Reflections on Home:

We returned to Boston last night after having been in Nashville for the past two weeks. Victoria has pre-op MRI’s and lab work before her third (and hopefully final) surgery on Tuesday, August 13th. Victoria’s amazing team of doctors has removed the parts of her tumor that could be accessed endoscopically through her nose, so this third surgery will require a craniotomy to access what’s left of it. We would love specific prayers for a complete resection. We REALLY need a full resection so that this beast of a tumor doesn’t grow back. While Victoria’s neurosurgeon is not expecting her to need a spinal fusion, things could change when they get in the OR, so prayers for “no surprises” (unless they are good surprises, of course!) during surgery would also be greatly appreciated. Also, I just now got off the phone with a woman whose 17 y/o son was just diagnosed a week ago with what’s likely clival chordoma. I could hear the worry in her voice and I feel her every emotion and desperation to find the best treatment for her child. Could you all please join us in praying for her son and their family as well?

It felt very strange to go home after being in Boston for so long. I actually got very anxious leading up to our departure and wasn’t sure if I even wanted to go back to Nashville. I honestly can’t say exactly why, but I feel like it had to do with the “responsibilities” of being at home. I’d left so many projects unfinished and the thought of just picking right back up where I left off seemed incredibly daunting. Going “home” shouldn’t incite feelings of panic and dread but how often do we actually allow ourselves to enjoy our own homes? For me, being at home means being constantly on the go: keeping up with laundry, figuring out what to cook, gathering up items that inevitably never get put away after they’re used, re-folding everything that was sloppily shoved in drawers, etc. I do not sit down until I’ve cleaned up everything from dinner. The weight of the responsibility of maintaining a house and fulfilling the needs of everyone in that house took over when I got on the plane to go home so I put on my sunglasses to hide my tears.

The pace at which we live our lives is mind-blowing. How much you can get done in a day is a badge of honor. Thanks to companies like Amazon, we can have anything we need or want at our fingertips in just a few hours. I get so frustrated with my girls when they don’t have patience, but then I realize it isn’t even their fault that they don’t. They were born into a world of instant gratification. They’ve never waited for a “new release” to be back in stock at Blockbuster. They’ve never even had to hear a busy signal on a phone or wait for someone to call them back. If I don’t answer my phone, my kids will text me 50 times until I respond or they’ll track my location to make sure I’m on the way to pick them up because, heaven forbid, they wait 5 minutes. While this behavior frustrates me more than anything, I have to force myself to remember that they don’t know anything else. Their attitudes are a by-product of their environment; the one that I contribute to creating every single day.

After a lot of reflection on the plane, I decided that I was going to allow myself to enjoy my home; to sit in the rooms I spent so long decorating, to not worry about anyone’s expectations of what I should or shouldn’t be doing, to have friends come sit on my patio with me. Then, I actually got home. I was immediately inundated with piles of unsent cancer bracelets, letters reminding me that I needed to renew my car registration, invoices from people who had been working on the house that needed paying, mountains of unopened packages, a broken printer, a huge, coffee-colored stain on a Roman shade in Wren’s room from where rain had leaked in through the 112 year old window, etc. Every time I turned a corner, it seemed like there was something that needed to be fixed.

Then, I saw a large, unopened envelope from the National Institute of Health on the breakfast table. I thought I’d better start there since it had to involve Victoria’s health in some capacity. I flipped through pages of results; lab results, cognitive testing results, neuro exam results, etc. Then I got to the last page which was a form acknowledging Victoria’s registration into the Rare Tumors database for research and future studies. It physically took my breath away to read those words about my own child. The magnitude of the rarity of her tumor hit me and I stopped reading. I put the papers back into the envelope and put them in a drawer. Maybe I’ll revisit them one day when we’re well past treatment. Maybe I won’t ever be able to look at them again. What I immediately knew was that I couldn’t deal with any of the aforementioned tasks regarding the house or anything that was broken. My brain and body needed to turn off. I had my sister sit right beside me one day and make phone calls pretending to be me just so I didn’t have to physically do it myself. Sometimes the easy things aren’t easy and that’s okay.

I did allow myself to enjoy my home. I sat in rooms in which I never sit and caught up with friends. I watched my two girls swim, laugh, and make stupid videos with my three nieces. I let my mother-in-law cook for us and gave my mom her marching orders for how she could help me with Wren and the dog this fall. I let my sister make thermoses full of Paper Planes and bring them over so I didn’t have to go get the ingredients myself. I let my best friend fold my laundry while I sat and critiqued her folding method. Wren and I finished the series Designated Survivor that we started when she was up in Boston earlier this summer. We watched the Olympics and I listened to Travis tell the same story for the 250th time about how he could have been an Olympic diver since he used to beat a guy that actually did make it to the Olympics. Shoutout to Caesar Garcia for not letting a Speedo determine the future of his diving career. Young Travis obviously couldn’t foresee all the tiny cycling unitards in his future or he might have been okay with the Speedo.

All of the above to say, we don’t have to go through life at warp speed. That happens regardless. Enjoy the things into which you’ve invested your time and energy. We should actually earn badges of honor every time we give ourselves a break and just sit and breathe. When easy doesn’t feel easy, it’s not a reflection of failure, weakness, or laziness. We need to allow ourselves the privilege of rest without guilt so we can be ready for whatever comes next.