Lamenting the loss of normalcy

Sometimes it just hits you in the gut like a ton of bricks.  There is nothing left in your life that is normal.  You watch, on Facebook, at church, through blogs and e-mails, as your friends and most of your family progress through a "normal" life, with fun pictures of holidays, updates about jobs, all the little details that make up "normal".  And you realize there is nothing left you can claim as normal.  I found a photo taken a few weeks before we lost normal.  What brings the tears the quickest is my children, my husband.  He looks so young.  I look at Caleb - just born - and Amelia, not even 2.  They don't remember "normal".  I see Katy's innocence.  I had never asked to learn to do laundry or cook a meal or clean a bathroom yet.  She has had to grow so fast.  And Rosy, so easy going and self-motivated and happy.  She just gets lost in the shuffle of the non-normal.  How can I make my peace with these losses??  How do I see this as a gift??

One of our last days of "normal".  Two weeks before my cancer was found.

Life was messy, and crazy, and hard work.  And wonderful.

Most cancer patients go through this, as their life gets ripped to shreds by cancer, its treatment and the treatment side effects.  An even smaller number continue to go through this for a long period of time.  That is where our family fits, once again in the statistical margins, defying the definitions and the predictions.  Even worse, it's not just cancer that has our number.  It's everything from infections to accidents, and "normal" life problems gone awry, like food poisoning and routine surgery or vaccinations.  Nothing goes "normal" for us.  Not in 2 1/2 years.

I walked into the bathroom today because I forgot.  I looked, for the first time, at the remains of the toilet.  It's not just broken.  It's shattered.  It stuns me, when I see what I hit and with what force, that I am typing right now.  That I have one hairline fracture and a small amount of bleeding in my brain and this will probably go down in life's history as a fantastical and horrific...yet short-lived...memory.  Just mire at the very bottom in the clear water of the rest of life.

I have to write it, this broken heart that longs for the day when I look back and realize no one has been in the hospital for several months.  The day when I realize that I have actually managed to care for my own children for a whole month without asking any relatives for help or spending any exorbitant dollar amount on childcare.  The day when I realized I've cooked every meal and swept every floor and wiped every nose and taken every picture and maybe even passed a test or gone on a real...restful rather than healing...vacation.

I know, deeper or truer than most, that life is a gift and every day, however flawed, is a blessing.  I know that my life is already a half-blown seed pod, and I need to be mindful of how and when and where I blow those seeds remaining.  But there is such longing to just be normal again.  I remember with longing a day I was frustrated because I forgot about dinner until 4 p.m. and had to rush to defrost something.  I look back at a day when I cried over the 10th poopy diaper and pleaded with God for an "out" from the drudgery of motherhood, and I laugh at my near-sightedness.  I recall a vacation when I fought with Aaron because of a difference of opinion about a leisure activity, and I wish I knew then what I know now.  I also know that, should God ever grant "normal" life to me again, I will forget all of this, most of the time.  I will take things for granted, and throw away blessed moments for the sake of my pride, and I will choose the wrong things to spend time on, and I will wound people and shock myself at how stupid I can be again so quickly.

A cross-processed photo from Mother's Day.

It is kind of like yearning for childhood as an adult.  This longing for something easy for a change.  It is like looking at photo and wishing you could cross-process it and bring out a new color that you know is there, you just couldn't grip it with your camera lens.  God says to give up my life to find it.  Okay, Lord.  You've got my life.  It's long been given up.  Please help me find the new one in the wreckage.  Please heal us.  Please rescue us.  And please let me never forget.