My Two Feet on the Ground

September 7th, Labor Day, was ground zero of this year's half marathon training. We're once again setting our sights on the Rocket City Half.

Last year, I waited until about halfway through training to sign up. At the time, the farthest I had ever run was a 10K. A half marathon still felt pretty out of reach, and after a summer of severe inconsistency thanks to the heat, I was apprehensive about committing to a race of that magnitude. About a month in, though, Jacob and I decided that if we were going to stay committed to this thing, we needed some skin in the game.

So, with the big, scary goal of a 10K conquered only a few months ago, I took the leap and decided to see this thing through. And see it through we did. Even standing here ten months later, it's still an accomplishment we are both proud of.

The half marathon is a big deal this year for another reason. Jacob is in some of the best shape of his life. Part of that is finally finding a weightlifting program he enjoys. Part of it is deciding that coping with an MEN1 diagnosis means doing everything reasonably within his power to be a good steward of the body he has.

For many people, a major health condition does not mean training for a half marathon, yet here we are. That defiance makes me want to jump up and down and scream, "Yes!" Take that! We will live the life we are creating, and nothing or no one will shut it down.

I'm grateful that, at this point in our journey, his stated attitude is to appreciate every day he feels good and do his best not to spend those days worrying about the ones when he may not. He is a constant example of what resilience looks like for me, and I can't help but admire him for it. I'm not sure I would have the mental fortitude to live that way, even as imperfectly as he has thus far. That made the early-morning runs that started back up this week a strange juxtaposition to Jacob spending Thursday in quasi-quarantine because he was radioactive.

His original parathyroid scan had been scheduled for two weeks earlier. After a disconcerting conversation with the nuclear medicine technician and realizing we weren't prepared for all the test's implications, Jacob postponed it until Thursday, September 10th. The goal was to gather more information and decide whether he really wanted to do it. After a good bit of research, we were leaning toward no, but the appointment quietly stayed on the calendar.

When Wednesday rolled around, I texted Jacob to remind him that if he was going to cancel, he probably needed to do it that morning. I also pointed out that if he was going to go through with it, Thursday was a decent day. We had worship band practice that evening, during which he would spend most of his time in a drum cage—a normal and expected separation from our son. Not long after I sent that text, he called. He had decided to do the scan.

I was surprised. In most of our conversations, I felt like we had more reasons not to do the scan than to do it. It felt unnecessary. His bloodwork is very close to normal, not the wild, off-the-charts numbers we had been told we could expect based on his brother's previous experiences with this condition. In our minds, even if the scan showed a tumor, we didn't feel like jumping to surgery was necessarily the right move.

I asked him what had changed. He said he would rather know and go from there. That probably doesn't sound earth-shattering, but for several months now, particularly on this front, I have been the one wanting to know. My general philosophy has been to let reality do its worst, then learn to live with it.

Maybe it's because everything up until these minor deviations in his bloodwork has been normal. I don't think I somehow thought MEN1 had disappeared, but I had gotten used to everything being okay. We had this diagnosis, but mostly it just meant inconvenient doctors' appointments.

I don't want to accept sickness or surgeries, or maybe the true starting line of once this thing starts, who knows what it will look like after that.

I think maybe it was also that all my knowing had come from abstract research. I was learning about MEN1, about these tumors, and about different care options. I enjoy medical stuff and am scientific enough that I usually compartmentalize pretty well. I was studying a condition, not my actual husband.

For Jacob, I think it has always been more personal. Throughout this journey, he has generally stuck to the need-to-know and left the rest out there until it became relevant. It made his response feel like a role reversal. For once, Jacob was telling me he wanted to know, and suddenly, I didn't.

I didn't want to face the truth that my husband might have a tumor at thirty. Even if this was the least concerning, best-case-scenario, lowest-impact tumor probable, I found myself slowly realizing how heartbroken I was that this was our reality now.

I think I've refused to let myself spend much time there because it generally isn't helpful. When reality is what it is, and we can’t do anything to change it, why waste emotional and mental energy railing against it?

Except, apparently, refusing to rail against it doesn't make the grief disappear. The more I tried to distract myself and live as if everything were normal, the louder the fear, heartbreak, and sadness became.

Over the course of my life, especially living with anxiety, I have learned the value of a  "fake it till you make it" mentality. It can be extremely helpful in some arenas of life. I've seen that living as if you have confidence, excitement, or even resilience can sometimes produce them, along with other traits like them. But in this season, living as if the doctors' appointments, scans, bloodwork, and tests—alongside embryo adoption—are normal sometimes feels a lot more like pretending than trying to live into our reality. Especially when the transition from shock to the system to the new normal doesn't seem to be happening, no matter how much I try to get to it.

Still, Jacob had decided to go through with the scan. It was his decision and his body, and I absolutely did not want to sway him without an excellent reason, which I didn't have. All I had was my own anguish that we were even having this conversation, and a determination not to let that anguish become something he had to deal with as he prepared for the next day. So instead, we planned out what Thursday would look like. I scheduled a play date after nap and took our son to my parents' house for dinner. Jacob would stay late at rehearsal so I could handle bedtime without them crossing paths. We would make the separation as invisible as possible.

I spent the rest of Wednesday trying to understand why I was struggling so much with this decision. We weren't expecting the scan to find anything particularly concerning. Even if it did, we didn't expect it to be urgent.

So why had months of I just want to know suddenly turned into Do we have to?

The next morning, Jacob had to be there at 7:30am to receive the tracer injection. He called afterward to tell me how it went. Thankfully, it went well. The needle was much smaller and more comfortable than an IV for MRI contrast. The imaging machine was far less claustrophobic. The nuclear medicine technician was knowledgeable, answered his questions, and put him at ease. I was grateful. He would have to go back at 11:00am for another hour of imaging, but for now, things were good. He got to work and resumed his normal workday.

We hung up the phone, and before I could really process the conversation, tears started falling. For the next twenty minutes, I sat there and cried. The same question kept coming back.

Why?

Why is this our situation?

Why am I having a conversation with my husband about comparing an MRI experience to a nuclear medicine scan?

Why does he have to have a scan to look for a tumor in the first place?

What does this mean for the rest of our lives?

And if I dared to think about it, what does this mean for our son?

Eventually, I worked up the courage to admit I was struggling. I texted two friends who I knew were aware of what was going on and wouldn't require a ton of explanation. I asked them to pray for me. Both sent written prayers back then and there for me to read and hold onto throughout the day. I am eternally grateful for good friends who continue to sit with us in this, even though it has been ongoing for months.

Jacob travels to Colorado for work once a quarter and has for almost two years. I'm used to days when he isn't home. But somehow, deliberately executing this day to keep our son away from his dad felt incredibly lonely. It didn't matter that I could call him, that I had fun things planned, that our son and I both love dinner with my parents, or that this was so short and temporary. That day, this condition dictated how our family operated, and I hated it.

Church band practice that night was another reminder of the strange day we were living through. I took it upon myself to put out the PSA to our pregnant friends to make sure they stayed away from Jacob. Someone jokingly asked what the half-life would be in the drum cage after he finished playing.

One of the pregnant women came over to ask me what was going on. I gave her the rundown of the test and filled her in on the previous couple of weeks.

One of the things I appreciate most from people is genuine questions. Maybe it's just me, and I know everyone's experience with grief or difficult seasons is different, but when people ask thoughtful questions about how we're doing, what’s going on, or for the latest status update on whichever process we happen to be discussing, since there seem to be so many in our lives right now, it makes me feel loved in a way few other things can.

I think it's the feeling of being known and seen, especially when so much of our lives feel heavy and vulnerable. There just isn't much that falls into the "small talk" category anymore. I also appreciated the people who talked to Jacob about the scan and about things unrelated to it. I'm so thankful to the people who love him and treat him like a normal person.

Practice ran late. We had all the bells and whistles surrounding the 30th anniversary of the church: a full choir, video content to check, a new sound scene, and a handful of other moving pieces to straighten out. Thankfully, my mom came to rehearsal to listen to the choir, so I could ask her to take our son home and put him to bed.

It was the part of the day I dreaded most. It always tugs at my heart when Jacob is out of town, and our son asks for him during bedtime. I had already spent the start of rehearsal physically restraining him from running over to say hi to Dada. I really didn't want to deal with bedtime too. My mom taking over was a huge relief.

Over the course of the day, I probably asked Jacob a million and one times if he was okay. Thankfully, he knows me well enough to understand I don't just mean physically. He told me that overall it really hadn't been bad. He just hoped it would provide some answers. Thankfully, I believed he was doing okay. The next morning, however, I was still struggling.

The risk of radioactivity was pretty low by then, and Friday promised to be back to normal. We expected results Monday or Tuesday, so there was nothing to do but plan the weekend around birthday parties, football games, and our church's 30th anniversary. But somehow, my heart couldn't let go of the mostly unspoken distress it was carrying. We talked through it that morning before Jacob went to work, and I think that somewhere between a good cry and his reassurance that it is ok not to be ok, I felt a lot of that sadness release.

These episodes of grief are something I am still working through. Most of the time, I find I can move through the day-to-day pretty well. I can still see joy in everyday life and stay present most of the time. But then, I get blindsided by a breakdown every couple of weeks (or sometimes days) that I don't quite know what to do with.

Am I repressing?

Do I just process differently?

Is that okay?

I don't know.

I think that part of why I struggle so much with these moments is that I don't want to become a victim of our circumstances. Which leaves me with an important question: What does acceptance look like?

If acceptance isn't that everything is great and we can make this okay, but it also isn't that our life sucks and why is this our reality, then how do we faithfully live with something we cannot change that isn't good? Where is the faithful middle between becoming a victim of it, railing against it, downright ignoring it, or dressing it up in enough flowery Christianese language to spiritually bypass it?

Frankly, this isn't a new question for me. I've spent most of my life trying to find that same faithful middle with my own anxiety. I can tell you that road has been a steep, continuous climb that doesn't always look like forward progress. If anything, it has included seasons of all the above. I can also tell you it would be unfair for me to pretend I have “arrived”. Today, I feel like my anxiety and I have made somewhat of a peaceful truce. But when that truce starts looking too much like ignoring or repressing, my anxiety usually finds creative ways to manifest until it gets acknowledged and dealt with again.

A dynamic has existed in our marriage almost from the beginning: usually only one of us falls apart at a time.

Wednesday through Friday had been a lot of falling apart for me.

Saturday through Monday was Jacob's turn.

Saturday afternoon, while we sat at one of our favorite breweries watching the Auburn game, we got some difficult news that hit particularly close to home.

Two days earlier, I had been wrestling with how desperately I didn't want to be the knower. On Saturday, I had to accept that I already was. I knew things from months of reading about MEN1 that Jacob didn’t, which meant I had context I wished I didn't have and eventually had to share some of it with him. We cried and prayed together in the parking lot as we walked back to the car so I could take our son home for bed. Jacob pulled himself together so he could finish watching the game with our friends, and I went home and started Googling. I wanted to understand what any of this news could mean for us and those we love. It wasn’t necessarily comforting.

For months, we had been able to live with MEN1 largely in the abstract. We knew possibilities existed that we hoped we would never deal with. We made life-altering decisions because of them. But when the most frightening possibilities were statistically less likely, it was easier to leave them out there as things that happened to other people.

Sunday came around foggy and earlier than usual, thanks to a 6:30 a.m. call time for our church's 30th-anniversary service. The day we had spent weeks preparing for had finally arrived, and neither of us was entirely sure we were okay.

For both of us, the weight of what we had learned the day before would not lift. We were sitting in the middle of a group of people preparing to celebrate something enormous, and none of it could override the very present blackness threatening to overwhelm us.

Jacob went back to the green room a little before service. Shortly afterward, I went to join him. Several people were already there. Our worship leader asked how he was doing, and he told her what we had learned the day before. The next thing I knew, our she was asking everyone standing in that room to pray for this situation.

I honestly couldn't tell you exactly what was said right now. I just remember thinking that somehow, what was prayed was exactly what was needed. Tears ran down my face as I listened to the chorus of other voices adding their prayers to the mix.

In the moment, I guess my time blindness was in full effect because I honestly didn’t realize how close we were to the start of the service. Jacob did, and as we talked about it that night, the timing of that moment stood out most to him.

We were five minutes from one of the biggest services of the year. The friend leading the prayer was supposed to be running our broadcast. Our worship leaders were supposed to be getting ready to take the stage. Most of the band was standing in that room. And yet they stopped.

It hit me then, as Jacob sat there trying to compose a text to thank our worship leader and express the overwhelming emotions he felt, that I couldn't help thinking about Jairus. His twelve-year-old daughter was dying, and Jesus was on His way to help her when a woman who had been bleeding for twelve years reached out and touched His robe.

Jesus stopped. He allowed Himself to be interrupted. He saw her, refused to let her slip into the crowd, listened to her, healed her, and blessed her before continuing on to Jairus's daughter.

Maybe that's why the timing of that prayer meant so much to Jacob and to me. It wasn't that the anniversary service wasn't important. It was enormously important. But for a few minutes, our grief suspended time for a room full of people who decided to pray.

I wish I could tell you I have some miraculous testimony to put here.

I don't.

What we have instead is a room full of people who created space where, in all practicality, there was none. We have people who love us, show up for us, and carry us when we don't feel capable of carrying ourselves. I have two friends who sent me prayers to hold onto while I cried on my bathroom floor Thursday morning. I have a mom who fed me and handled bedtime because I couldn't bear one more hard thing that night. We have friends who know when to ask questions and when to talk about something completely ordinary. And we have a room full of people who, five minutes before one of the biggest services of the year, decided that everything else could wait.

That's the testimony I have, and it seems to be the testimony we continue to have even when it’s not the one I want. Learning to see what God’s provision looks like in our lives, when it has come in the form of overwhelming love and extraordinarily timed people, has been both incredibly difficult and hugely comforting. Knowing and seeing that God is there, even when things hurt like hell, has made it feel possible to keep moving forward. I can also tell you that, as beautiful as that moment was on Sunday, it didn’t fix everything.

Monday continued to feel heavy. More waiting, more questions to ask, and more information to gather. Amid it all, life keeps moving forward. We both keep running. Jacob's soundtrack this year includes Pete Greig's God on Mute.

I don't know if life will get easier from here or if this is what normal looks like for a while. As I told Jacob this morning, it took us nearly a year to feel like we found some sense of normalcy after having a child, and that was a good thing. I'm not sure why we expect something that isn't good to take any less time.

Thursday, my husband was injected with a radioactive tracer to look for a tumor. Saturday, some of the possibilities we'd managed to keep at a distance suddenly felt much closer to home. Sunday, our friends halted everything five minutes before one of the biggest services of the year to surround us and pray. Monday, we still don't know what comes next.

We are still training for a half marathon.

And we are still making plans and going to work and playing music and trying to figure out what normal means now beyond just the dryer setting.