Campin' Out

When Dane's cancer returned in 2009, we started wondering what we were doing wrong. If hard times and wilderness journeys are here to teach us something, we seemed to be missing the lesson. Tired of repeating the same course, we decided we would start doing things differently. Whatever we had done before was clearly wrong so we would just give the opposite a try. We talked and joked that this would be our plan. Deep down we knew that in many aspects of life there was no longer a choice.


We reached out for help beyond family for the first time. We began to research and take advantage of the support organizations for cancer patients that we had heard mention of in the past but believed we didn't need. We fell to our church. I say fell to our church, because it was not a modest gesture for help. We walked into our pastor's door as he was working on a sermon series about Extravagant Giving. No more self sufficiency, no more appearance of having it all together. Pride? Huh-uh. We were no doubt a piece of a bigger plan. We became an example to help others give big and began to learn humility.

The help we received was overwhelming and enabled us to keep going. It minimized the impact to our children's lives and gave us the opportunity to travel to St. Louis for the best care for Mr. 1inamillion. It allowed us to secure him a place in a clinical trial for a maintenance drug. It gave us such relief. And hope.


In April we learned that the trial was not a success for him. The tumors had grown. Hello, rock. Hello again, hard place. What else did we get wrong? What else can we do differently? It's a long drive from St Louis to home. Long stretches of highway that provides time for a lot of thought. Especially following a visit with an oncologist who said your husband will likely be on chemotherapy for the rest of his life. I had always thought my job was to get us through it. Charge through and get my family to the other side of this. But this is it, no other side insight. This wasn't just his journey, it was my wilderness journey, too. And it wasn't going to end, damn it.

What can I do differently? What am I suppose to learn here? I began to realize and accept a few things along the highway. I never just sat in it. I never obsorbed or processed the wilderness experience. I certainly never talked about it. Now, understand I am not actually smart enough to have come to that realization on my own. I was reading a Priscilla Shirer bible study and she had recently just called me out with the following multiple choice question:

In a difficult season allowed by God to reveal Himself, I'm usually inclined to:

1. acknowledge Him for a moment and then try to move forward expediently
2. "camp out" to see what He wants to do in me
3. grow impatient and miss what God is doing

I immediately responded with option 1 and Oh no she didn't. Did she really just say that to me? Which was followed with oh yes she did, AJ. Hope you can still find a sleeping bag. Crud.

So I'm not here to just pull everyone through and dust them off when we get to the otherside? Super. I was a Girl Scout and grew up in a family that camped every year in the Ozarks. This certainly was not Roaring River, but I'd pitch a tent. If You really want me to.

Thus the blog was born. Me obsorbing. Processing. Uncovering what God is doing within me and exposing a few of the frustrations. Talking about it all a bit more. Sharing my view from our camp site between the rock and hard place.