A Charmed Life

Prior to getting breast cancer, I had lived a charmed life. It's not that I didn't have challenges like everybody else. I was the oldest of 5 kids and we didn't have a lot growing up plus my parents divorced when I was in high school, but I took great strength from my childhood. I thought that if I had the right attitude and postive thoughts, I could will everything to go my way and it pretty much did except for when I got cancer. That was not on my bucket list. Truely, everything else in my life had always gone my way. I had gotten to do so many great things in my life. I had been an officer in the Army, lived and worked abroad, including Germany and Israel and traveled the world, had my own marketing company, did my graduate studies in something I just wanted to it in, Religious Studies, had a great husband and two incredible kids. I always felt like I was very lucky, even though I don't like that word anymore because I don't think bad things happen to people because of bad luck, but that's another blog day, Why We Suffer. You know when people say if you have your health, you have everything, well, it's true!!! When you get sick, the only thing you want back is your health, and you'd pretty much do anything to get it back. No one had ever died or gotten sick in my life before so I was really surprised when it was ME getting sick with something that could kill me. I was so not prepared for real suffering in my life. I was very naive. I didn't know bad things could happen, so when it did, I thought I could still will the cancer to not be in my lymph nodes, but that's not how it works with cancer, not with life and death issues. It was in 3 lymph nodes with a turmor in one lymph node that broke open. So, I had a lot of catching up to do on how to deal with the bad. I learned more during the year and half of my cancer treatment than I had learned my entire life, the secret to happiness, how to live and why we live. I realized that a "Charmed Life" hadn't really gotten me anywhere. I love the quote from Elizabeth Edward's, God rest her soul, "We are defined by the way we handle the bad times in our lives."