Into the Unknown
We’ve got Frozen Fever in our house. Eden has officially caught the bug. Right before she turned three last week, I realized that she knows basically every word to every single song in the movie Frozen. She sings it at breakfast. She sings it while pretending that she’s Elsa while wearing her Elsa Princess dress. She sings it in the bath and then again at bedtime. With our word-for-word memorization of the Hamilton and Frozen soundtracks, I told Ty that perhaps our time would have been better spent with some scripture memory, but whatever. We get what we get.
And even though it’s just a Disney cartoon, there is truth: we must venture into the unknown. We don’t know our future. And we actually have very little control.
I find myself writing this post at 3am, which is totally unusual for me. I’m normally a sound sleeper. Friends like to say that sleeping is my spiritual gift. But it’s really hard to sleep when you find out you’ve got cancer.
A few weeks ago, I felt a lump in my breast. I scheduled a breast exam with my primary care physician. A week later, while I was still waiting for that appointment, some girlfriends put a little bit of pressure on me, so I scheduled a mammogram and an ultrasound.
Ty came with me to my appointment. We sat together and heard the words, “You have a very suspicious, rather large mass in your breast. We’re pretty sure it’s also traveled to some of your lymph nodes. You have cancer.”
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Ty and I sat together in the car after my appointment. We sobbed. We held hands. Through the tears, I said, “Let’s say out loud everything that we’re afraid of. Let’s name these things. I’ll go first:
I’m afraid I’m going to die.
I’m afraid you’re going to have to raise three girls by yourself.
I’m afraid people won’t know how to talk to me.
I’m afraid of looking ugly.
I’m afraid of how this will affect our girls.
I’m afraid of how we’ll pay for all of this.
I’m afraid of being really sick for a really long time.
Ty talked, too. I think that his fears are his to share and his to tell. But it’s safe to say that we are both very afraid.
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I’ve decided to keep an ongoing list. It’s called Little Mercies. I’m noting and writing down the places where I can see God at work in all of this. Let me give you an example. Let me tell you a story about a dog.
In May, during the height of Covid, we decided to get a dog. It was perfect timing: we’d be home for the whole summer. Nobody was going anywhere, so it was the perfect time to train a puppy. Our girls had been asking us for over a year, and they’d be around to do most of the training work. Our beloved little chihuahuas, Hector and Gloria, had passed away a year prior, so the timing felt very good.
I’m going to make a very long (and ridiculously hilarious) story short. In a matter of 4 months, I filled out at least 8 applications for rescue dogs (puppies) and was rejected every single time. Some of the reasons the Pattison family or the Pattison home apparently is just not appropriate for a dog include:
-We have a child under 12 years old. That’s right. UNDER twelve. (Concerns the child might harm the dog).
-We work (We might be gone for too many hours of the day).
-We weren’t able to show records of monthly heartworm vaccinations for our previous dogs. (This one definitely made me feel like I was a sub-par dog owner. I had to remind myself that Hector and Gloria were fifteen years old when they died—and not from heartworm—so really, they lived a long and wonderful life. I had to just Let It Go—ha! Did you see what I did there?)
-We have an electric fence. This one actually got us rejected twice. Once because the dog can too easily ‘be stolen out of the yard’ and once because the rescue director wanted me to be ‘personally offended by electric training on any animal.’ The nutty thing is that our fence is broken, which I explained. But it made no difference: we were already tainted just for the having.
-I was ghosted twice. Filled out an application, was told that my application was approved and sent on to an adoption committee—really?!—and that they’d call my references (yes, references were almost always required) and we’d go from there. My references were never called. In either case. After continuing to inquire, I finally gave up.
It was truly mind-blowing. Don’t they want these animals to be adopted?
I was recounting this story to some folks over dinner. My dear friend Emilee looked and me laughing and asked, “Sarah, did you ever think that the Lord doesn’t want you to get a dog?”
Yes, I did definitely think that maybe the Lord didn’t want us to get a dog. But honestly, that felt ridiculous. Why would he not want us to have this good thing, this thing my family so desperately wanted? What kind of person doesn’t want a family to have a puppy?
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Perhaps bringing God this conversation feels ridiculous to you. Perhaps you’re thinking that I’ve carried it too far and I’m making up correlations that don’t exist. What kind of God cares whether or not I get a dog? Isn’t God more concerned with starving children in Africa or something? Perhaps you even think it’s a little arrogant of me to bring God into my family’s dog decision… who am I to think God cares about my dog?
I guess I take my cue from Psalm 8: “What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.”
My personal, non-scholarly translation: “Who am I that you care about me? You’ve created me as your special treasure, as your honored daughter.”
When you walk with the Lord for a long time, you begin to see how he works. I’ve found a few patterns over the years. The sheep follow him because they know his voice (John 10). When doors open wide and opportunity knocks, it can often be a part of his leading. You perk up and pay attention. In the same way, when I come upon closed door after closed door, it is wise to stop and wait. Even if I don’t want to.
What kind of God doesn’t want my family to get a puppy? A God that knows I’m about to get cancer.
I should probably actually say: A God that knows I’m about to find out that I have cancer. Because I’ve probably had it the whole time. While I was busy filling out every one of those applications, cancer was growing in my breast. While I was cursing the closed doors and trying my hardest to force them open, God was graciously protecting me from something that would add to my hardship; from an added burden and unnecessary responsibility.
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My Little Mercies list is growing. Honestly, most of the things are sweet details that are bigger for me right now than perhaps they’d look on paper to you. But I suppose I’m going to follow my own motto and Choose Happy during this next season, whatever it brings. That doesn’t mean I’m happy that I have cancer. It doesn’t mean I’m going to pretend to be happy when I’m not. But it does mean that I can look for the little mercies in the midst of it. Some days it will be harder to do that than others. Thankfully, I’m not doing it alone.
