twenty-eight years together, 25 years married, we never forgot how time in this life is short. Twenty-eight years was a drop in the bucket of my life and his. So being in my 7th year of recovering post stroke is nothing but a bump in the road as is facing cancer again. It's a factor in my life for now. For all the "bad, scary, and upheavals" in my life, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of blessings and thankful happy moments to offset them. It tips my scales towards the positive.

Nothing is impossible.