Antsy.

Every year about this time, I start to get really antsy. I’m ready for the weather to get warmer, to redo the front landscaping, go on a long walk, play with Runa outside. The list is endless, and I just simply want it to be warmer. This year I’m personally excited to get outside and plant more flowers. Dad gave me permission to clothe the whole North side of our house in plants. I viewed this as a wonderful opportunity to spend my Christmas bonus on every California Poppy and Apple of Peru seed I saw fit. In my head, this looks wonderful. We’ll see what happens, but currently the weather is stopping me, and I feel antsy. I'm just in a season of antsiness.

It's hard to describe a season you’re in when you’re in it. You know it’s happening, but it doesn't make a lot of sense. Some lessons you must learn more than once. Sometimes God has to bash you over the head with a brick…multiple times…to ensure you get something. I think my season right now is ultimately about loving people. Right now, there is a lot of attention on me, and a lot of questions being asked. I know even if people aren’t asking me, they are asking my parents, relatives, or friends. I don’t like the attention; I wish it could be one go and then move on. There are other things happening than me having health issues. With this attention, people send cards and gifts and say lots and lots of things. I never know what to do with these things. I love the gesture and the thoughts behind them, but sometimes I can’t deal with it. – I don’t think you fully understand that until you walk in that. Ultimately, I believe that people do these things because they love me. They ask questions because they care. They send packages because they want to. In most cases, if I stop long enough to fix my self-centered attitude, I see God working in them and through them. And when you stop to see that, how could you not want that for them? If I love someone, I want to see fruit there. I must let them do what they feel led to do, even if I’m not having a good attitude about it. It’s a different level of loving people…allowing them to love you in not so fun situations. And every day, I think God is bashing me upside the head with that.

Not only is God bashing me upside the head with life lessons on how to love your neighbor, but He’s also giving abounding good things. We went Monday for an oncology appointment to go over every result I’ve gotten. While it was a mixture of news, we all know me, and we’re focusing on the good parts. The cancer is contained to just the lymph nodes and treatments for this work well – positive results in the ninety percentiles. I must go for a couple more tests, but chemotherapy should start soon, and we’ll be done with that by the end of summer. And by the Good Lord’s grace (the doctors’ words, not necessarily mine!), the scans come back clean, and I never have to see an oncologist again. However, I'm still antsy to get started. I want to know how I'll react and how it'll feel and if it will work. And if it works, how quickly and how effectively? I'm antsy.

So, in this season of being antsy, I’m going to do my best to love people. To love my people. I’m not convinced I’ll do well at it or that I’ll enjoy it.

This week I also made the executive decision to keep this place private for now. I realize it's a little contradictory to my last post, but I'm an indecisive person who does what she pleases. I'm treating this as my public private diary. You'll know all the details about all the things, and I'm sure someone somewhere will dig hard enough to find this, but it's still private. It’s mine and I have control over it.