in-deed.

Long chats and late nights had become the way of my past. These past few months I had thoroughly enjoyed leaving the night to those who wanted it, sinking into my pillow at a reasonable hour. But there I was very, very early Sunday morning, once again, fighting sleep and staring into the darkness, divulging my most inner, darkest secrets to someone who I barely knew...

And doesn't darkness always seams to bring out things that we don't necessarily want to know? Hidden truths that we keep hidden on purpose. Every once in a while we stumble upon one of these, be it an old friend or lost memento, that we had exiled to this darkness. What follows is my secret.... thrust into the light.

Recently, I have felt selfish. Entitled. Impatient. Basically, I TAKE.

I take, but I should give. That's my secret. 

You see, this whole cancer (slash life) thing can make you feel so many things. And one of them for me was that whole "live your life to the fullest" which I think I misunderstood for "do whatever you want." Which is absolutely not right at all. I have been a horrible friend and daughter and sister. I have been an awful person way more often than I should have been, which is...really...well, never.

I kind of had a wake up call (figuratively and literally...) that early, early morning. I just needed someone to knock some sense into me. I really believe that God throws the right people at you at the right times, and this is exactly what I needed to hear. We caught up and I told him how I had a negative (read: good) PET scan and great prognosis for the future (oh yeah have I told y'all that yet??? I AM HEALTY!!!). He told me that once, back when he was a patient, he thought about how much he had "taken" from this life and had yet to give anything back. If he were to die tomorrow what would be his legacy? Would others benefit from his existence??

This is something I had pushed to the very back corners of my mind, hidden in the darkness. Would people benefit from my existence, or did I just simply soak up all that life has given me, leaving nothing but barren soil behind? Or did I make sure to leave it better than I had found it, for at least one person? And well, right now I am not sure. But I know that's why I want to be a doctor. And I know that's why I want to be a better friend and daughter and sister.

I always find it so comforting when the Sunday readings in Mass are a perfect reflection of my recent thoughts... See the second reading, below:

^[14 How does it help, my brothers, when someone who has never done a single good act claims to have faith? Will that faith bring salvation?¹⁵ If one of the brothers or one of the sisters is in need of clothes and has not enough food to live on,¹⁶ and one of you says to them, 'I wish you well; keep yourself warm and eat plenty,' without giving them these bare necessities of life, then what good is that?¹⁷ In the same way faith, if good deeds do not go with it, is quite dead.¹⁸ But someone may say: So you have faith and I have good deeds? Show me this faith of yours without deeds, then! It is by my deeds that I will show you my faith. (James 2:14-18)]

You see, I can write and write in this blog. I can talk a big game about wanting to "help people" as a doctor. But what am I doing right now to better another's life? This passage from James seems so simple, but it is one of the hardest things to really, REALLY, put into practice. It is so hard not to be selfish and impatient. It is even harder for me not to feel entitled, as embarrassing as that is to put into writing.  To not feel like I deserve to be happy and do well and be healthy... because I just went through this awful thing and I deserve it, right??

Wrong.

One of the hardest things for me is to go back to the West Clinic, where I got my treatment, and see the faces, some familiar and many unfamiliar, of the many, many patients who are (still) fighting for their lives. To see the faces of patients who I know will not make it much longer. "Survivor's guilt" or his ugly cousin "helplessness" take their seats, one on each of my shoulders, and wiggle their way into every thought. Why am I the one sitting here with my new crop of hair, antsy to get back to the library, instead of them? It just breaks my heart to see so many good, probably extraordinary, people have to go through so much, with no hope in sight. It breaks my heart and pressures me to do something extraordinary as well. 

But, it doesn't have to be extraordinary. You just have to do something... really it can be the smallest thing you can think of... the point is that there is no faith without deeds. The point is that I cannot believe in this magnificent God who GAVE me the strength to make it through and who GIVES me all that I need and more in this life, without wanting to pay it forward. I must GIVE as a way of trying to put the smallest dent in the debt that I owe in this life. I can barely aspire to break even, for that would be impossible, but I can at least try. 

And the first step is to put all my feelings of entitlement aside. I am alive, no more or less alive than any other on this earth. In the great words of Henry Dodd, a classmate and good friend of mine, "everyone experiences trouble, but in their own way...the trouble of another may be only trivial in your eyes but to them could mean the world..." (sorry I butchered that quote...). But you get the point. What I have gone through is nothing special.Everyone around me has their own "cancer" to overcome. This was just mine. And it is but a catalyst that will propel me into the part of my life which is destined to be more special than any other prior part of my measly 24 years on this Earth. Special because it will not be of my life, but of something bigger. I want to give back. I must give back. Not because of my diagnosis, and not in spite of it either. But because I have faith. 

And I am going to start very close to home. You'll see.

Liv

^[34 He called the people and his disciples to him and said, 'If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross and follow me.³⁵ Anyone who wants to save his life will lose it; but anyone who loses his life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. (Mark 8:34-35)]