Receiving

Receiving help is hard to do.

So many of us are willing and happy to help others but when on the receiving end of things, we are brought low, humbled and forced to accept our neediness, and our helpless state. For someone who has spent their life DOING, it feels a lot like a demotion at work, like being sidelined. It IS being sidelined, let's face it. Even as an employer, when I delegate tasks I still feel in charge, even if I have given up control. However, when you are UNABLE to do anything, you have had both control and any sense of being in charge stripped from you. For me, it continues to be a learning experience and a daily lesson in letting go. When it comes to cancer, learning to let go is vital to good health. It's what we are asking the cancer cells to do, let go.

The upside of these lessons is learning how loved I am. Learning that others are willing to give up a precious Saturday morning on a beautiful July day to come and help Gil and I in our garden is a testimony of love in action and God with skin on! It is teaching me to be a gracious and grace filled receiver. Would I do this if not forced into it...no chance...so this too is another gift of cancer. Because, I need to learn these lessons, even if I am doing it under duress.😬

So let me, once again, say thank you to all the people who are continuing to give of themselves over and over in so many ways. You are too many to name but you have brought meals, fed us, grocery shopped, pulled weeds, cleaned my kitchen, done my laundry, provided moral and physical support, prayed with and for us, trimmed our trees, provided transportation and held my hand both figuratively and literally, all the while listening to me cry and sometimes whine about all the real and perceived miseries of cancer. Saying thank you seems so lame in light of all the ways we have been loved through this journey, and yet we would be remiss to not pause and be grateful, because we are...so very grateful. Beyond words grateful.