Defining Moment
This story starts with a defining moment. One moment, my husband was in surgery and I anxiously waited for news with my mother-in-law and my stepdad’s mom. We were talking, smiling, and I kept wondering how my kids were doing at their school Christmas concert. The next moment, my life changed.
It started with a hand motion from the surgeon. He brings us to a small, white room with chairs. We sit, he talks; and our life, our future, our hope, changes. The once quiet room is now loud, chaotic, stressful and sad. He said ‘the word.’ Cancer. I lost my breath, and the world changed.
I held my head and tried not to cry, but I couldn’t stop. The doctor kept talking, telling us detail after detail, guess after guess. His professional opinion, to my untrained ears, doesn’t sound too hopeful for a “healthy” 34 year-old father of two, husband of one.
I thought of our wild, passionate, smart, opinionated children – one with autism and one without. I thought, I can not do this alone.
I kept thinking, maybe even saying, “He is the love of my life. I can’t LIVE without him.”
That night was full of tears, sobbing and sadness. It was a terrible, awful night; and the ONE person I needed was in surgery, unaware of his diagnosis.
From then on, until an undetermined time, my happiness is forced or faked. Laughing no longer exists. My chest feels heavy and my heart hurts, because I am holding in the sadness. Those few minutes of quiet before sleep, my eyes leak with tears I spend so much energy holding in all day.
Now, a few short weeks later, I look back at that night and how I jumped to conclusions. In doing so, I killed off my husband. I wrecked our dreams and killed our hope. However, our lives have not stopped. They keep moving forward, and happy moments still happen, good news is shared.
Our dreams have stayed the same, and we have enough of them to last us at least fifty years. I see a happy family of four in our future, but there is a battle to be won first.
Love always wins. I am praying for that.
When placed in a difficult situation, I wonder why we, as humans, automatically jump to the worst conclusions instead of the best. Your thoughts?
Courtney is a wife, mom, teacher, photographer, writer and dreamer. She loves her perfectly imperfect family and all of the adventures they have together. Follow Courtney on her blog,’Our Small Moments.
