To back up to the beginning of my cancer journey, click here.

I’ve backdated this post to November 4, 2020-

the date that my weight first dropped to 99 pounds.

11-04-2020 So this past week has been rough.  REALLY rough!  As most of you already know, my weight has been steadily dropping since my Whipple operation.  (You may or may not know that I’ve struggled on and off with excess weight since I was a young teenager).

I will never forget weighing in at 99 pounds on my friend Cortney’s scale at her sixth-grade birthday party.  None of the other girls landed anywhere near the 99-pound mark.  Surprisingly, I do not recall anyone teasing me or saying hurtful things to me that night.  Even so, my tender heart was filled with shame and insecurity from that evening forward.  I longed to be tall and slender like the other girls and grew to hate my short, stubby legs and muscular build.  I remember lying in bed at night begging the Lord to just add four more vertical inches to my waistline.  Then I’d look more like everyone else.  Surely my request couldn’t be too hard for Him who created us all…

I have to admit that at the beginning of this journey, slimming down (without even trying) felt like a very strange “perk” of being stricken with a fatal cancer.  But as the small losses of each passing day have combined into weeks and now months of substantial loss, my perspective proves quite different.  The round-faced pear-shaped Julie that I’ve always known and have desperately tried to change for close to three decades doesn’t greet me in the mirror anymore.

Pre-Whipple Julie and Grace

When dressed, a weary, battle-scarred stranger peers back at me.  Her graying hair ages her tremendously and despite the hope that she clings to, her dark eyes reveal that she’s weathering one of life’s most perilous storms.

Post-Whipple Julie and Grace

Without clothes, she appears skeletal, her soft curves now replaced with harsh, protruding bones.  Such a strange and haunting sight, as I had never actually seen any of her bones before now. And oh! How small bones truly are! They look like those of a child!

Her skin literally hangs from those bones, as the areas that once happily stored the majority of her body fat (thighs, arms, buttocks, breasts, and belly) are now nothing more than cascading folds of loose skin.  Yes, you heard that right.  Body parts that are mainly composed of fat simply vanish when the body consumes that fat in order to survive.  Indeed, minimal body fat equals saggy skin waterfalls.  She has nine of them:  2 upon her chest, 2 suspending from her upper arms, a massive one at her lower belly, 2 dripping down her thighs, and 2 flowing down her glutes and trickling into large pools that rest on what hamstring muscles she has left.

I am repulsed by each of them at every glance and I must look away.

Her crooked spine (no longer safely concealed from prying eyes underneath forgiving body fat) is now fully exposed and particularly grotesque, pulling one hip and set of ribs upward. Her prominent ribs, sternum, collarbones, and shoulder blades remind me of a malnourished child miles across the globe. It hurts to sit for any period of time now and she must carry a cushion with her to pad her bare tailbone. How comfortable life once was with fifty-six additional pounds of padding!

Wasting. Why God? What purpose might this hold in my life?  The Lord has allowed it and I am diligently searching for the lesson in it.  Is He trying to unmask hidden vanity buried deep within me?  While I certainly have never thought very highly of my looks, I have somehow managed to connect my appearance with my “worthiness” to be loved.  I know this because I do my very best to look my very best as much as possible.  For twenty-two years, I’ve raced to put on makeup before my husband gets home from work because I don’t want him to see the real me, the plain me, the ugly me.

In the past, I have viewed weight gain as humiliating.  But this degree of weight loss is far more humbling, as it has robbed me of a feminine figure.  Instead, I look neutral and I struggle to comprehend how my husband can possibly still be attracted to me, the “neutral.”  How ill and undesirable will I look before he can no longer pretend desire?

In sickness and in health.  Does anybody ever think this through before vowing it for life?  What young lover imagines intimacy with bones?  At 41 years of age, I now weigh seven pounds less than the 99 I was so ashamed of in sixth grade.  I know in my head that my value is not found in my appearance, yet my heart fears that it is! And no matter how hard I try not to, I place “conditions” on love.  I just cannot mentally grasp a degree of love that will continue to love no matter how flawed the recipient of that love might be. 

Perhaps this combination of severe weight loss and a faithful husband who is determined to love the skeletal me just as much as he loved the fat me is God’s way of depicting His own unconditional love for each of us.  How repulsive, how loathsome our sin must be to Him; Yet, He passionately loves us!  How undesirable our disobedience to His commands must be, considering that He makes clear that the sole way we are to express our love for and to Him is through obeying the very same commands that we choose to dismiss in the name of grace (John 14:15). How disgusting our idolatry.  How revolting our selfishness. How nauseating our hypocrisy, our compromise-the mixture of holiness and worldliness- that we embrace day after day. Yet, He relentlessly pursues intimacy with us! Unlike the human love that many of us know best, there are no conditions on God’s love! “But God proves His love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8, BSB)

How ridiculous that we fall for the lies of the devil and believe that we are rejected and unwanted by a God who literally gave His own life in order to express His extravagant, unconditional love for us!

And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:38-39, NLT).

12-13-2020 Things appear to be spiraling out of control for me right now.  I’m exhausted.  I’m overwhelmed.  And honestly, I’m really tired of fighting this battle.  Hope of recovery is slipping further and further away.  My life and my health are unraveling right before my eyes.  My medical team is telling me that I’m out of options.  My body is wasting away; it is not cancer that is threatening to kill me right now, but malabsorption.  Nothing that I do on my own and nothing that the doctors suggest or even insist on seems to help.  I can’t fix this…and they can’t fix this!  And, despite our endless earnest prayers, God does not appear to be fixing this right now either!  The pressure of it all is truly staggering.  Yet, I KNOW that there’s purpose in the unraveling!  So, as tired as I am of the bad reports, and as much as I want to give up my fight right now and just melt away into a restful place…as much as I want to run and hide from reality and from this painful undoing of me, I have no choice but to face it dead on.  Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not as I will, but as You will (Matthew 26:39).

Similar to the great Charles Spurgeon, I must learn to “kiss the wave that throws me against the Rock of Ages.”  Yes Lord, unravel me.  Do what You must to refine me.  Do whatever it takes to make me more like You. And if I’m still standing when Your refining fire dies down, I’ll be all the better for it!

Please take a few moments to listen to the song below to better understand this most difficult season of my cancer journey.  I’ll admit, I can’t declare the last line as truth just yet.  But…maybe…one day soon.

Much love to you all.

Julie

Click here to continue following my journey.  Next post: Ampullary Cancer Diagnosis: Third Time’s a Charm