The choices life presents are mostly humdrum.

Should I have coffee or tea?

This parking spot or that?

And really, even those decisions are often made and continued in perpetuity.

I’m a coffee drinker.

This is my parking spot.

..so routine that I can be distressed when I DON’T get my usual.

Who took my parking spot!?

Until then the jolt comes that disrupts my whole life.

“You have cancer in your body.”

The tables I had carefully set are turned over and smashed. My life is disrupted.

No, let me be clear:

My life is threatened as truly as a gun to my head. All alarm bells are sounding. And sleep is a stranger.

And the day comes when it’s my normal. Normal, as I’ve learned, it more elastic than I realized.

My faith reassured me and I held on to it. I focused on the choice for life, narrowing my attention to this moment and the next. The cancer wasn’t the only thing in my life, but it got first consideration for most things.

This weekend I went to a women’s cancer retreat, which I renamed cancer camp. It was led by counselor/social worker group leaders. Talking with other people that had already passed through the alarm-bells situation was helpful.

Hey, I drink coffee. But there are choices within coffee. Sugar? Stevia? Decaf? Iced?

Living with cancer or post-cancer treatment has choices too. Hearing other’s choices and experiences was so refreshing. Most people don’t have to enter the lair of cancer and tame that monster. It’s hard to even think about. But my fellow campers have and do, every day.

My cancer monster had to be harnessed, and shrunk. I put it on a leash and carried it with me, rather than it pushing me around. It can now fit in my pocket and quietly travel along with me. I’d rather it had not come, but since it’s here I want to make peace with it.