We Know Those Waters

When I was going through cancer treatment a couple of years ago, on more than one occasion I would be talking to friend or coworker and while sharing a hardship they were facing, they would stop and say, “I am so sorry.  I should not be complaining to you.  You have cancer.  My problems are small compared to yours.”  I would always try and relay back that just because I had cancer it didn’t make their problems any less real or painful.

While in the midst of my own struggles, I have had friends and loved ones diagnosed with cancer.  Some have died.  Others I know have lost parents, children, and pregnancies. Some have faced addiction, lost jobs, or struggled to recognize life as they once knew it before COVID-19. 

For whatever reason, I am the kind of person who has aimed to make sense out of life through poetry, prose, and music.  And as I was recently reading the book, “Everything is Spiritual” by Rob Bell, I was reminded that not only are we not alone in our pain, struggles, and grief, but we are also connected by them.  Rob begins to talk about the beginning of the Genesis where the world begins with chaos, formless void, and darkness hovering over the waters.  He goes on to say this:

We know those waters.  Loss and pain and grief and wounds and not knowing what to do or where to go of how to deal with the agony of life.  We know those waters.  There’s Spirit in there, hovering, waiting to bring something new out of it.  This is why the people who inspire us the most always have been through those waters.  They’ve experienced the hovering.  They’ve seen that new creation.  There’s a mystery here, how the universe could be such an expansive place that the events we initially experience as heartbreaking and tragic and wrong could, given enough time, open us up and make us bigger and more loving and more grounded people.  The suffering doesn’t end the story, it unleashes a whole new story… That’s the question lurking there in all our dark waters, that the invitation that never stops coming our way, to see the whole of it to grow bigger, to expand along with the universe.  To learn all over again, that our bodies can include even this.

I found solace and beauty in this excerpt when I read it several months ago.  I earmarked it.  I’ve gone back to it.  Today felt a little heavy for some reason, and I just wanted to share it.  Because I know many of you are trudging those waters.  And I have been inspired by so many of you who are working to see the new creation. 

If there’s anything that cancer and COVID in the span of two years has taught me it’s that we are all part of something bigger.  We are never alone.

XO-Mary

PS – This blog post is dedicated to my friend Lindsey (pictured here) who helped me so much with my own cancer journey and now is victoriously making her way to the other side of hers. Sisterhood does not need to be defined by blood.