Living on a Roller Coaster

The blog address came from an earlier title I tried for this blog. Didn’t work. The new title is a better reflection of me – and if you’re here, I hope it’s a reflection of you… http://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/search/label/Introductions

If you’re in love with someone with breast cancer, then you get the whole idea of life lived on a roller coaster.

For normal people, a roller coaster is a toy. Something fun to do for a few seconds where you scream, ooooo!, ahhhh! feel queasy then get off the ride and continue on through the amusement park, the State Fair or the Something Something Something Land/Fair/Flags or whatever.

But imagine for a moment living on the roller coaster.

For starters, there’s no roof and you can be pretty sure that it will get wet in the rain and cold in the winter. As well, the ride at the amusement park ends in a matter of seconds. (Factoid: the longest roller coaster ride is just over four minutes long – 240 seconds…) There’s nowhere to sleep, nowhere to eat, nowhere to go to the bathroom and nowhere to take a few minutes to catch your breath.

Loving someone with breast cancer is like living on a roller coaster – every time you start, you have to pay with a token and even if you get sick on the ride, you have to stay on it. When everyone else gets off, the bar stays down on your lap. The cars fill up again with laughing people and the next thing you know, you’re rolling again.

The woman you love knows all about the roller coaster, too, but they’re trapped in experiencing it in a way you can’t. You end up going up and down all alone. No one notices that you’re on the ride, too.

You try really hard not to notice, either. You want desperately to get off – and the thing is, you CAN. Men do it all the time – they abandon their wives, their girlfriends, their lovers as the treatments progress. You know you can get off, but you refuse. Over and over and over again.

You KNOW that the ride will end eventually – you just don’t know WHEN. You keep looking at your watch; you keep seeing everyone else get off after having a good time and you wonder when your ride will be over.

At some point, knowledge changes over to having faith that the ride will be over eventually.

That’s where I’m at now, and if I didn’t have a God who loves me, a wife who loves me and a family that cares, I’m not sure where I’d be in my roller coaster life right now…

Image: http://attractions.uptake.com/blog/files/2009/04/2074550533_e66356c6c9.jpg