Depends and Saggy Boobs

Super excited! I just booked us a room for San Antonio on the 11th. The kids, Kevin and I need to get away for a few days (even Damion is excited). Riverwalk here we come! The very next week, we are going to Lubbock to see my brother and sister-in-law and my niece and nephews. I am a very proud aunt, but sadly, I do not get to see them very often. It is just going to be nice to get away from being sick all of the time.

I am planning a wedding for my best friend Kasey and her fiance' Kourtney. So far, I have the photographer set, florist, and hopefully the DJ and the officiator. I have until October 22nd to get everything perfect. So, while I am in San Antonio, I am going to scavenge for ideas. 

I want to live my life to the fullest and I cannot do that just laying down.

I am not afraid to die.

Once upon a time, I was in Kindergarten. For a reason unbeknownst to me, the subject came up as a topic of conversation between my best friend Peggy (who would have known she would passed so soon?) and me. Snuggled in our sleeping bags in a tent made by sheets stretched over the empty space between the two beds in her room, we wondered what it would be like to die and decided we didn’t want to.

I still don't want to die. I have so much left to do. I want to be there when my children graduate high school and college. I want to be there to watch them get married and have children of their own. And, I want to be there to sit on my porch with my husband when we are both old and cannot remember what we did with our car keys.

What scares me the most is the way I will die. I will eventually suffocate to death. But I also may die from the seizures if they do indeed turn out to be brain METS. It is not death I am afraid of, it is how I will die. I want a peaceful death and I would be extremely lucky if that was the way I went out.

I'm no theologian, and I don 't play one on TV. But I do have some thoughts on why bad things happen to good people. And please forgive me in advance, my faith and my relationship with God have both been shaken. 

If you assume that God is perfect, as most monotheistic religions do, then it follows that He did not make any mistakes when He created the universe and the laws of nature that govern it. However, when He created mankind, He gave us free will (and, thus, the ability to make choices).

We’ve all made at least one wrong choice at some point or another in our lifetime. And our choices never affect ourselves alone – we are all interconnected via our relationships with one another and with the different elements of nature. As John Donne wrote,

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend’s were.
Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

And sometimes, even when we’re trying to make the right choice, we end up with negative consequences. I’m reminded, in particular, of the TV show “Person of Interest”, in which the two main characters attempt to save various people who are in danger of losing their lives. However, sometimes they end up saving the life of one person who will go on to take the lives of many other people. We are incapable of making choices that do not affect others.

In terms of cancer, we’ve chosen to take advantage of the way God’s laws of nature work in order to create products and substances that make life easier or more convenient, or that allow society to prosper. And while none of these inventions may have been intended to cause harm, many have. The creation of plastics that may contain carcinogenic compounds, the use of asbestos in construction, the reliance upon nuclear power plants that may harm the surrounding population in the event of an accidental meltdown – these are all inventions that were meant to advance society but that have also ended up harming it to some extent.

So, God is perfect, and so are His laws of nature, but we aren’t. And, as a result, sometimes we misuse His laws of nature, even if we don’t mean to. But if God intervened in the working of His laws of nature through miracles every time they were misused, there would be no point in having laws of nature in the first place, or in having free will.

That’s why bad things, like cancer, happen to good people. God allows us to make our own decisions, and since our decisions affect everyone around us, other people’s poor or uninformed choices can start a chain reaction that negatively affects good people.

Let me give you a little laugh before I close:

How Having Cancer is like Being Old

You and your grandmother both:
share a wheelchair
share a temporary handicapped parking placard (yes, that’s illegal, but it’s dumb to carry two separate placards around in the same car)
spend most of your time in bed
have no social life
wear Depends
have short-term memory problems
have boobs that could break a big toe without the support of a bra
have osteoporosis
take the same diuretic and heart medicine, and
have a mix of grey and brown hair (granted, hers is more salt-and-pepper and mine is more ferret-like).

Am I too young to die this old or too old to die this young?

Love you all and truly mean it, and God loves you too!

Shanna xoxoxo

Here is the link to our Go Fund Me Page to help with medical and travel expenses: gofund.me/hope4shanna2016

Official blog Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/shannabananahealthandfitness 

Official prayer warrior page for my fight against lung cancer: facebook.com/hope4shanna