“I’m going to pray for you, you will beat this, Marilyn, you are so strong, you will beat it, and you will be well. I guarantee it.” My most recent cancer recurrence upsets my dear friend, Molly.
I listen with an interesting combination of irritation and sadness. She doesn’t know what I am feeling but she wants to make it better. She is reassured by her own sense of hope, and I think I am supposed to get on board, but I have an impulse to stomp away angrily, alone in my misery. I respect her spiritual beliefs, but I feel misunderstood, my emotions minimized.
I thank her, hang up, and think about hope. It seems so simple to pray and then a miracle will happen. Her prayer makes her feel that she is doing something, that she is effective, and she is very loving however her prayers feel more like a wish, and I am beyond wishes and dreams.
I can’t recall how many recurrences I have had so far, and this one is more uncomfortable than the rest. Each recurrence shatters my foundation and makes me feel conflicted about what to hope for. I have mixed feelings about hope.
It’s not about happy endings with silver linings — I cannot breathe properly. I am tired. Should I hope for my inflamed lymph nodes to shrink? But they will grow back like they have done many times before in my 6-year cancer journey. Hope is supposed to feel good but the best I hope for is to get through a day with some amount of activity that does not exhaust me. Is that enough to sustain me? Hope inspires us to reach upward, but I am not sure what I am hoping for. It changes according to the chaos my body, and consequently my emotional state, is presenting me with.
At a funeral once, I heard my niece’s son-in-law say after a beautiful eulogy, “Gracie, job well done.” I hope for those words to be said for me, but once, I also heard someone say, “Hope is not a plan.” It does not feel real for me to hope, like making a wish, and having it come true without some type of effort on my part.
Can you still have hope when you lack inspiration? I do not hope for good health; I hope for a meal that won’t make me sick. I picked an oracle card recently that called for me to seek happiness. That is as unrealistic as hope right now, and quite frankly, it’s a lot of pressure to feel hope, and to be happy especially when my body is achy, my appetite hampered by nausea and all I want to do is lay down. Isn’t there something a bit more moderate to hope for? And by the way, can happiness exist without hope?
And where does faith fit in? I do believe in a higher power, but feeling so physically exhausted grounds me and makes it especially hard to think of a higher power when I am dragging my feet along the boardwalk while others are jogging and riding their bikes, and showing off their beautiful bodies.
What happens to faith and where does faith fit in with hope? There is a certain predictability that comes with faith. I have faith in my willfulness. I trust that part of me, it has gotten me far in my life. I don’t have faith that Molly will understand my physical and emotional discomfort and just sit with me in this sadness without trying to fix it, but I do have faith in her love for me.
I’m thinking we all like happy endings. Is hope supposed to be accompanied by good results? Is faith in a higher power supposed to mean that that God and other Divine Entities will make everything better? I don’t think it’s Their job to make it all better. Does that mean hope and faith are 2 baseless aspirations? I have faith that my spirit guides are looking after me, but life is still hard and at times, just too hard. Maybe my faith in their existence helps me feel less alone as I move along in this unpredictable cancer journey. Perhaps we think hope and faith are supposed to make things perfect and it doesn’t, instead it gives us strength to endure, learn and evolve.
But what if we didn’t have hope and faith because life is just too hard? Is there a kind of hope and faith that doesn’t reach for the stars and instead more moderate, more in line with our difficulties, needs, and approach to life? I’m not looking for a miracle, I am looking for strength and acceptance and the ability to handle this invasive and deadly disease with grace. It feels more real to me to try to embrace hope and faith to be able to handle our obstacles with greater ease. And that is the difference, no miracles, just strength and endurance. Maybe what we hope for changes and faith is another way of trusting the process, and in the cycle of life.