The Day in Between

Today is the day in between. The day in between the day I was diagnosed with breast cancer last year, and my 30th birthday. It is the day after everything changed. The day after nothing made sense anymore. The day after I and my life would never be the same. It is the day I didn't kill myself, even though I had planned to.

It is the day, every year, that I question everything and accept nothing. The day that I wonder how I got here, right here, to this moment and I am always amazed, no matter where I find myself. It is the day that I recount the ways I wish my life were different and that I analyze the ways that my life does not meet my expectations. But unlike other years, I will not forget that I am grateful.

The gratitude though is colored with what I can only describe as doubt and a feeling of unworthiness. That I, of all people, for whom God has performed multiple miracles, did not deserve it.

There is this woman - and I don't know her, but a friend told me about her. We share the same name. She is 35 and dying of cancer. She has a family and small children. I pray for her. This morning I thought, why, God, would you take her away from so many people who love her, when I have no one to leave behind?

And though I can't say I know exactly what it would be like to go through what she is going through, to die, as I sit here, living, I feel for her a pain that is almost intolerable. It is ripping my heart out. I have tried to imagine it - in order to prepare myself for the slim, though very real possibility that I may one day be sitting where she is sitting. And today, right now, I think I know what that would feel like. It is indescribable.

When I pray for her - I pray for the things that I pray for myself. For God's will above all other things and that she can go on, unafraid - that she has peace, that her children can find some way to understand what there is simply no explanation for, and that she has the strength that I have. Mostly I pray that she is not afraid, because I would be terrified.

If you are reading this, and you know me - so you know my name, please pray for her. I do believe in miracles.