Build a Life.featured

One thing that has been made comically clear to me since my diagnosis is that it’s not particularly common for a thirty five year old to have terminal colon cancer.

This realization has mostly come in the form of nurses, techs, and even doctors arriving to my room or confirming an appointment who hold out until curiosity or scientific interest gets the better of them and they blurt out, “so HOW did you find this?” And after hearing, “and NO family history? No risk factors? No previous symptoms? This just seems impossible!”

It’s certainly not the unique identifier I would have chosen for myself, but now that it’s mine, I’ve received encouragement on many fronts to use my vantage point as encouragement for others to “take the trip.” I’ve sat down many times to write that exact post with no luck. Because the reality is, it’s much more than the trip.

Reflecting with Jeff during the last few weeks, we have been struck by the realization that if I were miraculously healed tomorrow our life would continue much the same as it has been, perhaps with another sweet babe or two in our arms.

We would work to deepen our faith and form family traditions centered around it. We would continue to travel as often and as far as possible. We would still live simply in a smaller home. We would homeschool and prioritize time outside in nature. We would read Tolkien to our children and obsess over the role of story and the importance of the stories we choose to tell.

Intentional living has always been our goal, and we have worked hard to build our family life around the things that are important to us. And yet, it strikes me as rare that at thirty five I am at peace with my life. I desperately want the opportunity to continue building a life with the ones I love most, but I have no panic or remorse that I haven’t begun truly living.

So yes, take the trip. But more importantly, build a life. It’s astonishing how simple it is once you begin. Removing excess possessions does in fact open up space in your life for more. As we dug down layer by layer, the possibilities of what could be done with a life against the status quo accumulated.

What if we didn’t need the big new house? What if we didn’t need both cars? What would we have time for if we didn’t have to mow the lawn or shovel the snow or organize the knick knacks?

For us, the answer was peace. Space to read. Time to get outside for hours with our children. More daily masses. Travel. Days spent in museums and churches and national parks. The opportunity to add beauty and quiet into our lives rather than rushing from commitment to commitment, never catching up with all the projects we had convinced ourselves we needed to do.

Of course Jeff’s career has been fundamental in our ability to have as much time and financial freedom as we’ve enjoyed. But before the big trips, before the infant passports and travel back packs and collection of maps in every room of our home, our family life had already begun to shift.

Our marriage transformed. As we went through item after item, we talked. We spent full days and late nights sharing our visions of family life. Our hopes for our children. Our dreams for ourselves. We decided we wanted to live our marriage and parenthood as the vocations they are, rather than the happenstance of cultural expectation.

Our parenting transformed. We chose not to spend our days just getting to the next day and instead to focus on crafting an environment for our children.

We wanted a peaceful home so we eliminated noise from TV and devices and clutter. We wanted to saturate their childhood with beauty so we began to take them to museums. We bought books that introduced them to artists and inventors and explorers. We wanted to give their imagination room to blossom so we spent more time in nature. We read legends and fairy tales and introduced them to entire worlds crafted within the author’s mind.

We wanted a faith-filled home so we began to weave the liturgical calendar into our daily lives. We celebrated feast days. We dressed up and ate fun food and lit candles and hung ornaments. We prayed together. We read Bible stories and saint stories.

When we began to travel, we approached it with the same set of priorities, and it became an extension of the life we were building, rather than an escape from it.

We value our faith and sharing it with our children so we traveled to Rome every year. We visited Lourdes and the Shrine of St. Maximillian Kolbe and the Sanctuary of the Divine Mercy. We visited renowned Cathedrals in France and a tiny log chapel in Iceland. We found familiar images of saints and gospel stories in Kiev and Beijing and Dubai.

We value quiet and time spent in nature so we visited national parks every year. We soaked up the silence of being far removed from the hum of civilization and explored stunning, unfamiliar landscapes.

We value beauty and art so we visited museums in almost every city we visited. We saw Vermeer’s View of Delft and then drove to Delft to find his vantage point and see how the view had changed. After buying a children’s book about Matisse at his museum in Nice, we discovered that he had painted a chapel nearby for his friend who was a nun in the convent so we took a detour to see it.

Quarantining the last several months has confirmed for us that travel is something we will continue to choose as an integral part of our identity as a family. It gives us the opportunity to expand and enhance every area of life that we value for ourselves and our children. It is important and incredibly worthwhile.

But as important as it is for us, it is not the foundation of our family’s identity. The choice to build a life centered on our values and to live our vocations fully happens as much in the daily activities of our life at home as it does halfway around the world.

Crafting a life you value against the status quo is simple, but it requires boldness and courage. When we began our journey, I often turned to St. Joan of Arc and her courageous proclamation, “I am not afraid. I was born to do this.”

Now, facing the challenge of chemo, a global pandemic, and a prognosis with little longterm reason for optimism, I realize that it is not the time to demure or lose hope. The life we are building has lasting value even if my own life is cut short. The day-in, day-out living and striving and suffering and celebrating of this life is sanctifying.

And so I once again cling to St. Joan of Arc’s bold words: “In His strength, I will dare until I die.”