Don't Waste Your Cancer

Laurie asks: “The drama queen in you has been holding out on us all these years...are you making up for lost time?”  and Joy adds, “You have found that writing voice, Anne.”  I say, YES.  But I want to tell you what it took: a dumb prayer, a slap in the face, and a Facebook community that gives me purpose. I have tried to write before. People in my life, especially Robert, have kept annoyingly insisting I write. And I dabbled, really, trying with many false starts, but I just couldn’t make it happen. I didn’t have a purpose, a readership, didn’t feel like I had anything at all to add to the world’s many words.

And then, this summer, I prayed a prayer that I shared with some of you, who started praying with me: “God, I feel like I am in transition now the kids are gone. Where do you want me to go? What do you want me to do?” NEVER PRAY THIS PRAYER. I assumed I would search out some new avenue of ministry in Oaxaca, down the street somewhere, you know, just slide into something. HAH. How could I know of the beast that had already slid into me, moving me to yet another new culture without me knowing it? My friend Vasti and I had even started the coolest ministry: breakfast with women hungry for God, and we had a year of cool topics planned. I was on a roll. I thought.

Then, Robert’s back broke. Well, that was years ago, but like my cancer, it had gone undetected. In February we flew to California for his surgery, just for a month, we thought. HAH. We found out we were moving to Canada while on the road from California to Texas to talk to the kids about my sudden diagnosis. Like I said elsewhere, I felt a tornado had picked me up and moved me to Oz, I mean Kansas, I mean Canada, where the cornfield lies dead in my backyard.

Chemo started, and we had lunch at Conversations Cafe with friend Stephen. In his usual, blunt way, (like Dr Blue-and-Brown. I just love unempathetic men.) He drills me: “How are you doing emotionally with this? Ok? Good. Because this is not about your cancer. ”  (My friend Mark just recommended a book called  Don’t Waste Your Cancer, and maybe Stephen  read it, but I think not. He doesn’t need a book. I just happen to be surrounded by unempathetic men.)  (Uh huh, you know who I mean.) (And fortunately Stephen has the most caring, empathetic nurse-hearted wife in the whole world, so it’s all good, and I think I need some thought bubbles here for all these parentheses). And so there is Stephen, insisting that I start writing, and all I feel is a slap in the face. The cancer card is just NOT working on this guy. That’s his gift, you know. To not play to those kinds of cards. And it worked, Stephen. You got me going.

I actually set up a blog with help from friend, Blogger Queen Jamie. And that might still happen. So far it has one reader: Stephen, and zero posts. But meanwhile it is really you, my Facebook community, that was the missing spark, putting up with me even when I posted from the WRONG page, taking off poor Robert’s eyebrows. I know all of you every one, and now I can write to you, in English, in Spanish, in pictures, in transparency. You gave me my voice. You uncloseted the Drama Queen. So I just want to say, keep up the comments, which spur me on, and THANK YOU. Prayer has been answered, but not in Oaxaca. No, that would have been too easy. So, in Oz, then, with its penchant for unempathetic men.