Perseverance

I celebrated being 2 months in remission on Sunday! God is SO good!
The funny thing is... I had not even realized that it was my 2 month anniversary of going in to remission until I woke up to this sign...

It's crazy how much cancer changes your life. Often for the better.

I've learned what's important in life.

I've learned to prioritize a lot better.

I've learned not to waste a lot of time.

And one of the most important things I've learned is how important it is to tell other people how much they mean to you; tell people you love them.

When I was first diagnosed I found it really easy to look at all the things going wrong in my life and compare them to things going right in other people's lives and sit and curse awhile. But this changed rather quickly for me. I wanted to have a positive attitude through it all, but also making sure that I wasn't hiding my real emotions. 

I am still not upset about getting cancer—I'm not depressed, I'm not disappointed, I don't blame God, or wish that things were different. I still think that there are things that cancer taught me that I never would have seen otherwise; I still think that cancer is a good teacher.

But that doesn't mean that I'm particularly happy about it, or that I should be. 

I learned so much about what it means to have perseverance.

Perseverance is not continuing a task you enjoy, it is by definition, continuing a task despite your continuing dislike for it. 

Being able to persevere does not mean that you necessarily have to be optimistic, but you definitely cannot go around complaining and call that "persevering." I think that in order to claim having perseverance through a cancer battle you must have a certain bit of acceptance for the situation.

I mean, I guess what I am trying to say is that I probably would not be learning anything worthwhile if I liked having cancer. I think that cancer is worthwhile because it is so awful—and it's not until times like there—where I HATE treatments, and I DETEST going to the doctor, that character can really be built.

It has been exactly 102 days since my diagnosis of cancer. That is 3 1/4 months, or 13 weeks, or 2,184 hours—however you want to think of it.

Since then I went through 6 weeks of chemo, helped bring a chemo buddy to Christ before she passed away, spent 3 weeks in Romania, and have started radiation treatments back up.

I have learned so many medical terms that it would take an unbelievable amount of time and space to type them all out on here. 

All I can say is that some times the worst thing in your life may contain seeds of the best.

(Blog inspired by something that I read)