The stress of having cancer live in your home ebbs and flows. Sometimes it’s quiet and you get to enjoy the little things and the simple moments with pure innocence. Other times it squeezes in at inopportune times and everyone knows it. The awkwardness of an uninvited guest. Oh. Yeah. That.

Love has qualities we can’t describe, substance that defies logic. It’s a given that I would accept any pain and suffering in place of those I love. Give it to me, Lord. And they would do the same. Love does. Seems like a strange game of Hot Potato. We both really don’t want it but would take it for the other. So, shared sorrow as half sorrow, shared joy as twice the joy seems true. But in those quiet moments you still are one on one with the uninvited guest. Taps you on the shoulder. Still here.

And you realize that those who would bear your pain and sorrow for you are bearing it in some manner already. You catch glimpses when they want to be strong for you. And sometimes its too much and we melt in the moment, spring leaks big and little.

In one of those moments, Melanie in a quivering burst leaked, “You never talk about it…”

It.

Oh. Yeah. That.

But I do.

All the time. Between the three of us. Me, it, and Him. It is not allowed in the sacred spaces of love. We get to keep that in all its grace. No matter what.