The last nine months of my life have been filled with change. Unexpected change, unwanted change, forced change, so much change. For a girl who likes change in small doses in a controlled manner, it's been a learning process. During all of it, I'm trying to listen to God, for guidance and courage to do whatever it is He guides me to. I feel like I'm just stumbling my way through, blind, no idea where I am or where I'm going. I only know that I am in fact, going somewhere, to do...something. I ask Him what I'm supposed to do, then listen. If I'm not sure, I ask Him to be a little louder. Really, I ask Him to slap me upside the head just to make sure I don't miss it. I was once called a writer. Long ago, that was my passion, my job. But life and the world changed and for years I just thought of that as something I once was, that girl I barely remember now, she used to do that writing thing. For a long time I missed it, like an addict needs a fix. But over ...

Before my surgery I had a talk with my son about what he was nervous about, because as it approached you could tell he was pretty nervous. He said that he was worried I would come down sick while my body was trying to recover, and that that would make everything worse. It was a legit concern, I come down sick a lot, my immune system is crap, it wasn't far out of the realm of possibility. I told him how when I get really really sick sometimes, for too long, it does get hard on me. Sometimes I cry a little bit, sometimes I feel like I can't keep going like this, sometimes I get scared. But in those moments of feeling like the weight is too big for me, like I just can't take it anymore, I remind myself to have faith, to trust God, and believe that God will get me through this. That sometimes I will sit and say repeatedly, almost like a prayer, "God, please get me through this," and then I have to remember to have faith, trust, and believe that he will. Then I told ...

I've never really been one to cry. It by no means stems from a lack of desire to cry. Life's handed me plenty of opportunities that I wanted nothing but to curl up and cry. A big part of it comes from how I was raised, and I think my brother would probably agree, even if it hurt to do so. It was just sort of this unspoken rule, you didn't cry. If you did cry, that was shut down real quick. Either by some jackass remark made by dad, or by mom trying to get you to shut up to prevent said jackass remarks from dad. But by the time you were old enough to realize that mom was trying to help you, you had already learned that it just wasn't acceptable to cry in our family. The damage was done. Suck it up, buttercup, no one wants to see that. In the darkest of times, it was a rarity to see mom cry. Or grandma. And I don't recall ever seeing my dad cry. Maybe he did at mom's funeral, but at that moment his feelings was the last thing on my mind. There were times growi...