And The Beat Goes On

Pss. 55:6 “And I said, Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away, and be at rest.”

And The Beat Goes On

In between all the angst of the chemo days, a lot of cruddy things happen in what seems like the beat of a drum. One thing, two thing rat a tat tat, and the beat goes on. This might be the proof I needed to show you that NEGATIVITY breeds NEGATIVITY! All of the instances below began at the beginning of the acceptance of Herceptin, it's when everything was negative to me.

In the midst of our illnesses (my hubby's and mine), our three-year-old fridge decides to make an extremely loud clanking noise in the middle of the night. Loud and irritating, (fridge not hubby) my husband decides to be jarred awake and go bang on the side of the rowdy fridge. The clanking stopped, but the momentum had the cookie jar on top of the fridge, toppling over, the lid came crashing down on the floor shattering into a million pieces, and at three o’clock in the morning, clear eyes are not to be had! Clean up. * sigh *

Then our twenty-year-old clothes dryer decides to play the fridge game and begins its own riotous annoying noise. Not at three a.m. and still heating and drying, its all good, just a pain in the EAR!

His twenty-one-year-old truck decides it’s going to do some booming and banging and as we were heading home from the doctors one day the clanking was obviously the muffler, that had fallen off, dragging behind us. We pulled into a safe place (there are no safe sides of the road here), and hubby pulls the muffler off and places it in the back of the truck. We don’t litter. More sighs are in the works with maybe a few eye-rolls. Next...

Hubby looks all over for his thirteen-year-old phone. I hear something heavy and noisy clanking (this post title should be clanking) in the washer that he had just loaded and started up. I tell him the noise doesn’t sound right from a new washer, but as a man (all men) who don’t listen, goes on with his day, until its time to get clothes out of the washer and what drops to the floor? His phone! The old phone went through the entire wash, rinse and spin cycle. He fruitlessly tries to save it, to no avail. He panics. Our phones are everything to us out here in the middle of nowhere with no landline. Besides being a shop-o-holic, the man is addicted to technology (like the rest of the world)!!!!!

I finish up the clothes, drying and folding and putting away as he runs off to the store to buy a new phone. Payment will just be added to our bill so no out of empty-pocket cash necessary. My anxiety rears its head because it just seems like everything is hitting us and hitting us hard. The fridge, the dryer, the truck, chemo crud, and a clinging cold/allergy session, and now, the phone.

Two hours later he returns with what they had to offer. A deal. UH OH! I hope he didn’t… he did. He fell for what they had to offer: a Smartphone and a FREE tablet with all the fixins and trimmings. A case, a keyboard, and they even tossed in some GPS thing for the car. Swindled. A week later he was returning, the phone shield (not free) and protective phone cover, keyboard to the tablet and the case (also not free). For what they were charging him HUNDREDS of dollars for, he purchased on Amazon for under fifty bucks!

I happen to despise the smartphone and everything that it stands for. I’ll hold my ground with my stupid phone as long as I can, but wouldn’t you know it, ironically, maybe less than two weeks later since his purchase, my phone stops working. Keys don’t function, the battery barely holds a charge, and the only key that worked in the end, was a way to get my contacts before my dumb-phone went dark, never to open its eyes again. 

I cried! I wanted my stupid phone! My only active contacts on the phone were my texts to my son, a text to hubby when he was on break at work, and two calls on the weekend to my mother. That’s it! Now the phone has gone into the ether. What will this poor woman do??

Hubby snapped into action, he ordered me a phone online and it would take two days to arrive. Thank God my son has a FB messenger app that when I write to him from Facebook, it goes right to his phone. Two days not talking to him, my lifeline, would tear me to pieces. Facebook finally came in handy! The only problem? With our phone service (I have no idea what it all entails, and I don’t care to know. Technology is a blank to me, a total blank!) the only phone they force on you is, you guessed it, the Smartphone! They offer NOTHING but smartphones! 

So my phone conveniently goes up in a puff of smoke when his phone was accidentally fried. Now I'm forced to get a new phone. It’s a conspiracy. It seems everything can and is going wrong like a train derailment skidding into a stop position but no sign of slowing any time soon.
But wait all of this began happening when my perky positive self took a turn for the worse. I’m an optimist, positive sharer of love, and giver of smiles and joy, but when I knew I was going for chemo in the vein, my world toppled! TOPPLED! I lost hope, I lost laughter and joy and optimism. Optimism is what God wanted me to have but hope was veiled, I couldn’t find positivity and every single day it is a struggle to see the Light shine, and lack of sun and warmth is no help.

Also on the familial level, I feel like a forgotten soul. Do you know how hard it is to love online Spiritual Family, that actually embraces me daily, more than any other family I'm connected to? Don’t get me wrong, I love the families God has surrounded me with but it is hard to see people as caring with an every-three-month email or visit (if that) saying I’m praying for you, hope things are okay. I’ve shut down. If you want to know how I am ask ME, I’ll be glad to tell you, if you don’t ask, I won’t, it’s that easy.

I’ve written a blog for well over ten years. My family could sure learn a lot about me if they read the pain in my words but no, they’ll wait until I pass and say, “How come I didn’t know about this?” Well, you did but you didn’t care enough to read the very heart and soul of the one you claimed to have loved.

Now to turn this around into a positive! I HAVE to see positive beauty in life, the life I WANT to live and not give up on. I have a husband, a son, and a Spiritual Family that cares for me, touches me, and gives me strength every single day to go on and be the me they know me to be! I am HER!!! It’s just hard digging her out of the trenches the sandy soil has encompassed me with.

The truck still runs, the chemo might get better, we did get new phones (that’s a whole different story) and my hardy Salvias are trying to peek their heads out and show me that life IS worth sticking around for. Until I got wind of a Blizzard Warning for the end of the week. HA HA HA HA! 

I’m looking up! I need to continue writing because that is the emotional healing that I NEED. Where you all follow along, read, and support me, my family here doesn’t know much at all and is full of questions. That pretty much sets me back because my path is NOT the path they’d choose, nor would any of you for that matter, but you RESPECT my chosen path! I love you for that. 

When I say I don’t look forward to living. The family gasps! You guys reading this understand me and know that this is just a phase and offer prayer, support and strength as I wiggle my way through this setback. You lift me up and make me WANT to live! Give me a REASON to live! And just as I typed this I peeked at Facebook before posting this and here’s what greeted me. “Our thoughts and feelings have an electromagnetic reality. Manifest wisely.” 

I think my Spiritual Family actually gets this, I thank you and love you for knowing and understanding me! Manifest positivity and it powers through! Manifest negativity and everything can and will go wrong. 

Mark 1:10  "And straightway coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens opened, and the Spirit like a dove descending upon him:”