a dark day.

here i am again explaining a lapse in posting, but this time it's not just from the usual busy-ness of daily life. for over a week now my mom, formerly in perfectly great health, has been in the hospital with a lung infection. for days we waited as the doctors tried to narrow it down... a bacterial infection, not a viral. not pneumonia. not meningitis. they did cat scans, bronchoscopies, and still we waited. then, a diagnostic surgery which, as of yesterday, finally revealed a diagnosis... stage four squamous cell cancer of the lungs. my dad called me yesterday at work and just happened to catch me on lunch break when i could actually answer the phone to tell me the news. i don't know how to process such a bleak and heartbreaking concept such as this. my momma, my friend, my mentor, my hero. to think that she might not survive, that she might not be okay in the most simple of terms, is incomprehensible.

i know i am not the first to experience this situation. i never thought i'd be the one doing endless google searches of every cancer-related medical term i've heard, wondering if there is a lung cancer version of the pink ribbon i can wear to show my support... to show that i too have been touched by this rampant disease that is claiming so many. matt has lost two aunts in the past year and a half to different types of cancer, and had one uncle with a terminal diagnosis. i leave sunday to go be with her, as hopefully by then she will be off the respirator and able to start chemotherapy.

so for now, there are only prayers and questions. questions of how a person can be perfectly healthy one week and the next, receive such a traumatizing diagnosis. what are we eating or breathing or doing that can be causing cancer to become so common? is prevention even possible anymore? and prayers, of course, that there can be a miracle. that this won't mean the end. that i will learn to trust in God's plan, and that he is good and his plan is good no matter how difficult it is to understand. that i will lean on him and not my own understanding, which is so weak. and, at the risk of sounding so cliched, that we all will find peace.

if you are one who prays, please pray for my mom.