Thoughts of a Sojourner

October 11, 2013 is a day etched into my mind and heart that would shape the next 12 years of mine and Kim’s marriage. A few weeks before this date annual mammogram had a revealed a spot in Kim’s breast, but at that time the hope was that it would be something benign. Her doctor quickly scheduled her for a biopsy to hopefully rule out cancer. During the week after the biopsy, Kim and I talked and decided that the doctor would call me with the results of the biopsy. On October 11, 2013, that fateful call would come. The biopsy revealed that Kim had a small growth in her right breast that was indeed cancerous. I was working at UPS in Huntsville at the time as a supervisor and immediately dropped what I was doing to go home and share this news with my bride. To say that 19 mile drive was the longest drive of my life was an understatement. As I drove home with eyes filled with tears and a heart that was broken for my bride, I grappled with how to share this dreadful news with her. When I walked through the door that early afternoon, she immediately knew because of the hour that I arrived home unannounced that the news was not what we wanted to hear. As I shared the news with Kim, we both sobbed like we never had before. Her confidence and determination quickly to hold of the situation and the mood turned from sobbing to, “Ok, we got to get a plan to whip this disease”. Over the next weeks, we would begin to meet with her oncologist at CCI in Huntsville and with Dr Richard Matthews, her breast doctor through this whole journey, to formulate a plan. More biopsies would be done to determine if the cancer had spread to the lymph nodes and the results again were not what we wanted to hear because the nodes were indeed involved. Our oncology team went into action quickly with an aggressive plan of chemotherapy which would last for what seemed like forever. The drugs they would use were some of the harshest they could prescribe, but they were what was needed at the time to beat this thing back. The sickness involved with this treatment was brutal, but Kim in true Kim fashion would face it head on with the courage of a brave soldier. Upon completing this round of treatment, she would undergo 35 rounds of targeted radiation treatment. This process would go on for approximately 9-10 months. After completing the treatments, she would undergo a lumpectomy and would have the lymph nodes involved removed.. When all was said and done, the treatments had done their job while taking a physical toll on my Bride, but again in true Kim fashion she recovered and life got back to normal. Well, as normal as it can within that 5 year window of getting 6 month scans to verify the cancer had not returned. Ultimately, we were able to celebrate that 5 year window in summer of 2015. We learned so many things during this first journey of her battle with cancer. I learned that I was married to the most courageous woman ever! Her attitude through the whole ordeal was amazing. It would have been easy to give up or feel sorry for yourself, but she never did during this first battle. She tried and pushed herself to keep things as normal as she could mainly for me and the girls because I also saw reinforced what I already knew about Kim and that was that she was one of the most unselfish people I have ever know. She was always thinking of others even when she would have been in her rights to focus on herself exclusively. Kim and I learned to love God more deeply and experienced the faithfulness of God in a way that we had never experienced. The years following would still involve many appointments, scans and tests, but confidence would grow that this monster had been defeated. In those years we learned to love life more because we had been given an intense glimpse of how fragile life truly can be. When I think of those days, our love for one another grew immensely. We truly lived and experienced how God can take tragedy and turn it for His glory and our goodness.