The GRIND: Can you hear me, Cancer?
Have you ever been there? You’re both on edge. You both start taking some cheap shots, but you’re “only joking,” right?
Yesterday, my wife, Shara and I ran an errand outside of Colorado Springs. It was a great opportunity to drive about 20 miles out in the country. We didn't have any idea how much we needed that. But, if you had been a “fly on the rearview mirror” though, it might not have started out that way. Have you ever been there? You’re both on edge. You both start taking some cheap shots, but you’re “only joking,” right? Nah...the ugly is there raging just under the surface. It’s not her, it’s this, this suffocating feeling of the GRIND. The bout that keeps going into the deep rounds.
Can you hear me, cancer?
Can you hear me, cancer? I’m going to be honest with you. I hate this place, this prison, this reality, whatever you want to call it. It has a stench, if there is such a thing. I feel saturated in it. I can taste the GRIND of this disease with every porous bud on my tongue. And every time that I do, I feel that somehow I’ve been infected by it. I can’t wash it off. I can’t get free of it.
No, it’s not her. It’s not us. It is the GRIND. So, we take some cheap shots, but then this loving, selfless, Savior tags into our conversation. He's the one reminder in all of this that we’re not alone in these moments. I don’t know how He did it, but He changed the direction of our conversation to...to LOVE. My distorted lens gets ripped off and I see her unconditional love, her selfless love, her sacrifice, her doing everything within her being to help me and serve me. The GRIND wants to uglify that image, to sour it. It squeezes resentment to the top of this mental health receptacle within me. I don’t want to need her. I want to be her man. I want to be her strength. The GRIND consumes me with resentment. It's bad enough to have a diagnosis, but when it renders me to this struggling human. My inner voice screams at me, "I don't need her, right? That’s weak." I hate this weakness, this need. I hate this GRIND that bests me.
But. Not. Him.
But. Not. Him. He’s not bested. And He does not relent. He smashes the lens. I see her. I lean across the Pathfinder and I grip her hand as she says, “I am just trying to take all of this off of you, I love you, I am here for you.” The warrior Savior overwhelms me and I respond, “I know.” At that moment a cloud burst dumps out over our car and the endless fields along the country road we’re on. Resentment. Machismo. Darkness. Gone.
I’m consumed with the limitlessness of her love. I have this urge to just take her hand, run into the fields and just hold her as the rain washes over us. Could this moment just remain? Lost in this moment, breathless at her love. Wiping away her tears with my weathered, wrinkled hands. Holding her. In. This. Moment. I know these moments are now fleeting.
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