Broccoli, swiss chard, leaf lettuce - oh my!

"Kale, broccoli, swiss chard, leaf lettuce - wow," the grocery clerk/store manager said as each item rolled by on the conveyer belt. "You eat HEALTHY. I'm impressed!"

I handed her my cloth bags for carryout and said dryly, "Yeah, well, I went through breast cancer last year and sheese louise, there's nothing like that to make you eat healthy so you can be a lean, mean, cancer-fighting machine."

When she gaped at me I thought, "Uh oh." Sometimes the C-word can be little touchy. I opened up my mouth with the full intent of babbling to mask the silence. Instead she filled it by saying that she herself had battled cancer.

We cancer chicks are everywhere.

"I even needed a port," she said, drawing her shirt down an inch to reveal the collar bone scar many of us cancer chicks share. Without realizing my hand was doing it, I felt myself tug down my own shirt a fraction, and exclaim: "ME, TOO!!!"

While writing my check, I told her that before I was diagnosed with cancer, I had always wondered if I would be one of those people who looked at God and said, "Why me??!!" when confronted with that kind of Code Red Circumstance. But instead, I said, the year was so profoundly full of blessing for me and my family that it never occurred to me that I should question my circumstances. We were so well loved and provided for in some really unexpected ways.

(I will tell you plainly that when we were wondering whether our daughter could be ill, that blessing seemed a lot more remote, but God's provision was still sharply, even painfully, evident.)

I looked up from my check. Her eyes were full of tears, and she was clutching my cloth bags to her chest. All my groceries had been bagged in plastic thanks to the bag boy (more for the stash), and that's OK! I get her response. Going through last year made me feel the most vulnerable of my life.

This last weekend, we climbed a bit of Mt. Marathon. I kept marveling out loud to my hubby at how my body was even capable of making that kind of a hike. One year ago today, I was just shy of four weeks of being done with chemo. I was as bald as bald can be and I felt weariness to my bones de profoundis.

But that feels like 10 years ago now. I wish I could whisper encouragement to myself a year ago that I would be readying for my first 5K, and actually able to run 3.2 miles without stopping (which I did for the very first time last week). The mouth sores will be gone, I would tell myself, and you will be climbing mountains and using mascara again on eyelashes that have finally grown back! However, that kind of knowledge also wouldn't have permitted me to lean on Jesus the way that I did.

Today I'm going to Anchorage to get an MRI. It was supposed to wait until this fall, but my docs decided that they would like to get a six-month scan (my first MRI was in January). I am gloriously ready to step off this medical freight train that I have been riding, but going through last year equipped me to feel a peace about these MRIs now. After weekly treatment last year, this kind of thing feels like a vacation.

"Lord, You are my portion
and my cup of blessing;

You hold my future."
Psalm 16:5

I'll post the MRI results soon after I receive them. Thanks for your prayers, dear peeps!