PURPOSE
Tuesday, September 16, 2008 at 10:30am | Edit Note | Delete
I always know when its getting close to major procedure/or results time, it usally stands to reason that i will find myself aimlessly wandering around the grocery store wondering what i came for or standing in front of the produce department contimplating for several minutes what breed of tomatoes i should buy; like its a decisoon that will affect the rest of my life.Other times someone will tap me on the shoulder or call "lori " several times before i realize this is my name. I find myself taking several seconds to process who they are (if i have dsipalyed this confused look toward you...i apologize)and no its not ativan induced, its complete brain theft.
I think the brain works that way to protect itself , it is saying "you have something on your mind, unload it, pray, talk , cry, whatever" , its there for a purpose, distraction although helpful at times cannot proccess fear and a grocery list at the same time.,something may implode. My mind has been distracted lately and although a small reprieve from fear.... mellencaully has snuck in , i have had reminders of our past lately ebbing into the present (that is a story for another time) forcing conntimplation to the wha tif's and purpose driven factors of our moment to moment life. I had to take a trip into northvan this weekend (our hometown)spent some time with one of my best friends who still lives there. Everytime i cross the second narrows bridge into nvan i am beckonned to a place that is eerily familiar with no escape and the distance of a foriegn country feeling. I am sure anyone who visits their hometown occassionally gets that feeling of "you can never go home"
My visits in the past have usually consumed thought s of place meaning.that is, when i would drive up mounain highway i would recall my life in order of the landmarks i would pass..Eastview Elementary and the haunting voices of children innocently walking home from school...the sounds of "tv tag" being palyed in the thownhouse complex i grew up in on a warm sunny day...the various friends houses along the way just off mountain hwy...the first home we brought Aslhey home to ...the street in which Darcys best friend was killed a few years ago,The Jack and Jill store my sister and i would buy my dad cigs at the tender age of 9and 6...the Chevron gas station where darcy worked afterschools ...7-11 where we drank"special slurppees" and ate hoagies on fri nights, death defying stunts at lynn canyon. The preschool that is like 100 years old that the old time north vanners would have attended.. the dairy queen darcy would take me to after he finished earning enough money at the chevron. My old highschool( too much stuff there for this blog) ....the cardinal hall darcy and i had our reception at then later became a rec centre where i used to take ashley to diaper gym. Then our first home as a married couple and how my said friend lives exactly one street down with the same address number...................................................................................................................s(sorry for the pause.... phone call from teh oncology dept, for more reminders and updates, and i used to think telemarketers and bill collectors were frustrating phone calls to take...................)
Anyways the purpose of my blog was just that...PURPOSE. Maybe you can help me out with that one. when we moved from nvan it was the right decision for us both financially and spritually, don'rt get me wrong it was a fun place to grow up , a difficult place to stay if you wanted to buy a home and didn't have resources. So we made the move and for some reason i know this is the place my children belong , so it had a purpose but as i drive up and down those childhood roads i wonder "what if " what if we didn't move what would our life look like now,?Now, the streets look different....would this be any different??? i have stopped asking what caused this to happen because childhood cancer has no rhyme or reason, but i have to say that when i meet a new family on the ward one of my first questions is "where are you from" i pay particular attention to the north van and abbotsford ones trying to find correlations...im sure there aren't any but things like pedticieds and power lines go through your head. Then i ask myself "IS THERE A PURPOSE TO ALL THIS? and if there is who's purpose is it to discover? Ahsleys? mine? Darcy's? the kids ? my parents? the world? who is that will learn from this and God knowing please jsut make the lesson or purpose clear so that we get it and my baby can be healed., i wrack my brain daily, saying maybe this is it ? maybe i am supposed to be more comapassionate , or our family must draw close and set an example, maybe ashley is to be a motivational speaker someday, maybe darcy will relax more,maybe her sister wil become a nurse or oncolgist or maybe ia m supposed to write???
I am always searching for peoples's take on purpose. Some will tell me that God has a plan for eveyones life , ok.... so who is this plan for ? Others tell me that God is loving and would never iflict disease or pain on people. that the world is imperfect and we should look forward to Heaven,others say that God answers all prayers, still others say that God doesn''t give us more than we can handle. And yes i know that when this is all said and done perhaps i will have learned a thing or two about pain, coping(ha ha) shock, gratitude,.... some friendships will have grown more intimate, and other will fade into a memory like that of an old childhood friend.
As i dropped Brittanny off at school today i saw a poor little kid being forced to go to school kicking and screaming, clearly a negative first time at school experience, she did not want to be there, did not have any choice in the matter, was scared at what was waiting for her ,I knew how she felt. I said a little prayer for her my hope is that she has the courage to face the day , that she has something to believe in, that she will be comforted by something bigger than herself, that she sees the purpose of school and she comes to embrace whatever school brings for her.
So i ask you after all my meandering "what do you think about purpose? do you think we are meant to go through all the things we go through ,it sounds lofty for the good stuff but what about the bad stuff, why would big bad stuff happen to some then and not others,(although i know we all go through some bad stuff) or is it just life or chance?I know i have been told i ask alot of questions...maybe analyze things too much but please feel free to express/reply your ideas, it really helps.
Ashley goes in tomorrow for step 2 of the procedure , pray for her please , and for us ,our children for our peace of mind for our faith whatever that brings for us, the strenght to deal with it.
Peace and God Bless
Lori
The Journey of a butterfly...Ashleys life has become symbolic of a butterfly, peaceful beautiful and free to fly where the wind takes her. We have a white butterfly that flies around us in the garden in the springtime where the other girls play. Irish folklore tells us that a white butterfly is the rebirth of a deceased child's soul reborn into something even more beautiful than before...our butterfly
June 29 1992 - February 16 2009
Welcome to the Journey of a Butterfly
We invite you to follow along one family's journey through grief and loss, one brave young girl's journey through faith and inspiration, this is not a blog to convert anyone , nor is it a blog about fundraising , it is what i hope will reach another family on a similar journey, we are not experts , i could not give you a magic remedy for how one gets through disease and devestation but it is our story , sometimes gut wrenching other time heartwarming and all of the time, i guarantee, very real. We are not perfect, we struggle daily and i think that the more we connect to one another the more we understand what this journey through life is all about . Sometimes that path is bumpy and we fall down, sometimes we sit and stop a while,or take a step back and other times we pound our fists on the pavement like a lunatic , still other times we find ourselves picking eachother up dusting eachother off and walking alongside them even if only for short time. This blog is dedicated to Ashley , her sisters and every single angel that picked us up along this road.
This is an introduction to the beginning and middle part of our journey the specific blogs are more indepth , the end...well there will never be an end to this journey i've come to realize that , not on this earth, for now we just assimilate it into our life like a hole , a missing limb, a continous ache that you just learn to live with.
When Ashley was about 12 years old she asked if she could go to youth group at a local church , i didn't have any church upbringing but know i craved it throughout my life , this was a rare opportunity and i recognized that if i didn't embrace it now she may lose her interst in it very quickly and beocme a jaded, cynical, stubborn person like her mom. My husband grew up in a very religious (shove it down your throat) kinda religion( i wont mention any names)or maybe it was the way he was raised ? Anyways i encouraged her to go because the community we had moved to embraced this kinda thing so i thought why not? Naturally and shortly after she started attending she was soon encouraging us to go , she had made quite a leadership name for herself there , pionner leader , sunday school helper etc, i was comfortable for the first time in my life going to a church, maybe it was the first word that greeted you as you walked in..."belong" maybe it was because they embraced community and outreach service in our city , dont know, but soon found it very therapeutic, cheaper than a shrink, and our other 3 girls jumped on board pretty quickly, my husband well... a work in progress , he communes with God in a fishing boat he says , although makes many efforts to go even if just for good way to start the week, i was still cynical , felt i wasnt holy enough but went anyways.
Ashley was scheduled to sing a solo in the church choir Dec 16 2007 , i was scared for her, i was sure she got her singing skills from me which was nil at best. She sang beautifully and you couldnt tell she had been complaining of cramps , something i chalked up to girls stuff/growing pains for a couple weeks off and on, she was an active healthy girl. When the performnce was done we got our christmas tree and i took her to the clinic to have it checked out before Christmas , they sent us to our local hosptial for tests , i was worried it was appendix. Darcy, my husband left the hosptial to go pick up our other 3 girls from friends houses , i caught the doctor in the ahallways and asked if the ulstrasound pictures were back, i remember having eye contact with Ashley only feet away from me but far enough away for her not to hear the doctor to so impassionaltely say "its not appendix, it looks like cancer", i have to stop as i write this because it is still one of the 2 biggest shocks in my entire life, i think i ran down the hallways screaming with no sound coming from my throat and not knowing where i was running . I phoned Darcy and words didnt come out of my mouth. Before I knew it we were at out local Childrens Hospital(100km away) meeting oncologiosts , being give an "oncology team" which consisted of a primary nurse, a social worker, a main oncologist and a shrink....wait a minute ...what is an oncologist? yep, a cancer doctor, this was the real thing . we waited 4 days to find out what type we were dealing with ... it was curable 90 % even though she was stage 4 , how the hell can my kid have stage 4 cancer and only a few cramps , it was mind bending. We were thrown stright into a world so foriegn to us , everything stopped ..jobs ..PAC meetings ,carppoling and yes even some friends who"couldn't handle it" it was no longer our own beds , our own home, our own anything. Treatments and life became unbearable , the 90% cure rate was not looking good at any stage throughout our journey , it seemd to be always full of negative news to the point where i couldnt stand the face of her oncologist , it nearly made me want to vomit everytime i saw him...The words they briefed us on as we began this mind altering path was " one of you will grieve through this process and no matter the out come the other will grieve after " they couldn't have been more right.......Ashley insisted on going to church on Christmas eve, two nights before she was to start chemo at the end of the service our pastor came to pray with us , i didn't know many people in the church , but wow did they know Ashley, when we rose our heads from bowing in prayer the whole congregation was surrounding us , i knew at that moment who i was going to need to get me through this ...would he be willing to listen to me...
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