About a month before my cancer diagnosis, my husband and I were talking about our self-destructive habits. I said we need to work on making our daily routines happier in order to replace these destructive habits.
I knew I had these health tests and scans coming up that I couldn’t control the outcome, so I knew we both had to fix some things we do have control over.
Soon after, my husband was applying and interviewing for new jobs.
He had been at his job pretty much our entire marriage—about 9 years. A great job with great benefits, but it had been a little mundane over recent years and he was realizing there wasn’t much room to grow.
Next thing you know, the same week I get my cancer diagnosis, he gets a job offer at a great company, but it came with so many unknowns.
My poor husband was experiencing two major life-altering events at once—a career change AND cancer.
He started questioning whether he should leave his stable job with good healthcare and lots of vacation, sick time, family leave (especially given the circumstances).
I only had one question, “Does your work make you happy?”
I don’t think work is always going to make someone happy, but if we spend almost a third of our lives working, shouldn’t we enjoy it?
Working for myself is definitely not easy.
I definitely don’t make the money that I know I have the potential to make.
But the work I do for my clients is enjoyable, creative, and useful to them, so I am satisfied especially with the flexibility in my schedule to take care of myself.
I definitely need that flexibility right now while my brain is congested with all the cancer thoughts.
I told my husband, simply, “You don’t want to hate your job AND your wife has cancer.”
*Mic drop.*
Something has to give us happiness.
Maybe we will be able to find happiness and blessings from this season of cancer, but I think we should try to find something good from his career too.
A pay increase to soften the blow of losing great health benefits will be a nice trade-off too.
And who knows? Maybe I’ll be able to live 60 years with cancer, so we shouldn’t put our careers on hold for the unknowns that lie ahead.
The same conversation had another round the next night.
Met with tears, my husband said, “But what if I need to take care of you?”
I cried.
I reminded him that we don’t know when and if chemo will come.
I’m still symptom free and no pain, so who knows when I will start to “feel” the effects of cancer.
Besides, we both have our families in town (sorry, mom and my three sisters, I’m enlisting you as backups).
We have more than enough love and support around us.
Let’s not put life on hold.
I think, fair enough, he might have been more nervous about leaving a job after so long and making a big change and was using me as an excuse for his nerves, but this is what we do well.
When I freak out about big things, he reminds me to take things a day at a time.
And when he is having a moment, I’m there to lift him up as if my own problems just disappeared.
We are each other’s cheerleaders when the world seems to want to fight full out and unfairly.
Marriage is rough, but it’s also beautiful.
I’ll be sticking with him–he is the best at keeping things in perspective.
I pray that as we battle in this season, God will show us the right decisions to make as I know we have many more decisions to come.