Yesterday’s hashtag physically, mentally, and emotionally hurt to write.

But it needed to have shock value so the people making decisions could feel the urgency of allowing stage four patients to have a voice. Today?

I’ve come up with a new hashtag.

Let me explain…

The other day while “Walking with Oprah”, I was listening to a podcast on how the universe has your back.

I’ve become what I call a “Christian Spiritualist”, in that Jesus is my lord and savior, God is my father, but they have a whole universe of spirit working with them helping us all while we inhabit our shells. I’m still up in the air about what happens when we die. Do we stay in heaven forever, or does God say, “I have more work for you to do. Want to go back and try again? This time you get to be this person and live this story” . Sort of like a hermit crab. You move from shell to shell each time, a bigger shell, a bigger life, until the life you lead is a life that helped many. Then, when you die a final time, God is all like, “Well, there’s nothing else for you to do. Stay and rest, and wait for all of your loved ones to come back up. They’ll be here in a blink an eye.”

(I’ve been sent nasty scary messages from bible thumpers before… so stay in your line, thumpers. I’ve heard it all before, thank you very much.)

Anyhow, while listening to the podcast, it finally clicked on how to pray. “Thy will be done” is probably THE single hardest line to say, especially for a control freak. I’m like Veruca Salt, and instead of wanting an Oompa Loompa NOW, I want the cancer gone NOW. Here is where it clicked.

Being a kindergarten teacher, I’m surrounded by children all day who believe the impossible can happen. I push on my port in my chest and begin to float to my tippy toes, and tell them it’s my magic flying button that I use at Night. They believe in fairies and unicorns and Santa and mythical bunnies.

ANYTHING is possible in their world.

So during the podcast I heard the words that clicked.

Maybe MY prayers are in the way of God’s plan. Maybe this is the story He told me was my life to live because something big is going to come of the cancer that will help others. I’ve had a woman who is truly gifted tell me that spirit has shown her how my blood will help not only cure breast cancer, but many cancers, and I will help many, many people.

As someone who was told I would be dead within weeks or months when first diagnosed almost three years ago, and again last November…

I’ll take story number one please.

Why not?

I believe in miracles.

Life is a dark and hard place if you think this is all there is.

God whispers to me as well.

While walking with Oprah, He told me to text someone I love who also needed to hear a message of how sometimes he doesn’t let us open the window because he is opening a big door for us. I texted this person. I found out later that this person got the text right after the door had been opened in a big way.

See?

It doesn’t mean I cant ask for help, or be specific in my prayers though. I asked God to help us financially. I got a call the next day that we are getting a partial refund from a bill we paid. I asked God to use this cancer story to help others.

The next day, MetUp contacted me and asked to share my blog. This is a national organization that advocates for stage four breast cancer patients. Actually, they also have a London chapter. They shared my blog, and now women and men from all over are shown the story. The faith, the treatments. The supplements, the herbs, the swooshing, the little signs of miracles.

The amazing thing is that I can see some of the strangers who clicked and shared. They all said it’s like I wrote their words. Falling down the hole when the trapdoor opens, being alone on a ledge that is crumbling, hearing others yelling support or crying in the dark…. our stories are all so different, but we are all in holes.

It’s not easy sharing this pilgrimage. This journey. This fall down the hole. It’s personal. It’s like the nightmare of writing my diary in elementary school and everyone reading it, except I don’t care who knows who my crush is, because he loves me right back. I’ve gotten thicker skin, and those who don’t want to read or support this story have been weeded out or removed themselves. That hurt, but the skin got thicker, and maybe it prepared room for others who put lotion of the skin and send support daily.

My blog website exploded a bit yesterday. I’ve got thousands and thousands of people who have read the blog, from all over the world.

What does it mean?

Physically, nothing. I’m still me, mom to three, wife to Rob, teacher, friend… Keri.

But it also meant something.

It meant that for a day, there were people who my words helped. Helped them feel not so alone in their freefall. Maybe they will click around the blog and follow the freefall of mine from the beginning, and see all the moments of light and love that have slowed the fall.

It’s like the starfish analogy.

Thousands of starfish on the sand and I’m throwing them back one by one. I cant help everyone, but I made a difference to each one I touched.

Keep swimming, starfish.

I see you.

Keep going.

Today is the big Jamesport parade, and it starts at 6:30. It’s a great parade and carnival, and supports our volunteer fire department. Everyone should go sometime this week and just buy a bracelet or food and support the men and women who will be there for you. They are the brave starfish throwers.

We saw my niece for her birthday/graduation, as my kids were all scattered the last few weeks. It was also “cake day” at the Mattituck Yacht Club, and Quinn was besides himself. The board of the club will never know how much this scholarship for my kids means to us. They took my starfish and are teaching them to sail. They are a blessing.

Today, I’m changing and using a new hashtag.

Im saying that #deadby2020 will turn into #curedin2023. (The medium told me seven years from diagnosis, so that’s the hashtag).

May it be so.

In Jesus’s name, amen.

Xoxo

Keri

Ps…

Today I walked with my Maddie. She is brilliant. We started with Oprah and Caroline Myss, but then Maddie used a point she said and began what I call her own epic Maddie Ted Talk. I wish I recorded it. Here is a picture of where we walked to… a place where the sidewalk ends.

“There is a place where the sidewalk ends

And before the street begins,

And there the grass grows soft and white,

And there the sun burns crimson bright,

And there the moon-bird rests from his flight

To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black

And the dark street winds and bends,

Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow

We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,

And watch where the chalk-white arrows go

To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we’ll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,

And we’ll go where the chalk-white arrows go,

For the children, they mark, and the children, they know

The place where the sidewalk ends.”

~shell Silverstein