Anniversary....

Twenty years ago, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was the beginning of a long journey into a foreign land, a place with its own language, customs, dress, behaviors, and residents. I became a kind of dual citizen, I suppose, with one foot in the time and place before cancer and one in the aftermath. In these decades, I have grown stronger, kinder, gentler, and much more aware of my own frailties. I remember someone saying once in those early days that I was “brave.” I felt nothing like that, but I was carried, I know, by the love and prayers of others. I had lived a good life in those years before cancer, productive, helpful, useful, involved in good and important things, I like to think. But I had also taken on a lot that was not always life-giving. 

One of the great gifts of cancer for me was a reckoning of time. I knew in a different way that my time is limited; and I knew that I wanted to make the most of it. So I let some things go. I made new priorities. I reordered how I spent my precious time. Over the years, some of the superfluous crept back in, some of the busy-work, some of the things that seemed to separate me from God. In this anniversary year, I am again reassessing what it is I need to do. I am leaving behind some things that were good and right for a time, but not forever. I am taking up new work that seems a true calling. I am living as though each day is a gift – and of course, it is, but we often lose sight of that. So I am cooking for my family, taking up new work as a court-appointed special advocate for children, preaching and pastoring, gardening, sewing, and giving thanks every day for being alive. 

I will not die an unlived life. 

I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire. 

I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me, 

to make me less afraid, more accessible, 

to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise. 

I choose to risk my significance; 

to live so that which came to me as a seed goes to the next as a blossom 

and that which came to me as a blossom, goes on as fruit.

                                                                                                        Dawna Markova