Surrender

Everything that could be in place is in place now. I have lined up a surgeon we have confidence in, have had the biopsies and the MRIs to help us understand what we’re dealing with, have scheduled the surgery at the earliest possible date. We have left our kids in the care of our dear friends. My partners have the Cultivating Leadership meeting well in hand and are right now moving furniture in the Hall near my house. Keith has driven us to the airport. Rob is driving to Auckland to be with Michael during the surgery. My bag is packed with 3 different sorts of nightwear (because I don’t know what the fashionable mastectomy patient is wearing this season) and a fluffy robe that reminds me of Dolce. There are so many moving pieces to the next week, and my hands are off all of them. There is nothing more to do.

And there’s a way that there is an ease in all that. I don’t think I really have understood what surrender is about until now. I have had moments of it, when the anxiety about missing my connecting plane dropped away because there was nothing I could do about it, when the logistics are as finished as I can get them and now it’s just about moving through. But I’ve never had this feeling about something that has created such anxiety in me. All week I’ve been imagining the pre-op time—the drawing of guide lines on my body, the pick lines, the oxygen tubes—with something that approaches terror. Now I see that same room, the same activity, and I my heart doesn’t race so fast. Now as I picture it I have the sense that these people who do their jobs well will be busily having just another day at the office as they paint on my body, cut and stitch. All I need to do is lie still. Surely I’m up for that task. One breath and then the next breath until finally I’m breathing into a new body, healing what has been silently ailing me for some time.

So I feel quiet on this plane to Auckland. I am on a moving sidewalk that goes through this little tunnel of misery and hopefully takes me to the large and beautiful cancer-free theme park on the other side. The love and support from all of you to all of me drifts about me like a warm blanket in an icy room. As I sit very still and peacefully, I can picture your words and your love weaving around me, helping to boost my courage and deepen my sense of peace. (If you’d form a protective layer around my lymph nodes, that would be special help…)

You’ll hear from us again some time tomorrow when I’m out of surgery healing. Until then, I hope that you breathe each breath more deeply, that you love the people around you a little harder, and that you relish each healthy cell in your body.