This is the phrase I heard for five months while the medical field tried to find out what this "lump" was at the base of my neck. Time and experience told these professionals that it probably was, indeed, nothing. But not in my case, and my body proved this phrase wrong time and again throughout the years. In these months of not knowing, for a woman just 40 years old with a 10 and a 9 year old daughter and son, I was sadistically introduced to the gray area of life that I would forever have to acknowledge. Imagination gone wild - "What if I have cancer? What if I die? What if? What if?" The "What ifs" of my mind took over reason and spun into fear, a place I did not like.
To offer reason and comfort as she always does, Eleanor asked me one day, "What if you have cancer? What will you do?" This was a defining moment in my life, for at that very moment a clarity came to me carried by grace and the answer was as true as anything I have every really known: nothing. Nothing different. I would live my life as I'm living it today. I would drive the kids to school, go to my job, drive the carpools, do the laundry, cook the meals, live and laugh and love with my family. At that moment, I decided to live my life as if it was a choice. Because it is.
"It's probably nothing." That phrase has ceased to have meaning for me. It doesn't matter if IT is something or not; it's what we do with our lives everyday that matters in the end anyway.
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