More Big Life Stuff

I’m not feeling particularly funny or light hearted today. To be honest, my family got some really hard news this week; news that we’re all still reeling a little from.

To bring my new followers up to speed, my stepdad, Edd, has stage 4 colon cancer. He had some seizures about a month and a half ago, and brain scans showed some strange spots in an area of the brain that cancer doesn’t normally attack. So we were hopeful that those spots were something else… anything but more cancer.

Since that particular brain scan, he had a very important surgery elsewhere in the body that, overall, was very successful. It gave him some serious quality of life back, and we are all very thankful that he is no longer suffering as much as he once was (sorry to be vague, but I don’t want to violate his privacy).

To make a long story short, he had another brain scan this past week, the results of which showed that those spots in his brain ARE cancer. He started radiation on Wednesday.

And you know, all of this just has me turning inside myself - thinking big thoughts, asking big questions. It’s hard not to question God when prayers are continuously answered with “no” – but if your faith crumbles in the face of adversity, did you ever really have a faith at all? Personally, MY faith, or the faith I thought I had as a child and very young adult, is being torn down brick by brick and somehow, at the same time, rebuilt in another way.

God is easy to believe in when all the people you love are alive and healthy and happy; when your life is devoid of any tragedy. When all of those terrible things you hear about on the news are so far away. But when faced with sorrow and fear in our own lives, there’s a lot of thoughts and feelings to sort out. And I’m no where near any place of understanding.

And don’t get me wrong – we are still very hopeful that Edd will pull through all this! The doctors seem very confident that the radiation will be effective. It’s just really hard to see people you love suffer. I can’t even begin to express the magnitude of it all on one little blog post.

Yesterday I went over to my mom and Edd’s place to take some pictures of the two of them before all his hair falls out. I enjoyed capturing their joy and love for one another, despite the card this life has dealt them. Here’s a few photos from the day, and please… keep Edd and my mom in your prayers and your happiest thoughts.