Soooo…..

You may have noticed a new little tab on my bloggity blog now, BUNA’s HOPE Project

(In short:  A non profit based upon the idea of families liftin’ up other families. Go ahead. Click the link above and read all about it!)

It’s clearly still in the ground level. We’ve got all the framework in place, now we’re just as working on our donation links, getting our TEAM BUNA t-shirt fundraisers back up and running again (almost their folks!, etc. Then, last but not least, we’ll soon have some fun community events on the calendar in the upcoming year to allow YOU, our TEAM BUNA community to get in on the action! I’ve been meeting with and am partnering with my buddies over at MAKE LIFE GRAND, AIN’T LIFE GRAND INVESTMENTS as well, who are all in on the idea!

(See just a part of their crew in the pic below)

MAKE LIFE GRAND TEAM on a Guatemala Mission this Summer spreading a little “BUNA’S HOPE” to some families in need of some joy and lovin. Can I get an “AAAAAAMEN?!?”

………………………………..

Now as for ME and my FAM, as much as we would have would have LOOOOOVED to do a mission like the one in this pic above to Guatemala right now!  However, it’s just not in the cards for us at this time in our lives.  For now, while I’m still recovering from the whole cancer thang, I realize that really, we’re ALL still coming up for air from the aftermath of it all (which is truly part of the mission of BUNA’s HOPE: recognizing ALL family members during and after crisis). My first personal mission is RIGHT HERE. My mission is with my family this summer.

So, we’re takin a good ol’ GRISWALD FAMILY VACATION.

Yup. That’ll be us.   Not so sure we’ll look quite that good though.  😉 After a good ol’ greasy week of road trippin’ and campin’ in the Rockies with our best buds while our combined 10 kids (their 5 & our 5 ) run loose in the  mountains, we’ll probably be more like Clark’s cousin Eddy (if you watched the movie as much as we did) …

So, with that, I apologize to all of our children. Yikes.

But, ya know what, as much as I’ve hemmed and hawed over the packing, the hours of driving, and how in the world this was all gonna work?!?  (I really have been a big baby about this. 😫Seriously.  I camped, climbed, white water canoed down waterfalls. Backwards even! Was a thrill seeker-outdoorsman all growing up: from learning to canoe with my dad at age 5 on the Tchefuncte River, to spending 3 weeks in a tent while canoeing through Canadian provinces at age 10, to rockclimbing and backpacking during my teens at summer camp.  But NOT since I’ve had kids. Not since I’ve had responsibilities. That was all when I totally independent and not responsible for anyone else’s packing, mood, or safety.  Entirely different.  I’m more of a beach person nowadays (It’s always been my happy place, but now, mostly for the CHILL FACTOR.)  Not so much of a road tripper.  But the truth is, if I’m gonna talk about all of these other families that I want to send on trips and give a little hope, joy, and adventure to, then I need to share my adventures and memories with my kids.  The more I talk about this whole BUNA’s HOPE Project, the more I know that WE are still one of those families that are still there, still in need of a little hope, encouragement, and healing through just plain being together.  My family is still sorting all this mess of the aftermath of cancer out.  My kids need to get away.  My soul, as well as my husband’s, need to go and be reminded of God’s glory and majestic artwork that just blow your socks off when you see stuff like this:

I mean really?

  Jaw just drops when ya see this.  Is this really real?

My kids have got to see this.  So do I.

Every time those hours seem long on the trip, I’ll just have to look at this picture.  Eye on the prize.

As much as I have been itching to begin my BUNA’s HOPE project,  I know there’s a reason why it’s taking a little longer.  I know in my heart of hearts and through prayer that God needs me to take a longer look at my family first.  My children need me.  They need me right now in a major way.  We are still processing so much.  Working together with my family to help other families will definitely help us to heal, no doubt.  But first, we need this retreat to the mountains to rejuvenate our little familia.  We need to experience God’s majesty and feel his touch in a powerful way that way could never even fathom before.  No doubt, we’ll go a little crazy and have some bumps on the way, but we’ll be making memories, nonetheless.

(And in case you were wondering, by the way of some MAJOR ANSWERED prayers,  we’re able to ride in an RV where the kids aren’t strapped down for the trip and can rome free.  Ahhh!!!!  A whole new way to travel. Happy kids, happy mama! Maybe a little less whine (And WINE! Haha! Maybe).

Until our return, keep BUNA’s HOPE in your prayers…

… and check out the tab, too, as we update!  We’ll keep you posted! Very exciting stuff!

See on flippity flip side! 😉

So apparently, I’ve magically turned into Rapunzel since I was diagnosed with breast cancer about a year and a half ago.  Makes total sense, right?  Nope.  At least not to the naked eye.

………

My personal Rapunzel Story: 

Part 1:

I began the bumpy road really looking the part (long blonde locks a-flowing).

Then upon my first major MRI with contrast, I found myself locked up in my bedroom “tower”, locked away from my fam for 24 hours.  All that they injected in me made me “radioactive and not safe to be around children.”  What the??   Texting the hubs from my room all day as he got off work to come care for our then 7 month old Snuggles, I blurted, “I don’t do Radioactive Rapunzel well. I’m busting outta here!”

Fast forward a month or so, and I did just that.  I busted out of the scary feeling of slowly watching my hair fall into my breakfast and drinks, fall onto my pillow and into my mouth while sleeping, and be swept from the floor as I sprinkled blonde pieces of my most recent transition haircut (The blue and pink Mohawk! #RockOn #StillProudOfThatDo) and began the head shaving ceremonials.

As my dear friend, Regina, lovingly shaved the last of my hair, I felt the flurry of emotions of Rapunzel.  I was free to embrace the adventure ahead, no longer hanging on to my strands as if to connect me to all that I knew.  Like Disney’s Tangled, those scissors and clippers essentially became my frying pan! Just as random and obsure as it seemed to Rapunzel and Flynn Ryder in the animated flick, the most unexpected object became my weapon of bravery!  Somehow, I became more confident in my baldness and in my sickness than I’d ever been before.   God’s graces were upon me, and I did everything I could all day, every day,  to tap in to them.  Bald and Brave.

Part 2: 

As I continued through each new phase of treatment after my initial 6 rounds of chemo, my hair began to slowly return.  Could it be real that I could have it all:  HAIR, this newly found CONFIDENCE AND BRAVERY, aaaand FREEDOM?

When I made my first “debut” out and about with my first baby sprouts, freshly tinted to a bold platinum blonde,  I felt that feeling of Freedom again.  The itchy regrowth under those beanies began to rebuild “tower walls” around me, challenging me EVERY DAY to bust out and keep my head in the game, remembering what was really important. I was here. I’m alive.  Who cares about my dang hair?!?

It felt great. I felt ALIVE!

PART 3

Fast forward to one full year later.  Fast forward to the present, today.

My hair’s finally picking up the pace enough that people that never new me would think I just have a “mom-do”.  I’m always pinning new cut ideas as it grows, determined to have fun and enjoy the styles as it inches along.  Trust me, if I just rolled with it and let it grow with no intervening, I’d have a full blown Joe Dirt mullet: “business on top, party in the back”! Like an aging man, my hair fell out on top and front first.  That, my friends, has been my most stubborn area to get back.  But… it’s hair, and it’s a great way to finally not look like I was sick.

However…

That’s the irony of it all.  As my hair returns, those looks feel so deceiving.

Just as Rapunzel’s long golden hair appeared an image of fairy tale beauty, it meant nothing of her every day life.  My hair coming back gives the rest of the world a feeling that all is well and lovely.  It gives people comfort to move on,  feeling assured that our fam must be able to as well.  Never would have thought that before having a cancer diagnosis, but since I’m learning so much about the before, during, and after that I would have never understood.  Before, I also would have looked at the return of HAIR to be a sign that it was over, they were “all good now”.  In a sense, yes, the initial cancer is gone. But little would I have known, the journey may not be.

 I stopped NEEDING my hair a long time ago.  The moment I shaved my head (Remember PART 1), I felt FREE.  Much like Tangled’s princess, I was smacking any fears, anxieties and stigmas right in the face with my hair clipper-frying pain.

With every inch, I’ve felt both excited and completely confused.

The majority of my treatment ended, the world kept turning, and I was thrown right back into it, yet this time, I’m only just beginning to look the part of my former self.  This time, I’m parenting 5 children ages 2 to 11 with a new body that just doesn’t work like it used to.   I often get worn down on every angle by weekly physical therapy and supplements to strengthen my bones and joints that seem to degenerate with each dose of my preventative meds to save my life from any future possibilities, yet make me feel as though I can’t function in the life that I fought so hard to live today.

With each doctor’s appointment to try a new plan of action,  I could feel the whispers of anxiety, dimming hope, and ultimately… FEAR giving all their best shots to lock me away from the world.  I began feeling misunderstood and embarrassed of my frustration and lack of positive go-getter responses as people ask “So, how are ya?  I see you’re hair’s back, so ya must be all done, right?”

My hair has felt like an awkward gift to just misguide people in their understanding of me and who I am now.

So who am I?

Then it hit me, like God so often does with me when I start to feel like I’m falling.

I’m Rapunzel again.

With every new milestone of length in my locks, I’m pretty sure I grabbed another brick to build my tower again.  With every appointment that I’ve tried to explain my increasing pain and frustrations, I climbed higher, away from the world.  I’ve felt the tower walls closing in upon me, yet this time, I had no idea what to use as my frying pan anymore?  It started feeling claustrophobic, and to say the least, disappointing.

During our regular Netflix-fix of our fave streaming show, Once Upon A Time, with the Hubbie I randomly got slammed in the face by the Rapunzel Episode (Yes, for any fellow viewers, we’re very behind on the seasons. No spoilers please!).   As Charming finds Rapunzel tucked away in the forest, it isn’t long before they realize she’s haunted and imprisoned by her own fears.   Only by identifying and facing her fears, and making a change… could she escape her solitude. Yes, she’s called out, yes heroes have attempted to save her, and her basic situation that first led her to the forest remains the same,  yet SHE can have HOPE that she is neither alone nor did it have to be this way.  Life may be as it has been dealt, yet only SHE can choose to LIVE IT.  She needed to want it, she needed to know it didn’t have to be this way, and she needed to get her “head in the game” (At least, that’s how my former chemo-fighting self would have said it.)

My physical situation may be what it is for now, but as a friend reminded me recently…

THIS TOO SHALL PASS.

It just HAS to.

That, and … I CAN DO HARD THINGS.

I can keep fighting. I didn’t want to be standing here a year and a half after my diagnosis and still be swimming up stream, but here we are.   It may feel like cancer is still upon me, still trying to take me away from the life I’ve been fighting tooth and nail for… but I CANNOT LET IT WIN.   It can’t last forever.  We WILL figure it out, and we WILL get through this.

I won’t stay locked up in a tower, afraid of some kind of dim future.

Instead, I’m cutting myself FREE, picking up my sword and…

I’M BUSTING OUT!

I’ve said it before, but it never means that I can’t say it again or be embarrassed to NEED to say it again.  The battle ain’t over, and I haven’t lost.

I fought hard for this life, and some creepy, ugly, old anxieties and frustrations are not going to take this life from my NOW.

So,  “So long, creepy tower.”  I’ve got a family to love on and a life to live.

And this time, when I peek out of my tower to yell for help.  I’m looking UP for my Prince Charming.  He’s not on the ground, waiting for my golden locks.  He’s been looking down upon me EVERY DAY OF THIS LIFE, and that BIG GUY UPSTAIRS has never let me down.  Sometimes, I just forget to call out to Him.

#GodsGotThis

Here’s to my new adventure!  Prayers coming back to YOU, my friends, on your own paths and “Welcome!” to anyone willing to join forces with me as I jump down from the tower and carry on…

ONE DAY, ONE PRAYER at a time.