What About That Gray Area?

The gray areas of life have never appealed to me. My daughter, Anna, is the same way. When learning to tell time there were constant questions about the clock, and hearing, “What time is it?” was incessant. One day I said it was about 2:45. “What does ‘about’ mean?” It didn’t take long for me to get into teaching her that it meant to round off time and numbers before I heard, “I don’t like rounding off.” Now there’s a girl after my own heart! In fact, on the day she was born, the doctor was explaining different scenarios to the birth which involved things from waiting until my labor might decided to kick in, or whether to induce, etc. Nervous, anxious, and ready to get going, I asked her exactly what time the baby would be born. No rounding off. No gray area. How silly is a question like that, but in that very raw moment my mind hit “Default” and I was my real self.

The real me, the one who wants to treat the wonders of life as if they were a pie baking in the oven, was fully exposed in the first two years of my cancer. Little did I know in the beginning months that I had always been living in a gray area, as we all are everyday. But it wasn’t until after I had my “first and final” treatment when more metastasis showed up in my neck that this cancer thing might never be over. Yikes, I had never thought that would happen. Then the tumor marker in my blood said there was more cancer in my body, yet no cancer could be seen. What?! More unknowns? More shades of gray? Trying my patience and fortitude like nothing I’ve ever known, I had to sit down with the gray and have a look-see.

I had been living my life thinking that I was in control and that by sheer force alone I could make all things white or black – clear as day. No unknowns, no gray areas, no things that would be out of my willful, intent and mind. What folly! What ego! Truth be told there’s precious little that I have ever been in control of, most of all, the things that really matter. It has been true to this day that there are gray areas in my “cancer life” that have yet to be made clear. The gray area describes more and more of life than I realized, and to admit that, to succumb to that reality is humbling, and ultimately freeing. And so the space that I now have that was previously taken up with this internal struggle, gives me room to sit in the gray area and see that God is there, too.
The gray area has taught me so many things: humility, patience, faith, wisdom, perseverance, and trust.