not a big fan of emotional roller coasters

It was a month ago tomorrow that we found out my mom had a large tumor mass the size of a tennis ball near her kidneys. The following day we found out that she was possibly already in stage 4 of Adrenocortical Carcinoma. That is the technical term for having cancer of the adrenal gland. It is a rare form of aggressive cancer that only 1 in every 1.5 million people get. This all took place a week after Brittany and I became engaged.

I have no idea if I will ever be able to explain, even to myself, what kind of emotional roller coaster this has been. Brittany and I were in Maryland this summer interning at a church and we had the blessing of feeling like we completely fit in with the people up there. We made incredible friends over the course of 11 weeks and honestly it was very hard to leave. I have had the privilege of being gone 4 out of the last 5 summers and getting to know wonderful people through camps and internships now. Through this I know that when you leave a place that you feel extremely used by God it is very lonely when you return home. You feel as though it is somewhat a let down...that somehow God will not be able to use you in such a strong way. These feelings are very real and very strong and this is what I was preparing to deal with when I returned home. Our engagement occurred at the end of our time in Maryland and was easily the best day of my life. So there were two opposite feelings at the same time going on. I was incredibly glad to share and celebrate the engagement and also I was dealing with missing the place and the people I was with all summer.

I will never forget the look on my mom's face when the radiologist told us that she had cancer and it was in stage 3 and possibly even 4. Even now as I type this, that memory deeply saddens me. Usually people loose a lot of weight and you know that something is very wrong and the diagnosis of cancer is still devastating, but not extremely unexpected. My mom looked totally normal, however. She had a few symptoms that lead her to figure out what was going on in her body, but 2 days before that moment I would have said my mom is doing great. In that moment everything that I thought was hard that I was dealing with (missing Maryland) became obsolete.

In this last month some of my best friends of my life have experienced very deep and heavy burdens like never before. Guys that I love and would consider family all hurting due to jobs, diseases, relationships...everything. We have all experienced things that we never have before and pain that we have never known...all at the same time. In some way it has been a little comforting. I can be a real idiot sometimes and so can my friends, but in this last month all of those things mattered so little. All we wanted was each other. And I usually wouldn't say that sentence or type that because it sounds really gay, but in this time of our lives it fits. We didn't care about stupid things we've done in the past. We didn't have to be doing anything fun. We just needed to know that we were there, that we are there.

It has been a crazy month. It has been so ugly and so beautiful at the same time.

And if my heart and flesh are weak
To bear an untried pain,
The bruised reed He will not break,
But strengthen and sustain.