Welcome to my GET UP blog, where I am opening up about how life continues to knock me down, over and over and over again, seemingly worse and worse to the point that many times it feels hopeless and over. I am also sharing how and why in those times I somehow manage to keep moving, find purpose, and GET UP. Currently I am fighting squamous cell cancer that has spread to multiple areas throughout my head and neck and even possibly a secondary cancer of the thyroid. Just this week I have started chemotherapy and radiation treatments.
Although my cancer will serve as the catalyst for doing this blog and it will be a part of the discussion, this will not be a cancer-centric blog. Insight for this blog will be drawn from my many life experiences as this cancer is not the first devastating blow to my life. In just the last 7 years I have experienced the love of my life receiving a terrible, life altering diagnosis; myself being given a disabling diagnosis of a rare and untreatable type of Muscular Dystrophy; heart wrenching relational struggles that took me down the road of an extended emotional breakdown; and all this being dog-piled by the current cancer diagnosis. During this time there has also been plenty of other kicks to the head and heart from life and other people while being down on the mat and struggling to GET UP.
To make matters worse, not any one of these tragedies were ever allowed to be over before the others happened... they just kept coming and coming and coming...piling one on top of the other. Yet in the midst of all this tragedy I have somehow managed to GET UP, keep moving, keep finding purpose, have moments of great joy, tremendous love and laughs...while also continuing to get knocked back down over and over again.
This might all sound a bit disparaging, but I feel I have to be real, transparent, and vulnerable if this blog is going to be relevant to those of you going through similar circumstances. I am not a motivational speaker coming to you with clever concepts I came up with to inspire you in your low times, but rather, I am a person laying on the mat across from you, both of us hit so hard we are wondering if we can GET UP or if we should just lay her and give up.
Throughout my life I have been a “silent sufferer” and have not been open to talk about my struggles, my fears, my pain, my times of hopelessness, but rather people have only seen my seemingly optimistic spirit because I did not allow them to see the incredible struggle behind the silence.
I find it ironic that this cancer has stemmed from a tumor at the base of my tongue, because I feel I have always held my tongue. I have stayed silent about the struggles, but now I know in the depths of my soul that holding my tongue will help no one, including myself.
I am hoping that the words in this blog that come forth from a broken, diseased tongue can bring hope and healing to someones soul, maybe even my own. Sometimes just knowing that we are not the only ones beaten down on the mat, knowing we are not lying down here alone, can be just enough to keep us hoping we can continue to GET UP.
If we are too proud, private, or shy to share our struggles and down times, leaving others think we are always up, then we are also leaving them to think they are alone and that there may be no hope for them to ever GET UP. There is currently a tremendous increase in depression due to peoples social media presence making their lives seem so perfect that it convinces others that nobody has their same problems...and it just isn’t true.
I told Gina that I don’t have a choice...I have to go through this cancer. But I do have a choice of HOW I will go through it and what the outcome of my HOW will be. I don’t agree with the thought that God allows everything to happen for a reason. I don’t believe God gave me or anybody else cancer or the other terrible things that happen to us in order to accomplish some divine purpose. But I do believe that my faith enables me to find purpose while going through it. My purpose is to use this struggle to help others GET UP and in turn that will also give me even more reason to GET UP.
Just before beginning to type this I was trying to cook breakfast. I had been nauseous during the night and this morning I woke up nauseous from my chemotherapy. I quickly turned the stove off as I was overwhelmed with an urge the throw up, running and looking for something to contain it. There I was sitting on a stool, hunched over a trash can, with nausea from my stomach into my throat, all constricting and welling up inside me...and my thought was “sit here as long as you need Tad and do what you need to do to get past this...but then GET UP and get this message out.” So here I am.
I promise to be open and vulnerable like never before about my struggles, my fears, my time spent face down on the mat thinking “it’s all over...i’ve got nothing left in me” feeling hopeless and helpless. It scares me to even do this, to be this transparent, to be this vulnerable. But I feel it’s the only way I can bring any sense of purpose to this tragedy and a sense of purpose is absolutely a voice calling us to GET UP.
I will also share how, why and when I hear that voice saying “GET UP...GET UP Tad...it’s not over yet!” I am baring my soul in hopes that somehow, someway, this blog becomes that voice to someone else, speaking to the depths of their soul ”GET UP...GET UP...IT’S NOT OVER YET!”
There may even be days when I struggle to hear the voice, and maybe...just maybe...in those moments, you can be the voice to me saying “GET UP Tad!”
Let me be clear, that despite this and the other tragedies in my life, I count myself a man blessed beyond belief. I have such tremendous love for and from so many wonderful people. Know that if you are one of them, you make my life blessed and you are one of my reasons to GET UP!
...more to come