Satisfied
I came home from Houston on December 26th, and I found myself with an urge to nest, similar to what I sensed in pregnancy. I remember right before our first child, Esther was born fifteen years ago, I felt an impulse to clean out every closet and cabinet in our house, purge the garage, and perfect all things domestic. On top of that, I was aware of a deep desire to create a sweet little nursery, a safe and quiet space for our new addition.
I’m experiencing that same urgency now, with no baby in sight. Since I came home in December, I’ve had the house’s interior painted, ordered a roomful of new furniture, replaced doors, rugs, light fixtures, and shades. I’ve purged, rearranged, and purchased.
And I have noticed a pattern. I call it the When You Give a Mouse a Cookie Phenomenon. I paint the walls, and now I see the shades and decide they need to go. I purchase a new chair, and now our old side table is too short. A new rug? Well, promptly, the pillows don’t coordinate.
So, in the middle of this celebratory project, one ugly truth has bubbled to the surface:
I’m never satisfied.
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When I was in Houston, a friend of a friend came to my apartment to trim my hair.
Hair is a big deal for cancer patients. When I sat in the radiation waiting room with other women that had just finished chemo, most days, someone inevitably inquired about my hair: it was longer than the other patients’. “Didn’t you have chemo?” they would ask.
And I would explain again that I had a weird cancer story, so, yes, I had had chemo, but it had been over a year prior. I had a years’ worth of hair on my head when all of the other patients had about two months’ worth. My timeline was off.
My hair grew into a curly mullet while in Houston, so I sat in the bathroom of my apartment on a stool while a perfect stranger trimmed my hair. She snipped just a bit here and a bit there to shape it (I look a little like a dandelion as it grows—a curly-headed poof ball) as I complained about my hair.
It’s common for hair to come back post-chemo as a totally different texture than you’ve had your whole life prior. I had this wild, thick, carefree, curly hair sprouting out, and there is definitely a learning curve on how to manage it. It’s short, unruly, and disobedient.
You’re going to have to be patient, Sarah, she said. There is no quick fix here. You’re just going to have to enjoy the journey as it grows.
But I begrudged it. I wanted it to grow faster and get longer. I wanted it to stop fluffing up in certain places. Then, in February, about a month after I came home, I noticed that clumps of hair were coming out in the shower. When I wore a black sweater one day, hundreds of tiny, short hairs were all over the shoulders and back. It was all so familiar, and my stomach churned at the thought of it.
Am I losing my hair again? I asked my Oncologist.
Maybe, he replied. Hair thinning or hair loss can be a side effect of the new drugs you’re on.
I was incredulous. To be on the other side of cancer and still lose your hair is a gut punch.
And now I find myself longing for the very thing I was just wishing away.
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I recently told someone that I feel like my days are too full, that a sense of balance always seems just outside my reach. Ty and I were going over our calendars together, and I bemoaned tomorrow’s packed day, which was supposed to be a day off work. I had intentionally set a day aside to catch up with some things at home. Instead, it was a day full of good things but too full. Bible study, doctor’s appointment, lunch with a friend, counseling session, workout with a trainer, an appointment with a person to measure my windows for shades. I felt suffocated.
Ty sat across the table from me as I had an existential crisis about my feeling of unrest in these hurried days.
I said I wanted a different, slower rhythm when I came home from Houston, I cried. But here I am, and I’m as frantic as ever.
Ty looked across the table and took my hands in his. What I’m about to say to you is in love. It may be hard to hear, but… Nobody puts those things on your calendar but you, babe.
I know. He’s not wrong. I am my own worst enemy.
I discussed this issue with a woman a few clicks ahead of me: her kids are all grown and out of the house. She told me that she thought once her last child graduated, her schedule would change, and she would get some of her time and balance back. But what she saw was that nothing changed, and that’s when she realized: it wasn’t her kids. It wasn’t her job. It wasn’t her schedule.
It was me, she said. It was always me.
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The fear of the Lord leads to life, then one rests content, untouched by trouble.
Proverbs 19:23
In his book on Proverbs, Tim Keller writes,
Those who fear God find God satisfying, and they are contented. The second phrase literally says that they, “spend the night” content, meaning that God is like a haven for the storm tossed.
How is it possible to live life untouched by trouble? This does not say that we will not have trouble, only that it will not overthrow our contentment. Trouble can take anything away from you except God. Therefore, if God is to you a greater safety, a deeper security, and a more powerful hope than anything else in the world, you fear no trouble. Depending on God in trouble is a spiritual skill that can only be learned in trouble. Difficulties take away earthly comforts and then, through prayer and reflection on the Word, we are driven closer to God to get his unique consolations. This process is long and in many parts painful, but the fruit is a spiritual poise that no trouble can dislodge.
There isn’t anything wrong with freshening up my house or highlighting my hair or going to lunch with a friend, or trying to strengthen this post-cancer treatment body. But there is a heart issue at play here, and it is the same beat of the same drum I’ve steadily heard over the last twenty years, pre-cancer, during cancer, and where I sit today:
Can I be content right here, right now, exactly where I am with precisely what I have?
Can I be happy with thinning, frizzy, curly hair? With a side table that’s a bit too short? With windows that have no shades? Can I feel safe and content with frightening, quarterly body scans at a Cancer Hospital? With lymphedema in my right arm? With an unknown future?
Do you need to answer the same question? Can you be content with the husband you have, not the one you think he should be? Can you be happy in your current home, not the bigger one you feel you need? Can you appreciate the season of being a mom to toddlers or middle schoolers or teenagers without wishing it away, longing for the next season of life that seems like it will be better?
Will I always be looking for the next thing that I think will satisfy me? Will I always be wishing away the now, trying to get to the future?
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A friend invited me to the Ash Wednesday service at her church this week. As the pastor dipped his finger in ash and wrote a cross on my forehead with it, he said: Sarah, from dust you came and from dust you will return.
Boy, don’t I know it.
We all die, he said in his homily. There are two choices. You can live for yourself and then one day die, or you can die to yourself and truly live.
I think that my impromptu haircutter was right: it’s all about the journey. Indeed, I’ve spent the last two years trying to avoid that final destination for which we all have a ticket—I don’t want my train to leave yet; I want more of the journey.
I’d love to tell you that I always wake up with a beautiful spirit of gratitude just to see the delights of another day, but that would be a lie. I still get cranky with my kids, irritated at my husband, and mad when the dog shooshes in the house. I look in the mirror and see a woman who looks and feels twenty years older than she did two years ago. I see windows with no shades.
But I see so much more: I see a messy house because we are an active, busy family. I have the gift of more days with them. I see hair that is thinning, but it’s because these medications that cause my hair to thin also keep cancer at bay. I see a remarkable, exceptional group of women at work that enables me to leave the studio a few days a week for doctor’s appointments and space to breathe. And in one month, I fly back across the country where doctors have the equipment and capability to walk alongside me in this journey, where I hope to hear that all is still well.
Can I be content right here, right now, exactly where I am with precisely what I have?
Yes. A resounding yes. Let’s savor this journey together.
Satisfied,
