I watched a rom-com movie on the airplane back from my most recent trip to Houston and it was bad in every way. One of those where you keep checking your watch to see when it will end but, like a car accident, you just keep staring. The main characters seemed to equate arguing, miscommunicating, sarcasm and selfishness with love, and when they inevitably wound up together in the end I was disappointed in humanity.
Love is wild and fun and exciting, yes, but it is also the most powerfully transforming energy I know. It is not just something we feel when we meet our person, but something that heals. I know this first hand.
Yesterday I had follow-up PET scans at MD Anderson in Houston to see how radiation affected the still-remaining cancer in some lymph nodes. The news was positive and trending in the right direction. While the cancer is not completely gone, it has shrunk significantly, and the doctors have every reason to think it will continue. That combined with a nice low CA 125 (the ovarian cancer blood marker) and the fact that I feel great, we are going into a “wait and see” mode. Both the gyn oncologist and the radiation oncologist concurred and said “keep doing what you’re doing!” That’s easy – what I’m doing is receiving all the love, prayers and care from so many people.
I have no doubt that the among the best things I did when I was diagnosed a little over a year ago, was pay attention to the love being sent my way. My default is always, “I got this.” Whether it’s vain overconfidence, or the complete opposite, which is what I suspect – a desire to look more capable than I really am – I am a master at dismissing help. WAS a master. I’m improving thanks to you all.
Recognizing and receiving love is critical to our healing and survival because it means recognizing that we belong. That all the love being poured out for us is because we are part of something larger than just ourselves. It may be a club or a workplace or a community as a whole. I’m lucky enough that I work in a profession and in a community that just anointed me with prayer and healing energy. There wasn’t a day that went by this past year that I didn’t have someone sending a blessing over my bald head, or sending text messages, emails, songs, greeting cards, meditations, and memes to make me laugh (and cry).
But here’s the catch: belonging demands that we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world AND that we love ourselves enough to receive the love freely given. What I’ve learned is that those two things really don’t take a lot of work. And they are so hard. Both are true. To embrace imperfection and self-love requires us to be humble and small in ways we’re not used to. That strong, confident, together girl? She is a wonder to behold but even more so when she is vulnerable, open, and a little bit broken. Think about it. It’s hard for love and light to seep in when there’s a hard exterior that says, “No thanks, I got this.”
Thanks for helping me be a little softer and little more open. It’s not easy, but then neither is cancer. The love I have received from you all has transformed me from the inside out.
❤️❤️❤️
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. ~John 13:34
Kick it with Charla 
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