Dear God, From 23-Year Old Me

Dear God,

I want to ask if You can be with me always. Allow me to feel Your love and warmth pouring into my soul, like melting gold filling the depths of my heart. Can I hold Your hand when I am nervous and scared? Can I ask You to help me get through the loneliness of the night? My room is too small to ask my parents to stay; they won’t get any rest anyway with nurses coming in for vital signs and blood draws.

I’m not quite sure what is going on with my liver. I am whispering to my body to protect it during chemotherapy – build some type of protective glass-case shield around it, but who are we kidding? Blood naturally passes through. Makes sense that it’s getting messed up a little. Brain is excellent. Kidneys are excellent. Just the poor liver getting out of hand, an innocent bystander taking all the gunfire shots in this war. All organs and tissues need to toughen up and remain resilient. Can we do that?

23-years old. No smoking. No recreational drugs. Social drinking the equivalency of one strawberry margarita every four months during my time in college if you average them all out evenly. You can probably tell I’m trying to reason this out, because I thought I kept a relatively healthy lifestyle. Ah, but the absence of sleep. And working overtime on a lot of things. That could have been it.

I am not angry at You. I think I’m just starting to realize that it takes events like these to put into perspective how precious life can be. And how I desire it so much now. But it is hard to live it to the fullest within the confining walls and restraints of a hospital. My idea of living it to the fullest was traveling, becoming a teacher, being passionate about the work I do … all I can do now is simply dream about these things in a bed. So for now, I live vicariously through movies and books in my cocoon, hoping to emerge as a butterfly one day from all this. I begin planning for my life after cancer, because I assume I will survive. Moving ahead and forward is better than pausing forever.

I know everyone has their time to go, but I don’t think now is my time. I am quite certain of this. As much as I want to be up in Heaven with You someday, feeling endless joy and who knows – eating all you-can-buffets all the time — I’d like to feel the rhythm of the Earth for as long as I can – even through all the chaos that we go through on land that pales in comparison to the perfection of Heaven. Why? Because my loved ones and friends are here, and I don’t want to part with them anytime soon. Because there is still so much left to be done. I want to be playing checkers or chess with other elderly folk someday, cranking our necks to watch meteor showers … becoming an old cat lady with her grey, “salt and pepper hair” wrapped up in a bun.

I spent my 23rd birthday in the hospital. I wished for one thing, and though it’s bad luck to reveal what the wish is …. You probably knew exactly what I desired.

I shed my fears away tonight, and ask for calm and peace. Bravery in the morning for procedures. Courage when my doctors reveal more information with results. Luck so that chemotherapy is not further delayed by complications.

And so, my heart is longing for You. As Mother Teresa once said, the final analysis is between You and me. Will You be there for me so that one day I may be a living testimony to all the cancer patients of tomorrow?

Love,
Janet