Spring is here which means an end to my cancer treatments. THAT is good news! So I am continuing to rest, but am also building back in some activity. Not too much, but some.
Not much else to report. Because END OF TREATMENTS is big news. ;-)

March is looking like a month of "lasts". My last chemo was postponed from Feb. 25 to March 2. And my last radiation looks like it'll be March 30 or so, depending on weather delays.
I'm looking forward to being done with everything regarding treatment for cancer. I think that goes without saying, although I just said it. Again.
Spring is around the corner and we're ready. I've become so used to short winters that this winter seems especially long. Temps around Alabama have usually already started climbing by late February. Come on sunny and warm days!
May March pass amazingly quickly! Please!

As I sit here this Sunday morning with  my quart of coffee (yes. quart. litre. a lot), I'm reflecting on the events of the past year. February 4 (last week) marked one year since my diagnosis with breast cancer. One year ago. To remember the emotions hitting me at that time is enough to raise my blood pressure. So, I won't. What I will remember is the way all my care was orchestrated and fell into place and felt specifically tailored for me. I will remember in spite of the weather delays in getting appointments, everything was going to be okay. I will remember the trauma of my first biopsy made it clear to my dear friend Ami that she was going to make it a point to be with me for any potentially traumatic appointment. And she was. And if she couldn't be, Anne-Marie was there. Or Kristi would pop her head in the mammogram room to see if I was okay - taking a break from her pharmaceutical job where she was mixing MY meds for my chemo. My friend making my medicine. Perfect.
I will remember the day of my first chemo receiving so many texts and messages saying, basically, "You got this, Lisa", over and over again until I actually began believing it. I will remember coming home to flowers, cards, gifts and food that first day. I will remember having so many meals delivered to my door that now the list has exceeded 100 meals. That's around 10 meals a month! For a whole year!
I will remember the kindness of my workplace. The space and time they give me to recover and still do my job. And when I fail, the grace they show me. Wow.
I will remember the two weeks straight I got to spend with my little sister Kristy when she came to take care of me after the mastectomy. The diligence with which she watched my "drains" and kept them clear and wrote down when I took my meds, and tended to my every need. I will remember the visits from my older sister Janet and her smiles, the games we played, the attention she gave her nephews so I could rest. The movies, but mostly her smiles.
I will remember the time my parents gave me - both sets. My parents sat with me, folded laundry, fixed broken things around the house, and loved on me. My in-laws sent notes, love, texts, gifts, and visits, too. What a blessing to enjoy your family!
I'm leaving people out and I don't want to do that, so I'll stop here. Just know that you are remembered. I have a list. For real.
Now I face the end of this journey. The good end. One more chemo - last chemo - on February 25. Radiation therapy starts this week on the 11th. I'll be ready for a big celebration Spring Break - by that week (which is March 27-April 5), I should be finished with all cancer treatments.
Above all, I have to say, again, God is always good all of the time. I believe that now.

Autobiography:

There once was a little girl who had few words. The words she had were all tucked away in her head. Tucked away like that they grew like apples on a tree. More and more trees and apples grew until she had whole buckets full of words. Enough to start creating a wonderful world. Right there in her head. What things she saw. What wondrous places she went. And what lovely friends she had.
One day a strong wind blew through her apple orchard and knocked all the apples off the trees. It was so sad. The little girl fell to her knees mid-dance and started crying. There were no more words. And the ones she had were rotting on the ground. For a long time the little girl walked around silently, wondering if she would ever dance in her wonderful world again.
A boy showed up one day out of nowhere. He went over to the girl and took her hand. He asked her to walk with him for a while. As they walked, the wind grew colder and the sky grew cloudy. She didn't like this place. It was noisy and cold. But the boy's hand was warm, and his grip on her was strong, and comforting.
She was not in her head anymore. She was in the real world. Sometimes it was sunny and warm, and sometimes it was cold and rainy. And the boy was always with her.
Her words slowly came back. Lots of words on the once bare apple trees in her head. But instead of creating worlds for herself like she used to do. She let the words out. Good luck getting her to shut up.

The journey continues, but I feel I'm in the homestretch fighting and recovering from this illness. Radiation should begin before the end of the month and will last for about 6 weeks. All treatments should be over by Spring Break! (which in Alabama is the end of March). Celebrations will be ushering in the spring around the Theus household. :-)

The last year has been one of the toughest we've weathered as a family. What it has shown us, though, is how large our family really is. The four of us are not in a small little row boat navigating the rough waters. We are actually on quite a large barge with lots of loving, praying, supporting extended family. And the waters of this illness are beginning to calm. Thank you!
Oh, and for all of you who have asked, there is an updated meal schedule for us. (http://www.takethemameal.com -- username: theus -- password: lisa). Thank you for feeding us, too! You have no idea what a blessing it has been, not only to eat the great food you've brought, but to enjoy your presence in our home as well, no matter how brief your visit. :-)

The events of our lives can only be there to mark us. To make us stronger. To seemingly defeat us and then, somehow, turn into something like victory. To give us just enough hope to keep us fighting. Sometimes our fighting is just a scratching at a bare wall while we lay face-down on the ground, but at least we've lifted our hands from our sides and we are trying. We may crawl, but at least we're moving.
Depression feels like that. I drift in and out of it. Mostly out, but sometimes it seems to completely drown me. Thank God for David. No one in the Bible writes more eloquently and honestly as he. The Psalms have been my favorite passages of the Bible since I could read.
Others write well, too. I have been reading excerpts from poems, books, snippets of life written on the back of grocery lists... One such is a paragraph sent to me by a dear friend from a book by C.S. Lewis called "That Hideous Strength" - that's a book with some serious punch. Well worth the read. This paragraph sort of describes the complexity of walking with Christ; of seeing the old turn to the new. Of not really grasping what has changed, and whether the change is even good yet, but knowing things are different. Reminds me of another C.S. Lewis book where, in describing Aslan, Mr. Tumnus says, "Aye. He's not safe. But He's good."

"The mould under the bushes, the moss on the path, and the little brick border, were not visibly changed. But they were changed. A boundary had been crossed. She had come into a world, or into a Person, or into the presence of a Person. Somthing expectant, patient, inexorable, met her with no veil or protection between... This demand which now pressed upon her was not, even by analogy, like any other demand. It was the origin of all right demands and contained them. In its light you could understand them; but from them you could know nothing of it. There was nothing, and never had been anything like this. And now there was nothing except this. Yet also, everything had been like this; only by being like this had anything existed. In this height and depth and breadth the little idea of herself which she had hitherto called 'me' dropped down and vanished, unfluttering, into bottomless distance, like a bird in a space without air...
The largest thing that had ever happened to her had, apparently, found room for itself in a moment of time too short to be called time at all."
 -- C.S. Lewis "That Hideous Strength"

Regarding my journey to wellness... I have two more rounds of heavy duty chemo, and will be finished with that in January. I'll take a short break and begin 6 weeks of radiation - a short burst of it daily, 5 days a week. After that they tell me I need time to recover before reconstructive surgery. We still have months to go, but every moment God is working. And He is always good.

"She was beautiful, but not like those girls in the magazines. She was beautiful, for the way she thought. She was beautiful for the sparkle in her eyes when she talked about something she loved. She was beautiful, for her ability to make other people smile, even if she was sad. No, she wasn't beautiful for something as temporary as her looks. She was beautiful, deep down to her soul. She is beautiful." -- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Thank you, Jennifer Gamble, for sharing this nugget of wisdom this week! Because I miss my hair. (Hair keeps your head warm when it's cold, and well, my eyelashes and eyebrows are thinning now, too).