9:26 and one second

The past few days have brought renewed meaning to the phrase "one day at a time." I am acutely aware of what this means, but sometimes lack appreciation of the power of this concept in practice. Sometimes it is an hour at a time, 5 minutes, a minute, a second. How do you do anything - stay sober, survive breast cancer, deal with unrelenting and inconsolable fear - you do it moment to moment. I don't have to figure out how to deal for the rest of my life with this overpowering fear of dying of cancer. I just have to deal with it, right now, this second.

These past few days I have tried to sit in the feeling - and it is indescribable. It feels one way to have your life yanked out from underneath you with no notice, like when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. It feels like something else when you have a chance to prepare and think about what that would be like to have it yanked out from underneath you all over again. I can't really think of the words to describe it, I've tried - but only someone who has been through this can understand what this fear is like. It is a fear unlike any other fear and there just aren't words to capture it.

I have tried to sit in the feeling and actually experience it and process it, while at the same time maintaining a kind of distance, more like perspective, to enable me to stay present in the very moment I am sitting in and have a true appreciation of every teeny tiny detail. It is more like being in the solution than being in the problem, but it still doesn't feel good. It feels horrible on the one hand but at the same time it is the most amazing thing to be right here, right now, which is the place I find myself least often. I have focused on only one thing these past few days and that is seeing my nephew on Friday. He is the greatest reminder to me of what it is like to be present in the moment. To watch him laugh and learn and look at something in amazement fills me with a kind of happiness that is unparalleled in my life.

To my complete astonishment, even though I am caught up in the worst fear and anxiety I've ever had in my life, I have been more present these past few days than I have been in a very long time. I have enjoyed these days and I have most importantly remembered to be grateful, not sometimes, but constantly. I have felt peaceful and content. I have had powerful moments of surrender - because to deal with what I am dealing with requires surrender on a different level than what I experienced before. I have had meaningful conversations with my higher power.

This situation is a true test of my faith, of my ability to apply the program to all my affairs. You know sometimes how you wake up from an experience and things are different - you are changed somehow and it wasn't a process, it just happened in a moment? These days, changing is like that. It is sudden and unpredictable. It happens in those moments I spend talking to my higher power about the purpose of all of this that I am too human to even begin to understand. These past few days have changed me.

Tomorrow I have a follow-up mammogram. Until then, it is moment by moment. To those of you who are so inclined, please pray for me.