When I was in the mental hospital the first time two years ago, one of our group sessions was on ways that could help alleviate depression. One of these ways was owning a pet. Pets provide unconditional love. As long as they are fed and cared for, you are pretty much guaranteed that they will love you in return. They also gives you someone else to invest in, to live for. You have to get out of bed because the dog needs walked, or the litter box needs scooped, or whatever the need may be. When you own a pet, you have at least one being in the world who needs you.
So when I got out of the hospital, Jason, the kids and I went on a hunt for a cat. One of the pet stores in town had several cats from one of the cat adoption agencies on display. We watched them for awhile and of course the kids were drawn to the kittens, the young, feisty ones. Jason, however, was drawn to a big, fluffy cat with no tail. She seemed very mellow and relaxed, but when we asked about her, we were told that she was part of a bonded pair. If we adopted her, we had to adopt her counterpart as well. After talking it over, we decided to go ahead and do that, and we brought Kaia and Mama Cat (named by the agency, not us) home with us. They were 6 and 5 years old, respectively.
While I knew it would be nice to have a pet, never in a million years would I have guessed how therapeutic they would be, not only for me, but for Jason as well. Mama Cat took awhile to get acclimated, but once she did, she turned in to a great lap cat and she and Jason bonded strongly. She relaxes him when nothing else will. It's funny to watch. No matter how busy Jason is, she will force him to stop working, sit on the couch and pet her for a few minutes before she will allow him to carry on with his day. If he doesn't, she stands at the foot of his desk and meows and if that doesn't work, she jumps up on his desk and sits on his keyboard until he gives her the loves she wants! I find it so amusing how something as small as Mama Cat can have a big man like Jason wrapped around her little claw, but she owns him and there is no doubt about it. And in owning him, she relaxes him and brings him the sanity he has so desperately needs during these difficult times.
As for me, the cats have spent hours with me, snuggled up in bed, during my illnesses. Mama Cat likes to come over and lay on my face when I'm getting ready to go to sleep. She used to lay on my chest, but once I came home from my bilateral mastectomy, she quickly learned that she could no longer do that!! OUCH!
And then there's Kaia. I love Kaia. She's my cat. She allows others in the family to pet her, but she and I have a bond that the rest of the family doesn't have with her. She's not a lap cat, but she likes to lay next to me for hours on end and I will pet her while she rumbles away in contented purrs. She's a Japanese bobtail, so she is a very vocal cat and she and I will have conversations. I will talk to her in English, using her name, and she will respond to me in "cat". On some of my really rough days, I have sobbed my heart out into Kaia's fur and she has proven to be very absorbent :-).
If you are hurting and need some unconditional love, I highly recommend a pet. It has made a world of difference in our family and I bet it would in yours too. It is easy to underestimate the power of unconditional furry love.
I have a problem, or so it may seem. I can't grovel before God. I just listened to a sermon by a well-known preacher that I highly respect, but this time, I just couldn't agree with some of what he was saying. He was talking about being careful about how we approach God, that when we pray, we need to make sure we are not being flippant, but that we are giving God the reverence He deserves. Now, I fully believe God deserves our complete adoration and respect. I am in no way saying that we should take for granted what He has done for us. However, for most of my life, I have prayed the penitent prayers over and over and over again, thinking that the sorrier I was, the holier I would become. I felt like I needed to cry repeated tears over the price that Christ paid for me, or I wasn't genuinely penitent and thankful. I don't believe that any more.
No one can compare to God, not by a mile! In and of ourselves, we are too tarnished to come in the presence of a holy God. If we try to approach God in our own strength, then yes, we should grovel. We should shake in utter fear!! BUT I am not tarnished any more!! I've been paid for, washed clean, purified and stand blameless before God! I am not approaching Him as a condemned sinner but as a redeemed saint! If I grovel, if I weep and moan and cry about how evil I am, am I not spitting on the very blood that has cleansed me?? Am I good enough to stand before God? YES! Because I've been redeemed. I've been bought. I'm not a slave anymore, so why should I continue to act like one? How in the world does that honor the God who gave His own life so that I could stand confidently before Him?
I stand in awe of God, but I can no longer live afraid of Him. He is not out to get me. He is not measuring each and every one of my thoughts and deeds to see if I'm good enough to claim as His own. He's already measured me, found me lacking, and paid the immeasurable difference so that I can be His. No amount of weeping, begging and/or self loathing will make me any more His child. That's why I can approach Him with confidence, trembling not in fear but in awe of His majesty, crying, not in pain or remorse, but in joy at the incomparably deep, deep love of the God of the universe, who loves me enough to call me His child.
I'd like to think of myself as independent and strong, but the fact of the matter is I am neither. I am exhausted. I am moody. I'm a mess!
I'm not sure why I feel the need to prove that I don't "need" my husband, that I could do just fine on my own. I'd love to say that we are a pair because we want to be, not because we have to be, but the fact of the matter is I need him. From the very core of my being, I need him, and right now, I am so aware of that fact.
Two and a half weeks ago, Jason got sick. He had a fever for nearly a week. Because I'm on chemo and am at a higher risk, he didn't touch me, slept in the other room and if we talked, which was seldom, I was sitting on the opposite side of the room with a mask on. After several feverish days, he finally saw the doctor and about two days later, he started to feel better, little by little. Last Saturday was our first "normal" day, where we finally felt it was safe to hug, and talk without masks. The next morning, at 3:30am, he left for Massachusetts. He's been gone for a week, and will be gone for 3 to 6 more days, depending on how things play out.
I am beyond exhausted, and it's not a fatigue that anyone but Jason can help with. When Jason holds me and I can talk and talk and talk to my heart's content, the world suddenly doesn't seem as heavy to bear, but when I'm alone, it all builds up. It's not the housecleaning, or the cooking, or the kids, although all that adds up too. It's that my other half, my sounding board, the missing part of my brain is on the other side of the country.
So while as a modern woman, I'd like to believe that I am just fine on my own, the fact of the matter is, I'm not. I need my husband. We're a team, and things just aren't right when he's away.
I have so much I want to write about today, I'm not even sure yet what this post will be about! Today has been so full of blessings. I started off the morning with a phone call from Bridgette Eilers, of the Chemo Crew. Bridgette is an ovarian cancer survivor who started a non-profit to help cancer patients in Stanislaus County. The Chemo Crew provides services like grocery shopping, house cleaning, lawn care, help finding free resources, one-on-one support, etc. To find out more about them, you can go to their website. I had called them a couple days ago and Bridgette was returning my call. She sounded like such a sweet lady. I can't wait to meet her in person! I found out that she has three children of her own, ages 6, 7 and 9. She will be dropping me off at my chemo appointment on Wednesday and then coming back later to sit with me for awhile and then take me home. I found out last night that Jason is going to be out of town on Wednesday all day, so having someone who can take me to and from chemo was a huge relief! I'm really excited to talk to Bridgette and find out ways that I can help out with Chemo Crew too. It's really hard for me to sit around and do nothing of value for weeks on end. Yes, I know healing from cancer is valuable, but it's not tangible right now, and feels...I don't know...boring? inconsequential? I only get one life. I don't want to sleep and puke it away. I know I can't do much right now, but maybe on my good weeks I could at least sit with chemo patients, or assemble kits, or something. One of the hardest parts about this cancer journey for me has been the lack of social contact, so I welcome any chance I have to be around other people and especially to be on the giving side of things rather than the receiving side every now and again.
After I got off the phone with Bridgette, my friend Jenni and her daughter Zoe came by, bringing us a pizza from Costco to help with dinner on those not so great days. Thank you so much, Jenni! What a thoughtful gesture!
After they left, I headed to my appointment with my psychiatrist, whom I absolutely LOVE, by the way. If you or someone you know is in need of a great psychiatrist, I highly recommend Dr. Hetnal in Modesto.
I asked him today if I would be on my medication (Paxil) for life, or if it was a short term thing. I found his reaction kind of amusing. He looked at me with somewhat of a startled look, then said that he was really sorry, but that I would be on medications for life. He then corrected himself and said: "Well, you are the patient. You make your own treatment decisions, but you won't ever get a recommendation to go off your medications from me!" He turned my file over and read off the back: "Major Depressive Disorder with Re-occurring Episodes. No. You will need your medications for life. We won't mess around with that." He seemed apologetic about my need for lifetime meds, but to be honest, to me, it was actually a relief for a couple reasons. One, when you've walked through the darkness of deep, suicidal depression for months on end, it is not something you EVER want to have to go through again for any reason. The thought of having to wean myself off of my medication to see if I needed it was something I was really apprehensive about, and honestly was the reason I asked the question today. The second reason I found comfort in this news is that there is a part of me that still wonders if my depression was my fault. I hear over and over in my head the stinging words: "Your problem is a SPIRITUAL one! You need to focus on getting right with God. Don't contact me or my family in any way until you get right with God and get the kind of help we offered you a long time ago!" (text from a former best friend's husband right before I got on medication) or the words of the elders of church I used to attend, when they anointed me with oil both for my depression and my cancer while we were waiting for the results of the biopsy: "So you have an emotional problem and a physical one. Take your thoughts captive." "Really?" I thought. "Really? So my possible cancer is a more 'prayer worthy' illness than the depression that had ravaged my life for two years? That's supposed to be as simple as taking my thoughts captive?! Have you ever tried that one in the throes of depression? Yeah. I didn't think so." To be honest, that's probably not how he meant it, but it's how I interpreted it at the time and there is part of me that wonders if maybe my depression was because God was unhappy with me, that maybe I was at odds with him, somehow holding on to my sin, but then I remember this post I wrote back in September 2011, shortly after my first stay in the mental hospital. I remember being flat on my face before God, begging Him for deliverance, knowing that I was fully and completely surrendered to ANYTHING He wanted from me and still feeling myself swallowed by the darkness of depression. So having the doctor tell me that my illness is severe enough to require medication for life, in some ways, affirmed to me that I am not to blame for the chemical imbalance in my brain. If this imbalance is lifelong and not situational, then perhaps I didn't cause it. Perhaps my former friends were wrong.
After my doctor's appointment, I drove to Chipotle, picked up lunch for me and Jason, and took it to his office. We ate lunch together, then I headed home to pick up the kids from school.
It was so nice to be out and about and to receive the love of strangers and friends alike. I'm exhausted now, but thankful for such a good day :-).
Today is the first Thursday since I decided to embark on Therapeutic Thursdays. I came up with an idea last night of what I wanted to do, but when I awoke this morning, I wasn't feeling well. I hoped that I could shake the fatigue and go out after a couple hours, but it didn't happen, so I shelved my original idea for a different week, and went back to the drawing board.
To be honest, I've wrestled way more with this than I needed to over the last twenty-four hours, and I found myself falling into a few traps. The main one was that I started to try to think of someone who "deserved" something special, then realized that defeated the point! I want to spread love to all, not just those who "deserve" it! I also found that the more I thought about what I wanted to do, the more I worried that people would think I was crazy, and I stressed about how I would explain why I was giving away what I was giving if I got "caught".
The act itself was completely uneventful. We had some Regal Cinemas gift cards that were given to us as a Christmas gift, but hadn't used yet. I used a blank card I had, wrote "Please enjoy a movie on us.", and enclosed the gift cards. On the way to pick up the kids, I left it in the stroller on the doorstep of a family who lives down the street from us. They have three young children, kindergarten and under. I've said hi to them many times, but have never officially met them, so they qualify as strangers ;-).
All in all, the first Therapeutic Thursday went off well. Those of you who have joined me on this adventure, please comment below with your stories. I'm hoping that we will all be inspired by what others have done, and may even get some ideas of our own from your adventures.
I mentioned in one of my previous posts that God is using my cancer to heal me of some past hurts. I was pondering this last night when I couldn't sleep and I came up with an idea that I'd like your help with. Let me explain how.
One of the outcomes of the two years leading up to my cancer was that I really began to believe that most people are cruel and heartless and that most of us really don't care about others. My cancer journey has helped me to realize that this is not the case. Many, many people, even perfect strangers, have shown me so much love, and I would like to take this a step further. I'm hoping you will join me.
I'm going to start Therapeutic Thursdays. Every Thursday, no matter how sick, weak, or tired I feel, I plan to intentionally show love to a stranger. The reason I decided to do this toward strangers is that I find it easy to love on the people I like. It can be much harder to do if I don't know if the person "deserves" my love or not. I've also found that some of the moments that have warmed, and healed, my heart the most have been when I've been shown love from someone who didn't even know me.
Sometimes, Therapeutic Thursday may mean paying for the coffee for the people behind me in the Starbucks line. Maybe it will come in the form of flowers and a card on the doorstep of one of my neighbors that I have never met. Perhaps I will pack a picnic lunch, head down to a park, and have lunch with a homeless person. On a cold, rainy day, I may buy an extra cup of coffee and give it to someone, with a hug. (By the way, you would be surprised how many people are receptive to hugs from strangers. It's a free way to put a smile on someone's face, but make sure you ask first, or they might call the cops ;-).) I'm hoping many of you will have your own ideas of what Therapeutic Thursday could look like. The sky is the limit, really. Every Thursday, I will blog about the experience and am hoping that many of you will jump on board and comment about your own experiences. I'd like to show the world that love still abounds and I'd like to inspire us all to make a conscious effort to spread it.
It would mean a lot to me if you would join me on this journey. Do your own deeds of kindness and comment on the Therapeutic Thursday posts with your own stories. If you would like a reminder, comment on this post and I will email or text you (whichever you'd prefer) a reminder every Thursday morning, starting tomorrow. Let's bring some smiles back into this world!
