Both Can Be True

I woke up angry this week.

Not sad. Not numb. Not even particularly scared in that moment.

Just angry.

The last two weeks have felt like a roller coaster, and I’m never sure which emotion is going to show up next.

The first week, I was devastated. Shocked. Angry at times, but mostly just trying to understand how this could possibly be my life.

Then last week, I went into fight mode.

Appointments to make. Doctors to call. Scans to get through. Questions to ask.

I was running on adrenaline. By Friday I was exhausted physically and emotionally.

I was also terrified.

Every scan felt like another opportunity to learn something I didn’t want to know, while also desperately needing answers.

And in the middle of all of it, I was still Mommy.

I played with Brooks. Held him. Fed him. Put him to bed. Tried to soak him in.

I think I was present.

But sometimes I wonder.

My body was there, but my mind was carrying a hundred other things.

And that makes me sad.

Because this is his first year.

His only first year.

We’ve already had nine beautiful months, and I am so incredibly grateful for them. We had time together as a family before Brian deployed. We made memories even in those strange weeks when he was in Texas waiting to leave the country. We’ve laughed, traveled, played on the floor. I’ve watched Brooks discover food and swimming and people and the world around him.

There has been so much joy.

But I look at the rest of this year and see a giant question mark.

I don’t know what treatment will look like.

I don’t know how I’ll feel.

I don’t know what our days will look like.

And one thought keeps coming back:

I don’t want to be sick for his first birthday.

I know there will be more birthdays. I know it’s one day.

But I’m his mom, and this is his first.

I waited so long for these moments.

And sometimes I’m just really angry that it feels like pieces of them are being taken from me.

I can know how blessed I am and still feel that way.

I can look at my beautiful, healthy little boy and feel overwhelming gratitude while also wanting to scream that this isn’t how his first year was supposed to go.

And I have screamed. In the car, in the shower. That guttural scream where it leaves the throat scarred for a few hours after. 

And then there is this other part of the last two weeks.

The people.

When Brian and I got married, community mattered deeply to us. We were intentional about who stood beside us and sat in the chairs witnessing our commitment to each other. We asked for their commitment too. It wasn’t just about our wedding day. We were asking those people to walk alongside us through our marriage.

Through the good and the hard.

The celebrations and the disappointments.

The ups and the downs.

We meant it.

But I don’t think I fully understood the weight of what that could mean.

I do now.

It looks like a friend popping across the street just to say they are thinking of us, then quietly helping me clean up after Brooks’ dinner and taking out the trash.

It looks like some of our closest friends and next door neighbors loving Brooks like he’s one of theirs. Their boys are like brothers to him. It looks like them taking him to school so I can get to an appointment without having to figure out one more thing.

It looks like my sister-in-law showing up for an early morning appointment and sacrificing time with her own son before he heads to summer camp for the day.

Friends clearing their schedules to come to appointments and sit in waiting rooms with me.

People rearranging their lives, even for a few hours, so I don’t have to do this alone.

People loving on Brooks.

Checking on me.

Checking on Brian from thousands of miles away.

Praying. Feeding us. Sitting with me. Helping with the very ordinary parts of life that don’t stop just because something extraordinary and awful has happened.

And it looks like me learning to accept it.

To let people in.

To stop trying to carry everything myself.

We’re meant to do life with other people.

I’ve always believed that.

I’m just not sure I understood it like I do now. I have always been fiercely independent (ask my parents!).

There is something humbling about needing people. And something incredibly beautiful about realizing they were already there, ready to show up.

None of that makes me less angry.

It doesn’t make me understand why this is happening.

It doesn’t make me less scared about treatment or less sad about the parts of this year that may not look like I imagined.

I’m still mad.

I’m still scared.

I’m still hopeful.

I’m still grateful.

Sometimes I’m all four within the same hour.

And I’m learning I don’t have to pick one.

I don’t have to turn this into a lesson yet. I don’t have to rush myself toward gratitude every time anger shows up. And I don’t have to feel guilty for laughing with Brooks five minutes after crying about cancer.

Both can be true.

Maybe that’s what this meanwhile looks like right now.

Being angry about what feels stolen while being deeply grateful for what I still have.

Being terrified of what’s ahead while believing there is still so much life ahead of me.

Wanting to protect Brooks from all of this while watching an entire community wrap itself around him, and around me.

He is so loved.

We are so loved.

And on the days when hope feels harder to find, there are people here helping hold it until I can find it again.

Meanwhile…

I don’t have a neat ending for this one.

I’m still angry.

I’m still hopeful.

I’m still trying to understand how this became our life.

But I’m also understanding, in a way I never have before, what it really means to not do life alone.

We meant it when we promised to do life in community.

I just never knew how much that promise would someday carry us.

With love, in the meanwhile.