Late March

It is snowing outside again today - big flakes backed by a grey sky and freezing temperatures. Even though we have lived in Northern Alberta for eleven years now, winter still feels long, each and every year. I grew up in Southern Alberta where there were always tulips in early April and we never wore snowsuits (or even coats) for Halloween. Probably only four to six weeks less of winter a year, but enough of a difference to make me feel trapped after the five and a half or so months we get here. I'm dreaming of bare feet on grass. I quit facebook, probably not forever, but for well over a week now. My mind needed some extra space, and I don't have the self-discipline to stop checking on my own, so quitting it was. I'm craving a lot of quiet which is ironic for a woman who homeschools her three children, has a nine week old puppy and is living out the last few weeks of full on winter. I'm trying all my get through this season tricks that are available to me.

Running usually helps me get through this period of the year and I'm missing the mental clarity it brings to me. I've been thinking much about running because yes, I'm missing how it makes me feel but also because I feel like I have just run a race. A race I didn't sign up for and I didn't know how long it was going to be.

This is true of any tragedy, of any trauma, of any hardship that comes and surprises us I think. For anything you have to do that you really would rather not have to handle. Any race you would rather not have to run.

The actual running of the race is the really hard and scary part. You have to push yourself, you use all your positive thinking mind tricks, you tell yourself you aren't tired and that heck yes, you can go a lot further. You tell yourself you are strong, you are brave, you are not a victim. Because you are, but also because if you didn't think you were before, you have to be now.

You have to surrender yourself to the process, to God, to faith and hope. You give yourself over to the belief that good will come from this. Because the alternative just doesn't jive with your soul.

Of course there are times where you break down, where you think you can't do this anymore. Times when you depend on the medics and the volunteers who pass out water and your family and friends who helped you train and are cheering you on, even if they don't really understand running at all.

After you are patched up, cheered on, taken care of, you keep going because you aren't ready to give up. Mostly you do pretty well and don't break down too often,  and you think I'm okay, I'm fine, I'm not tired. I can keep doing this shit like I was born to handle it. This goes on for varying lengths of time and involves random changes in the course.

You keep going because you are strong, you are brave yes, but also because you are tenderhearted. Because you have the will to live and grow and heal. You learn all kinds of things about God and your self you weren't sure you ever wanted to learn. You make it through things that are taking every ounce of will you have.

Then one day the race is over, at least for now.

And whatever your race is that you didn't choose and didn't know how long it would be, when it is over you are tired. Maybe it was only a half marathon instead of a full or maybe you had to do the whole freaking iron man. Anyone who has trained for these types of runs knows, you lie to yourself to get yourself through. No I'm not tired. I can keep going. This hill is no big deal. But when you let yourself stop, when the race is done, it comes flooding in. Tired muscles, tired lungs, tired self.

So here I am in late March. Tired. Feeling acceptance about this messy middle, the place where I can't feel all the gratitude I know I will feel when I've sat here long enough to catch my breath, when I've stopped racing long enough to have recovered a bit more.

It's my nature to rush this, just like the last few weeks of winter, to wish it away, instead of learning from where I am at. So for now I tell myself, spring is coming, everything just needs a bit more rest.

So...

(Originally written for facebook) I've got some not awesome news and that is that I have cancer. I haven't been very public about this yet as I wasn't sure until recently where this was headed (and hoping it would just be a little blip) so I wasn't feeling the desire to make it 'facebook public' so to speak. The world feels a little crazy right now and the last thing I would want to do is add to people's feelings of overwhelm or take away from anything else currently going on. Instead my intention is to hopefully increase compassion and connection for whatever is going on in your own life. I tend to have a lot of thoughts about this right now so if you are interested here are some of them.

As it has become apparent this won't be the little blip I hoped, I still debated about keeping this very quiet and asking people not to share but there were two issues with that. The first very practical one is my husband is not a private person and a part of how he lives is being very open. Therefore I want to be somewhat open here too so people who know both of us aren't only hearing things from him and people who I am close to but he isn't aren't left in the dark.

The second issue is that we live in an interesting time of facebook and instagram and all other sorts of social media. Overall truly I love social media - often I think it spreads joy and hope and connection and provides a place to get some empathy or learn about something new, support a cause you are passionate about or heck, even just good suggestions for what to read next.

However, I am getting closer to forty and as I have aged this has become a life truth: hard things happen to everyone. Everyone you know has either recently had or is having or will in the future be having a hard time. This is just a part of life, there aren't any exceptions I have observed, just as I believe joyful things happen to everyone as well, if we can have the eyes to see them.

Now social media doesn't always make it look that way because hard things are often very private, as private or more private than the things that bring us the utmost joy. Here is why: perhaps your hard time has to do with your child or your partner or your sibling. Perhaps it has to do with finances or health issues we find embarrassment around or our childhoods. Maybe it is something you feel shame about so isn't safe to put out there for everyone's input. These are things we can talk to our most inner circle about but they are not things most of us talk about online. Because they aren't just ours to tell and most of the people in our online worlds don't need to be privy to the details. The details cannot make sense outside of a close relationship context or it just simply isn't a safe subject to open up. Maybe we think that because our hard times seem easy compared to others they don't count so we keep quiet. This of course is utter crap, hardness is not a contest and empathy, as a woman I love says, is not a nine piece pie. There is enough to go around. So because of our respect and concern for others involved (including our very own selves) in our hard stories, they often don't show up on social media and we are stuck in a place where it may appear that so few of us are actually ever having hard times.

In fact the hard things can sometimes be so absent from social media that we can sometimes start to think we are the only ones going through struggles or at least the struggles that aren't on the nightly news. We can sometimes even start to feel jealous and angry and resentful of people who look like they have it all together.

So I decided to share as a reminder that whether it is out there on social media or not, if you are having a hard time you are not alone. You are loved. You are cared for. I hope you have people taking good care of you. You are not the only one with shit blowing up everywhere and living with fear and worry alongside any joy and hope. I know you care about things outside yourself and want to change the world to be a better place, no matter how much energy you have to give to that right now or not.

If you are not having a hard time right at this very instant, I hope this will be a reminder to be compassionate to others because we can't be sure of what they have going on. A reminder that while lots of us have good lives, none of us have perfect lives. A reminder to be gracious to others because we are all still learning and stress often causes us to not do things to the standard which we would prefer. To be happy and celebrate as much as possible other's healthy boundaries or joys or celebrations that they do share because who knows what else they have gone through, aside from what you are seeing.

As for me I have appendix cancer (one in a million so likely you haven't heard of it or known anyone with it before.) If you are interested in the more nitty gritty details of that I wrote a post of the history and where things are at currently on my blog: www.leahcolbeck.com  Otherwise I'm super grateful that I know so many people who believe in taking good care of the people around them - whether we know of any hardship they may be having or not because this is what the world needs. I will also say in advance I appreciate all the love and prayers and am so thankful for that.

Photo because I still believe God made this world so beautiful and full of love.