The Embrace Is The Test

I used to think of myself as a warrior, and of cancer as the enemy.

Didn't realize I could be that dumb.

No, cancer's not pleasant (and having a perpetually broken arm due to metastasis kinda sucks), but it's real, it's what's there...and it's not personal.

Fighting it as if it was a kind of single-combat knightly joust was helpful for awhile, but in the end it was draining.

Learning to embrace this experience, however much I might prefer it to be something else...it's the hardest thing I've ever done.

It's also the most rewarding, because I can, at last, clearly see and feel the blessings in which I have been daily bathed.

I did not see this truth at first,

but know now it's a test:

if you cannot embrace the worst,

you won't accept the best.

This life's a chiaroscuro game,

light and shade defines the rules,

and in our hearts we find the same,

saints and beggars, knaves and fools,

and thus we must take in the whole, drink it down without a flinch

to nourish an expanding soul,

ounce by ounce and inch by inch

until we come to gifted right

that Christ bought, eternal light.

The Five Minute Friday prompt this week is TOGETHER. Hmmm...

Together we have got this far,

together we have chased the sun,

together we have wrecked a bar

or three, just while having fun.

Together we have danced in glee,

together we have wept in sorrow,

but now I fear that there will be

no 'together' on the morrow.

I think I will be leaving soon,

and know that I must document

the mundane done from noon to noon

with a clear precise intent

that taxes, mortgage, these and more

will have no fell surprise in store.

Four minutes of hard truth. Don't want to do THAT again.

Music from the Fab Four, with Let It Be.

Sylvia is delighted to embrace ice cream, especially McDonald's vanilla.