Dear God, it's me H.....:)

      WOW.....how my life has changed since last year this time. Last year I this time I had a newborn baby. Changing diapers, sleepless nights, and breast feeding my little angel was all my days consisted of. What a great time that was, I miss that time. My life was predestined, I was going to get married, have another baby, and I was going to look good doing it. I love fashion, clothes, purses, hair, all that is outward shallow beauty, I am still that person, but different. That person is trapped in a boob less body with a GI Jane hair cut, not exactly cover of Vogue to say the least. My vanity has been put on the back burner throughout this journey, cause...... what can you do? I wanted to live no matter how disfigured I felt.
    Seeing this journey almost halfway through and all downhill from now, I am getting VERY excited to get back to looking like myself. Confidence and  beauty are from the inside I KNOW!! But boobs and hair are looking pretty awesome as of late. I have 4 treatments left and then surgery to get my groove back on, I mean my boobs back on. LOL! I am so excited, I am scheduling consultations with some plastics docs this week. I am anxious to see some magic be done in the operating room, CANNOT WAIT!!!! I know it will be another challenge with restrictions for a while but I need something GOOD at this point, especially since rads are to follow for 30 something grueling days. Final implant exchange surgery will be done 3-6 months later. YEAR OF TEARS, so true. My journey pending no complications from the rads, which my radiation oncologist seems to think we will avoid, Please PRAY!!! will be about a year and a half.
    I have been entertaining the thoughts of going back to work for a while or volunteering at a nursing home, or helping other survivors. I want to THRIVE!!!! So, I have been applying for a few weeks just for the heck of it and have had no call backs or interviews. I am excellent at what I do, so I just kind of gave up, then I got a phone call for an interview. Went and  it went excellent despite my wig and powdered in eyebrows. I didn't tell them about my cancer yet. It was a panel interview and all were young women so I think they knew I was wearing a wig, but no questions. They seemed interested but as I drove off.... again I asked God that if it is his will for me and I am physically well enough for this job I was ready, but ONLY if it was him and not something I was trying to make happen.
    As I sat in chemo today I got a call back , they want to visit with me again, YEAH!!!! I am BLESSED and FAVORED!!!! Praise you GOD you are so good. I know it isn't a done deal but I do feel like God is working and opening doors that I may or may not be ready for. I guess if he thinks I am I really am !!! I will, if offered the job tell them I will be needing a week off within the next two months for surgery and I will have to schedule my chemo for a Saturday or Sunday, or maybe an evening? So, a lot of new happenings here. New home, maybe new job, new boobs.....things are looking up:) LOL!
   Where I am in my life one year later is disheartening and maybe that is wrong thinking. Some days I look at cancer as an opportunity to draw and develop a closer relationship with God, and give me a greater appreciation for life and how I want to spend the rest of mine. On other days I feel that it stole so much from me I just want to forget it and live like it never happened. I know that out of this horrible experience I have been molded and sharpened for a greater opportunity. Not sure if it means helping other survivors by doing a  "Look good, Feel good" program to aid in the cosmetic challenges of this journey, which would be very rewarding or maybe founding a breast cancer survivor group at our church or maybe something else?  I am looking forward to fulfilling the promise that God gave me before I was ever diagnosed and on the loo the day I was told I had cancer. This is your testimony and you will tell lots of women your story. PRAISE YOU GOD!!!!! By your stripes, we are healed.

Dear God, I  want to thank you for the opportunities that you give me to tell my story to others almost daily,  including my beautiful daughter and her sweet friend Andrea this weekend. I hope that the talks we had about breast cancer and the vision of the scars on my chest would spark them to do self exams and live a healthy lifestyle. Above all let my life be a living testimony to you and your glory, thank you again for always holding me throught my life and on the darkest days:) Love, H

This is what it feels like to be held.......This song has been very special to me through this journey, but as I posted it tonight I want to say that it reminded me of a high school friend that lost her beautiful daughter last year suddenly. Jenny, I love you and hope that you know that I think of you often and want to dedicate this song to you:) God bless you and your family.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pP6T1bJEO6Y

Living life outloud

      I am more than half way through my second phase of chemotherapy and with only five treatments left I am feeling pretty good. I am still fatigued and counts are still hovering around three, but my red counts are going up leaving me less breathless and weak for that I am thankful. I have new hair growth and have started growing new eyelashes that I am already donning with mascara despite them being uber short, thank God for the small things:)
      I am so blessed despite the chaos that surrounds this diagnosis. If attitude is everything, then I have already won. I have drew on my faith and relationship with God and he has supplied my every need, Praise him for he is sooo good. Sierra, Dakota and Colt have been doing incredible and I have to give so much credit to the great family support I have had throughout this journey.   
   So, life goes on after breast cancer and I am proof. You can't stop living and you can't give up. You just have to keep propelling yourself forward, not looking back and wondering if it's going to return or if they got all of it, or if it is hiding somewhere else. You can't do it !!! So, when all of those thoughts creep in I get busy doing something else like just LIVING:)

Child like faith, with a dash of spiritual maturity ♥

       There is much to be said about having a child like faith, it is very difficult to do as an adult with such a bright, logical and analytical mind. I have known Jesus since I was about 6 years old, but I have strayed from my faith since then. I also have never fully matured as a christian due to the unwillingness to serve God with all my heart and to pursue a sin free life. I would get on fire for God and lose momentum or passion due to the inability to GIVE him my life, I was too busy controlling my own life and every one in it to allow that. NOT very spiritual, huh? BUT It is the truth.
     I was talking to a friend a few weeks ago and she also had been facing physical obstacles like me and her situation was more complicated, she has been a christian longer than I have been alive. She confessed that she doubting her faith and God's promises, she even stopped praying. My heart broke as we spoke. I knew that she was under spiritual attack and needed God more now than ever and I told her that. It is very hard to be disconnect from your church family when you are sick especially as baby christian like me, but she was no baby christian. She has been praying and reading her bible again and has taken back what the devil tried to steal from her, but it is easy to listen to all of the "what if 's" in this journey, it is human but certainly not spiritual.
     Every time the "what if 's" creep in I go straight to my knees now or I run to the word and the fear begins to dissipate.That is something the old Heather would NOT have tried as a first resort, that would have been after days or even weeks of trying to figure it out myself and of course discussing it with with others, all not cool. I began to realize that I had matured since last check and that although my own walk had not been everything God had planned for me, it still can be. AND that I have since day one of this diagnosis relied on ALL of the promises of God, when I read his word I take it literally and apply it to my life and to my situation, without that childlike belief in a best friend that I can't see or touch I may too have doubted the promises.
     I have missed many opportunities that God had for me in my life I am quite sure due to my disobedience, but maybe all of those failures have left me stranded in the wilderness wondering for 35 years for a purpose, for a moment just as this. A moment that I needed God and him alone, no person could fix it for me and I certainly couldn't. If I was going to beat this, it was only his will I had no control. In that I began a relationship with Christ that I can only say is deep, full and mature, I am sure on some days he still may dispute that, but I am on my way. Praise God!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwsvqVmFV6Y

My mess, HIS message.





New Years 2011





      I have to start this post by saying GOD is soooo AWESOME!!!! I was concerned about my blood count last week as they continued to dive, but as prayers from the saints went up and GOD'S healing hand intervened, things changed. I had a white blood cell count of 4.1 today....one tenth over a low" NORMAL."  PRAISE YOU GOD, for you are my healer and my strength. I give you ALL the glory and praise!!!!!  However, I am far from normal, as my dad said today:)
    As I sat today talking with my favorite chemo nurse April, I shared some of the feelings I had been having about who I had become as a result of this disease. I explained to her that I don't want to be referred to as the girl that had cancer for the rest of my life, I am so much more than cancer. I was told in the beginning of this journey by my sweet friend Dara, " Don't let this define you". That was GREAT advice, thank you love. I never knew that a friendship I had twenty something years ago would come again and that her words would be so powerful in this walk :) I have been approached by another friend Rafael to help him with a local cancer fundraiser called SHAVE TO SAVE in May, I feel honored that he would want me to be a part of it. But I have to say I will NOT be the one shaving my head for this one, I should have AT LEAST Halle Berry hair by then;-)
    All joking aside, I am making "MY MESS" into" HIS MESSAGE", I do not want to be the girl that just survived cancer, but I do want to be an advocate for finding a cure, supporting other young women going through this dreaded disease in some way. Most of all I want to be the girl that isn't just a breast cancer survivor, I want to be a testimony to the power of  GOD ALMIGHTY,  KING OF EVERYTHING.  I want to tell others what he has done in my life, I am changed by this experience, I am forever changed. When GOD spoke to me last fall and told me "This is your testimony and you are going to tell it to LOTS of other women", I had no idea what testimony. A testimony of mistakes I have made and how he was changing my heart and life, was I no different than every other sinner ? What did I have to offer someone else? Who would want to know about my past and all the things I had done and was ashamed of ? What GOD what do you want me to tell them ? I didn't know until I was diagnosed in July and within an hour, on the toilet, as I cried in devastation there HE was again telling me the same thing word for word.
     For those that are either non believers or those that have never had a personal relationship with Christ you may doubt that GOD has the time to speak to you personally, but HE does. I am living proof that he does and he will and if you let HIM in and you seek HIM, read HIS word and fill your mind with HIM, HE will change your life as HE has mine. I am far from perfect and am and will be a work in progress, just like the children's church song....HE's still working on me, to make me what I ought to be. So, maybe you won't be as "lucky" as me to have trial by fire with a cancer diagnosis, but I have to say that even without  that desperation you too will find him, all you have to do is ask.
Check out this video, this is my life song........I hope it touches your heart.
Love, H
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ee1-qHCmDUQ