This cannot be happening again. I know what a “tiny spot” means. A one-centimeter “spot” detected by my mammogram a year ago initiated this entire nightmare.

“What’s matter mom?” Amber asks.

“I’m very tired today,” I reply. She doesn’t ask any more questions. She saw first hand how being tired made me cry during chemotherapy treatment.

I show up for CT scan following Thursday. I tell nurse I have a port to draw blood from.

"I’m sorry, honey, we can’t use a port for this type of blood test.”

When nurse inserts IV, I stare at exit sign and imagine ripping needle out and walking to my car. It’s my body.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

“Yes,” I say, but I keep my eyes on exit.

The next day my husband, Randy, wakes up with a fever. Stomach virus. I decide to take Makenna to neighborhood pool. I put on my swimsuit and tape a bandage over my port. I leave my cell phone in house. When doctor called me with bad news a year ago, Randy wasn’t with me. I won’t let that happen again.

We’re at pool about two hours when I see my husband parking his car outside gate. My heart sinks. There is only one reason he would drag himself out of bed to meet me at pool.

“You forgot your phone,” he says. “And your oncologist called.”

Then he hands me a piece of paper.

“I can’t read it,” I say. My eyes are filled with tears.

“No, honey,” he says. “It’s good news.”

I blink and read diagnosis: “Hemangioma. Group of blood vessels. Totally benign. Born with it.”

“I asked him to repeat information twice,” he said. “I knew you’d want to know exactly what he said.”

Totally benign. I can breathe. We go home and I tape note in my journal.

A “tiny spot” will always be a major deal for me, and that’s okay. I’ll continue to live fully and proactively. I’ll confide my fears in my journal when my family can’t understand them. And I’ll keep right on being a survivor.

In as much as we would like to help our 'almost adults' make adulthood choices, amidst their period of regression (wherein they behave more like a 12 year old), power to control their destiny is not ours.

There comes a time wherein only option left is to let go, to extent their behavior is neither illegal or immoral, and let God finish raising them. And in making transition from parent to friend, we discover our own need for growth; thereby realizing God is not finished raising us, either.

Once we acknowledge that our need to control is a result of fear, consider that fear does not come from God, remember that we were once 'almost adults', too, and realize that God used our immaturity to grow us into a better person ... perhaps, then, we can trust God to protect our 'almost adults' from irreversible harm and know He will be there to pick up pieces for them, too.

© 2004 by Joyce C. Lock http://our.homewithgod.com/heavenlyinspirations/