Life keeps going. Shocking, right?

Number one thing we learned after the shock of Ryan's diagnosis wore off: Life keeps going. Our dreams blew up, our reality shifted to something totally alien, and we spent a good bit of time just staring at the world around us trying to sync our minds with the newness of our lives.

Thing is, life didn't change. We did. And I am just now finally getting that. Ryan understood it from the start. He's good like that.

Every morning the sun still comes up. There are still meals to make and chores to do and animals to care for and projects to work on. There have been countless hugs and helping hands ever since Easter morning, when it all began. But those hugs come from people as they pass by. Those helping hands reach out much like the guy who picked me up off the ground when I nose-dived in front of him on the hike with the 4H little ones: a strong arm with a firm grasp lifting us back up on our feet or steadying us when we started to tumble. Just as quickly as we feel the grasp it's gone again, swept forward in the ongoing flow of time, life, whatever.

I keep saying "we", when I think really it's mostly me. We were part of that ongoing flow, just cruising along and life was reaching the best it had ever been for us. Then (stupid) cancer reached out kind of like a Shepard's hook~~just hooked around our waists and jerked us out of the flow and sidelined us. Ryan stood there with me for about a month, then he started walking forward again, just along the sidewalk now rather than in the middle of the road. Me....well, I've still been standing right there where we were pulled out. Crying because I want my life back just the way it was. Furiously staring into the surge of life running past me watching for the opening that would allow us back in.

I feel like I was totally blindsided by this (stupid) cancer. I felt like it had to be some kind of mistake. I felt like the world should have stopped when we were pulled out of the flow. I was...it wasn't...and even though it feels right that it should have, it didn't. I finally get that. So I'm finally ready to start moving forward again. It's totally different here out on the sidewalk. And there is most definitely a part of me that is feeling bitter about our having been plucked up from where we were and dumped out here. But I'm finally ready to suck it up and just start moving forward again. Ready in the real sense...not in my previous bi-polar up-then-down sense. So--here we go.