Beyond Settling

So really. How do you know when you're supposed to be content with something, seize the opportunity available instead of the one you might have wanted, and take things as they come, versus when you're supposed to hold out for something better? How do you know the difference between contentment, resignation, and settling? I've asked these kinds of questions before. Here's a new context for them.

You may have noticed that I keep obliquely mentioning I need to replace my car. Bela Corolla, serviceable as he has been, is rather ailing these days. Even though three years ago he got all new brakes, new tires, a new battery and a new starter, and even though last year he got his wheels re-applied (when they almost fell off) and a couple of other things, this year he's burning oil so that I have to put at least a quart in every week, I can't see how fast I'm going at night (due to all the interior lights having died), and the struts are shot. The car basically clunks along, no matter how smooth the road surface . . . and in Central Massachusetts the road surface is not always very smooth (regardless of ongoing attempts to fix this). There are also more minor cosmetic issues, like the fact that when a droplet of water hits a fabric surface in the car, it spreads to an unremovable stain 1000 times its size. And the fact that one of the lights on the passenger's side is taped on with packing tape.

Car-Shop-Dave, from my church, has been helping me in my quest for a replacement vehicle, and the other day when they were moving cars around at his dealership, he discovered a 2005 Nissan Altima with only 52,000 miles and an excellent Carfax, that he thought would be just what I was looking for. Even though they want to sell it to me for $1000 more than the maximum price I was willing to pay (since I am not entirely sure I have the money for this venture to begin with), yesterday I went in to look at the car.

As soon as I sat in it, I uttered an involuntary sigh, and thought to myself, "I had no idea my car was so uncomfortable!" Car-Shop-Dave and his car shop let me take it home for the night so I could have my mechanics check it out this morning, and naturally, the more I drove it, the more I loved it. But . . . it is still $1000 more than I was willing to pay for it. And . . . I discovered that Bela's trade-in value is only $1000. Not only are all those things wrong that I mentioned before, but I'm sure my Corolla's Carfax tells all and sundry that one particularly rough year, I crashed him. Twice.

There are people who would say God doesn't care about my car needs, mundane as they are, and I'm not one who subscribes to "prosperity gospel." (I find it kind of horrifying, honestly.) However, I do believe He cares about the details of our lives, and I also believe He is able to do, as the Bible says a few times "more than we ask or imagine." I have a pretty good imagination, so that's saying something.

So let's say I had this pipe dream of an expressly environmentally-friendly, safe car which I could somehow get for under $10,000, at payments of only $200 a month. Unlikely, but God can do anything, right? So . . . do I hold out for this? Or, when the opportunity arises to get a car with an excellent reputation and history, which is more comfortable and more spacious than I could have hoped for, but which costs slightly more than I had wanted, and when my car's trade-in value is less than I'd hoped for (though honestly probably better than I should've expected), and they tell me I can make payments of $202 per month, do I take it? Does $202 count as "more than $200 a month"? Or is this some kind of divine dig-in-the-ribs, where God's saying, "Oh no, darling--you don't get out of making an actual decision that easily." (Interestingly, today I saw a car with a license plate saying "UDCIDE." It felt a little more personal than the last one. Who are these people?) Another factor is that the dealership's interest rate isn't that good for financing, but my bank that could give me a better one apparently doesn't deal with them. On the other hand, the car's so good that if I don't decide to buy it by tomorrow at 2 p.m., the dealership owner wants it.

So really. What am I supposed to do? I'm asking. This car's pretty great. I want it. I do. But it's kind of none of the things I asked or imagined. Does this mean I'm settling, or that it's more than I asked or imagined? It doesn't feel like more. It just feels like different.

I have less than 24 hours to figure this out.

Christmas

The balloon ended up deflating in a flood of tears rather than a round of screaming, and the techs who did my first radiation treatment this afternoon (who were women, and not the guys of the initial visit) thought I was crying because I was upset about the treatment.

I suppose there might have been something in that. But mostly it's because I feel that, like the Milk Guy's appliances, my circuits are fried--by a whole lot of little things rather than one big thing. And added to that is guilt. Huge amounts of guilt.

I live in a "developed" country. I am not homeless. I have healthcare. I have friends with electricity and food and . . . heck, I haven't had to cook or go grocery shopping in weeks. The Nurse Practitioner's comment kind of rankles, because I want to be selfless, but apparently only on my own terms. I used to think I would go On The Mission Field for the rest of my life and maybe live somewhere less "developed" than this country and, you know . . . have to boil water or something. I've been in many different countries and managed the hole-in-the-ground toilets and eating mystery foods with my fingers and washing my face in a bowl of water and wearing the same clothes days in a row, and it didn't bother me at all. But I chose to go there and do those things, and those were the things that were "done" in certain locations.

Those things aren't generally done here, and I had no control over the circumstances bringing them about. It's not like a camping trip, which I don't enjoy much either, but which I can choose and modulate a little. And so everything in me revolts (as it does in many people, I've observed). I can listen to myself and think I sound absolutely pathetic, and yet I'm still a bundle of nerves because I can't flick a lightswitch and see the entire room.

I feel that the timing of this "ordeal" (which I feel is an unfair word, because this could have been so much worse--it's no Katrina) is sort of interesting. By which I mean, it's making me think of Christmas a little differently. Usually there's all this talk about "the true meaning of Christmas" and to some extent, I usually squint my brain every year and try to remind myself that the birth of Jesus is so much more important than the Christmas tree and that it wasn't all pretty and cozy and lights. Not . . . that there's anything wrong with that.

This year I'm probably about as distracted from the birth of Christ as I've ever been, but I can't pretend I'm not interacting with it on some level all the same. There's so much going on in my life right now, and there's this kind of deprivation, and there's a very distinct (if presently guilt-inducing) reminder that Christmas is actually about inconvenience and deprivation. Jesus gave up all his glory (light! weightiness! splendour!) and schlepped around in a Roman-occupied "under-developed" country for thirty-some years, talking to a bunch of people who often didn't get what He was talking about. And Mary and Joseph gave up their reputations, and had to pack up their lives and trek down to Bethlehem, and then down to Egypt, and their lives were in upheaval for, oh . . . pretty much the rest of them.

Jesus kind of does that, I think. I suspect Mary and Joseph had to come to terms with that more than once. Unless, of course, they had no controlling tendencies at all . . . I kind of doubt it. But maybe I'm just thinking like that to make myself feel better.

Balking

When I saw my Oncologist a week ago, she gave me a choice: chemo or randomisation (wherein I would either get chemo anyway, or I wouldn't, but I'd have no choice in the matter). I was feeling tired and stressed and sort of resigned, so I thought I was going to go for the chemo. I didn't feel like fighting with my very pro-chemo doctor, and I didn't feel like deciding anything. I didn't feel like talking to my Second Opinion Doctor, either. But I did.

"Great!" she said. "You have a low recurrence score! You'll do great in the protocol!"

But I don't like the idea of being randomised. Waiting some more, just to find out I'm being assigned something by chance, doesn't really thrill me. No one was suggesting I could just opt out of chemo altogether. My Oncologist is a treatment-conservative (which, for some reason, translates into very un-conservative treatment). My Second-Opinion Doctor is a researcher. Why would they offer me the "third way," I guess?

Then the People Closest to Me started asking questions, which basically boiled down to "How on earth is pumping extra toxins into your body when you only have a 9% risk of recurrence actually going to help you?" and "Why don't you just refuse the chemo?"

Oh. I can do that?

I understand that my cancer may come back. And maybe it will be worse. And maybe I'll have to have chemo then. But maybe it would even with the poison. And maybe I'd go into menopause before I'm forty. And maybe I wouldn't be able to work at Starbucks because my immune system would be compromised and working there is pretty much like working in a preschool with how everybody gets sick in the winter. And maybe the long-term effects would be such that years from now I'd be regretting the treatment more than the recurrence of the disease.

I kind of feel like Daniel and his friends when they asked the Babylonian steward to let them be vegetarians. Maybe someone should do research on the hormone-therapy/radiation/prayer course of treatment.