What Will You Be Like?

This is from 2005.
“What will you be like when you grow up, Elisabeth?” I asked my daughter, for no reason, except that she was sitting there, on a kitchen stool, waiting for her breakfast, with the sun coming through the window behind her making her hair gold around the edges, and I was amazed at her, and I wondered out loud what she would become.

“Like you,” she answered immediately.

I was startled by her quick answer, and not sure if I liked it. “Maybe not just like me. Maybe you will be smarter than me; nicer than me,” I suggested.

She shook her head. “No, I want to be just like you. Only with more hair.”

Elisabeth at five

The last part made me smile. I know that it is her five-year-old way of saying that although she wants to be like me, she doesn’t want to have cancer. Of all the changes my disease has left me with, the hair loss is the thing that has been the most visible, the most disturbing to my youngest children. My baldness has become a symbol for the sickness; the whole experience summed up by a tangle of hair left on a pillow and a pile of donated wigs on a shelf of my closet.

Learning that I had an aggressive breast cancer a year ago was surprising, and sad, and unsettling, and worrisome. But, strangely, it was not devastating. I shed some tears, and said many prayers, pleading with the Lord that I would conquer the disease, that I would be allowed to remain on earth and finish raising my young family. But I do not recall a feeling of hopelessness or despair. In fact, I remember the week of my diagnosis with something like fondness. Thinking back, it seems that it was a very sweet time. I felt that I was wrapped up in a blanket of peace, and I came to truly know that the Lord was with me, and that his plan for me was wiser than my own.

Now, I don’t mean to sound perfectly saintly. As a rule, I am not a person who accepts trials with faith and gratitude. I whine, and complain, and doubt. In this case, my prayers progressed gradually from, “Don’t let me die, Father. I can’t die,”  to “If you think it would be best for me to go, to leave my family, then I am willing. But I think I should tell you that’s not what’s best. They need me here,” to finally, “I want to live, Father. But thy will, not mine, be done.”  At that point, I finally felt the peace that comes with accepting His will.

A few weeks ago, I was asked to speak to the Beehive class during a lesson on eternal perspective.  I told them, honestly, that I had been able to see how, in God’s eyes, the cancer was something that could help me, and that in the eternal scheme of things, it was a small moment in my life.

All the next week I wondered – why is it that I can have that kind of perspective about a terrible disease, but not about piles of dishes and whiny children?  Why is it that the small ordinary trials are sometimes more difficult to deal with than the “big ones”?  We believe we could square our shoulders and be brave about crossing the plains, but no one thinks about bravery in the face of gum in the carpet.

Yet bravery – consistent, unyielding courage – is exactly what is required for those kind of everyday difficulties.

When I was a teenager, I read a story about a man who set a world’s record by walking across a large desert. When he reached the end, he was interviewed by a reporter, who asked him what was the most difficult trial he had experienced on the way. The man thought about it and then replied, “I guess it was that the sand kept getting in my shoes.”

I remember being struck that he couldn't come up with any more noteworthy problems than that. How about heat stroke? Dehydration? A thrilling battle with a wild animal? A tarantula bite?

Now that I’m older, I’m beginning to see that the scary problems in life – the tigers we have to fight – are difficult, no doubt. But we have adrenaline to help us with those. Clogged toilets and burned casseroles and dirty floors are the sand in our shoes. We keep dumping it out, but as long as we are on the journey, there will be more sand to get inside our shoes and irritate us. We may be tempted to give up, to sit down in the middle of the barren wasteland and cry. But to endure to the end – to cross the desert – that is what is required of us.

By the time I handed Elisabeth her oatmeal it seemed she had forgotten the conversation. But now I am wondering: Could Elisabeth grow up to be just like me, but with “more hair” – in other words, live a full, character-building life without facing major trials? Maybe, with our limited vision, that is what we  want. A life of sunshiny days looks good to her. And it would be heart-wrenching for me to watch her suffer. But it wouldn't be possible. I am what I am because of the experiences that have shaped my life, and cancer is one of those experiences.


So, what will you be like, Elisabeth? What events, happy or sad, will help make you what you will become?

None of us really knows the answers to those questions. I can't shelter her from life's sometimes unexpected roughness. But what I can give her is an example – a close-up view of a human being who has been kicked and pinched and poked and hurt, but who still gets up in the morning to make breakfast for a little girl with golden edges.

Note: You can find more information about my cancer diagnosis and treatment at the Mormon Women Project website, here: www.mormonwomen.com/2011/04/13/daughter-of-a-king