Cherries, sugar, corn starch, flour, shortening, water, and a pinch of salt.  Combine in carefully choreographed steps and you have…cherry pie.  When the pie is fresh from the oven, you cut it into pieces and you delight in your creation. (with a nice cup of lemon tea, please)

Sometimes, I feel like it is too easy to see people as pie.  Each slice represents some part of them that we label, as though labeling allows us to understand them better.  You can label me as a therapist, a wife, a mother, a friend, a Christian, a cancer patient.  But that does not tell you my story.  You may know that I’m a wife, but it does not tell you that Brandi and I laugh at the same old jokes we told almost twenty years ago and the smiles on our hearts match the smiles on our faces.  Or that we can be insensitive to each other one moment and codependent with each other the next.  That while she is traveling for her job, I find post-it notes with “I love you” written on them hidden in the silverware drawer or the keyboard of my laptop.  We are complicated. complex. We are human and we each come with a history that continues to weave it’s influence into this day.

The same goes with my slice of the pie named, “cancer patient”.  One moment I feel overwhelmed by the sheer physical pain of cancer and the next, I feel a great wave of gratitude wash over me for the gifts cancer has brought into my life; the many lessons it has provided to me.  One moment I feel deeply connected to the people in my life, loved, loving, blessed.  And another moment I may feel alone and unable to communicate this physical and emotional roller coaster I’ve been on for the past six years.  Moments of aloneness do not detract from moments of feeling blessed.  They are ingredients that combine to create the unique flavors of my life.  As these moments coexist with each other, they make up my life.  A life that is not simple to live or even to describe.  But a life that, with a cup of lemon tea, is quite delicious.