1) So We Bought An Old Church: A Leap of Faith

“What in the absolute fuck did I just do?”

Panic sets in like a steely vice on my chest. Waves of anxiety crash over me. I feel nauseous.

This time out loud, “What. Did. I. Just. Do?”

Then the tears, the tears I swore would never come, “I will skip out of here the day we leave!”

Remember when you said that all those times, over all those years… with such unwavering conviction?

HA!

Now?

You grip your chest, your stomach churns.

You just sold your house.

Not only your house… but the place you’ve called home for the last twenty years. Your support system, your family, your friends… you signed it all away.

“Did you really think that over?” You ask yourself, disgusted…

“All of it?”

And you swore you did. Every last bit of this plan. It’s always come to this though? Right?

Hasn’t this been the plan all along? I mean the numbers checked out, heck even your therapist thought that this whole move was a great idea… a fabulous idea, one that she’s surprised you hadn’t taken to sooner…

But that was before.

That was before you bought an old church in a little village. Sight unseen. What would she think about that?

“Sight unseen…” you marvel at your former nerve. Where was that now?

“But wait,” you think shocked by the wreckless abandon of your former self, the self that hadn’t yet sold her familiar, safe home, the former self that didn’t just sign it all away… “Sight unseen, 1200 miles away in a little village of roughly 8,000 people you’ve spent less than 30 minutes in one time six months ago….”

“Jesus Christ… what the fuck did I just do?” You whisper, hot tears streaming down your face, choking back sobs.

You feel your stomach jump. You’re sure you will vomit. This new you, this new you that sold her house and bought a church is a lot less ballsy now… what the hell happened?

Personally: You’d love to know what the hell was wrong with you.

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The seed was planted 26 years ago.

You were 16 sitting on the couch in the family room flipping through channels when something caught your attention. It was a woman in her 30s, she lived in Vermont and bought an old church. Her dad helped her turn it into a house. The old choir became her lofted bedroom, wooden pews were cut down to flank the large farmhouse table.

You sat there entranced… you had never even considered this was a possibility… that one could live somewhere other than a house.

You marvelled at the idea, you could do that one day!

Right? Couldn’t you do that?

One day.

Maybe.

The first seed was planted.

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And maybe someday would have come… eventually, but cancer and one hell of a hurricane season brought you there a lot quicker.

You had always wanted to move somewhere warm, tropical, to escape the winter… but now, after having lived in the sweltering Florida heat, a move you made right after college, you were rethinking your decision to stay indefinitely.

Then the hurricanes came. And that freak storm. All that rain.

Each storm brought the flood waters just a little closer to your door. The last one far too close for comfort. Had we gotten that predicted storm surge your home would have been under 13 feet of water…

You were spared but many of your friends were not. You helped muck out homes where you once hung out with friends, laughing, sipping tea… and now you helped carry their lives, covered in toxic sludge, dripping wet with the weight of flood waters and so much grief, to the curb where everything piled up high in the thick humid air. Generators, pick up trucks, hammers, power-tools… when the wind subsided and the water receded, those became the new familiar sounds of the neighborhood.

How does one feel when their entire life is reduced to a filthy heap on a spongy front lawn? Memories, pictures, sentimental mementos left to fester on the curb, rats and pickers and roaches weaving in and out of the destruction piled on aprons just off the curb…

We view from a safe distance, we are the demarcation line of so much destruction. The water stopped at our home, one side of us completely untouched, unscathed, safe… and the other side over, lives upended. There’s survivors guilt, there’s panic, there’s relief and then more guilt…there’s also a growing resolve, another freshly planted seed, to never be on the other side of that line.

Two seeds planted.

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“You have stage 2 Thyroid cancer.”

This was the first time I had heard myself staged.

At this point I had been through hell and back. Just a few months ago my prognosis was looking bleak; initial scans showed what appeared to be the cancer that might have spread to my brain.

There was no cure, I would be told to get my affairs in order, enjoy my children, and they’d keep me comfortable for the next few months, which would have been all I would have had left.

Not knowing what was coming was the worst part. I wondered if I was enjoying my last Christmas and New Year’s. My friends threw me a big birthday party just in case it was my last.

I eventually wound up making an appointment to see my primary care physician.

“I might be terminally ill. I am so scared. I go for my scans and bloodwork to confirm just how bad this may or may not be… I’m not doing well.”

My doctor writes me out a script for Xanax. “I just want two,” I tell her, “One for the day of the testing, and one to have on hand for when my results come in.”

She tells me that this is perfectly acceptable and we will re-address getting me medicated if needed, after the results are in.

I wipe hot tears off my face and thank her as she hands me a tissue.

There was no bargaining with a god I didn’t believe in, there was no anger, there was just fear, and resolve… a resolve that no matter which way this went, that I would find the meaning in all of this, my purpose with whatever time I may or may not have would reveal itself to me.

The cancer did not spread to my brain, it stopped at my lungs.

Six months after the second round of tests showed that I was not terminally ill, I sat in my endocrinologist’s office. I was at my first six month post op/cancer treatment. My bloodwork, the ultrasound and the MRIs all came back good. The treatment had stopped the cancer and as of now, it was not actively growing, or showing up in my system.

But I was not out of the woods.

“It’s not a matter of IF it comes back,” my endocrinologist says, “It’s a matter of WHEN it comes back and to what extent.”

I feel hollowed out.

“Will I live a normal life? Like will I be an old lady one day?” I ask.

She doesn’t answer me directly, “Some people live a long time without too much disruption… some people remain asymptomatic for years. And when it comes back… there are treatments… we can do treatments again… but it will be back… we just don’t know when or what exactly that will look like… which is why from here on out you will have to, and I can not stress this enough, you will HAVE to stay on top of this. Every six months: bloodwork, ultrasound, MRI… you can not, not do this… every. Six. Months…”

On the drive home we take the express lane through the outskirts of Tampa, I look down on the commercial buildings below us, the sun now high and hot in the afternoon sky, palm trees peek out over the white barrier walls of the Selmon Expressway, Tampa Bay shimmers in the distance…

“It will be back. It will be back. It will be back. It will be back. Not if… When. It will be back. It will be back. It will be back.”

Now what?

The third and final seed was planted.

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