Here I am again. At the beach. At a cafe. At the start of a blank page. Hoping to write words of saintly inspiration, of resilient hope, of eternal significance. And, instead, I am all churned up because of an argument about scrambled eggs.

As I survey the menu at this beautiful beach-side cafe, I realise I again have to ask to get modifications for my anti-cancer diet. I love bread. I love flavour. I love going out for delicious food, and it is one of many losses that I experience in my new existence with cancer. It has been hard to adjust to a life without carbs, without comfort food, without the nurturing embrace of fresh baking. 

Different cafes have different approaches to you when you ask for modifications. Today, I feel sorry for myself for having cancer and having to eat keto. I don’t have the emotional energy for extended negotiations, so I deploy the silver bullet and use the ‘cancer card’ pre-emptively.  I try to sound light-hearted about it but I’m not sure that I fool anyone.

I suppose the first red light should have been the apologetic uncertainty of the waitress. Both waitresses. The first one used the excuse that she was new and had to check. The second one nervously explained they don’t usually ‘do modifications’ and that I’d have to pay extra. The price was already $24. Without toast, potatoes, or bacon, but with a bit of added spinach, I’d end up paying more like $29. More money for much less food. And I was already stressed about the cost of going out for breakfast. My sense of abandonment was whirlpooling. I revved up and pushed back further. ‘So I’d have to pay extra to have less, then?’ She went again to check with the manager. Finally, yes they can do it. 

With an ingratiating smile, I thank the manager as he brings out my coffee. There is no smile in return. He explains that he doesn’t like to do modifications because he’s already worked out the costs of ingredients. And I see that he is also a victim.

Ah’, I say, suddenly ashamed. Did he want me to pay the extra? ‘No, no,’ he mutters, disgrunteldly. I’d won the victim game.

And as I sit down and pretend to be OK, the fruit of my Pyrrhic victory churning uneasily in my gut, I consider the way that the undertow of victimhood swirls uneasily like a riptide beneath the surface of our normal days, pulling us unconsciously sideways. To some degree, everyone living in this broken universe is living in the land of ‘at least’. You don’t have a partner but at least you can go on amazing holidays. You can’t get pregnant but at least you can focus on your career. You can’t afford to start paying off the credit card but at least you can raise the price of scrambled eggs. You are told you have ‘terminal cancer’ but at least you can go out for breakfast.

And we walk around with these flags of ‘at least’ flying invisibly above our heads, daring anyone to challenge our victimhood. Daring anyone to assert that our needs don’t matter. Like wounded dogs, nursing our pain, ready to pounce on the unwitting perpetrators of any further injustice. 

And I deflate slowly as realise how far I am from the reality of the Kingdom. And I remember the invitation I have been hearing to step out of living in ‘the land of at least’. The land of limitations. The land of lack. We live as paupers – as orphans, dejected, rejected, and used to scraping and scrapping for the smallest slice of bread. Or in my case, spinach. 

And I feel the call to be living in a different reality. He says he has come to give us life in abundance. Dripping with abundance. Dripping. And it doesn’t really matter whether we are struggling to make ends meet or worrying about our career or scared about our very life. These are all just limitations on a scale that pales in comparison to the Creator who is the Source of Everything. We can’t really get our heads around it. 

And how? How do I live outside the ‘land of at least’? How do I become aware and transformed by His place of complete enoughness? I don’t think I can approach this place alone. I think it requires revelation. I think perhaps I will go and sit by the sea, which I didn’t create and cannot earn. And try to pry open my grasping, anxious, heart to what He is offering. 

One of the things I love about writing is it allows you to look into things that you may not understand – you may not feel like you have control over them. It feels vulnerable: I’m gonna write about this but I don’t really know what this means or how this works but I’m just gonna go into it anyway and try to stay present and responsive and try to tell the truth. And trust that somehow if I just start walking in this direction that this is gonna go somewhere. And I don’t know where it’s gonna go but I’m gonna trust that in some sense that I’m moving toward a face – that this does go somewhere and there is someone inviting me forward. And if that’s the case, then I’m going to be met in this at some point – and I am maybe already surrounded even though I don’t know it. I am maybe already held. – Matthew Clark, songwriter and musician

Hello. Here I am again. I am writing on this blog for the first time in almost a year. And the question that keeps dogging me is ‘why’? Why do I feel the need to produce words and send them out into the universe? What degree of arrogance makes me think my words are going to be helpful, necessary, or beautiful in the world? Is it the understandable but pitiably desperate ploy of the cancer patient attempting to wrench some meaning out of apparently meaningless suffering? Is it the control freak within grasping for agency over the narrative? Or perhaps a semi-narcissistic need to feel like a Shakespeare – to exploit my circumstances to finally get one or two readers for my inner ramblings. 

All of these are probably partially true. And these are the reasons why I haven’t written for almost a year. I didn’t want them to be driving.

And yet, there is something deeper still under the surface. Something innate to me – to my way of breathing. I wrestle myself into meaning within the written word. The Word, after all, spoke all of us into existence. And I think He still does, in the continuous act that is creation. I haven’t been able to stop writing, during my break from this blog. I haven’t been able to separate my self from the scratchings that devour my page – or rather – a collation of random pages in random notebooks that I keep on hand circulating between my handbag, my backpack, my bedroom, my study, my car. I write in order to pray. I write in order to think. I write to lament, to pour out my pain, to worship, to delight. I write in order to bleed out the messiness of my soul on a page so that I can see it and weep. And perhaps repent. And maybe even pause long enough to listen. 

And I realise that, perhaps, I have not been writing here because I wanted to wait until I was perfect – or at least inspirational. Until I’d figured something out. Until I had something that felt worth saying. But I am starting to think that perhaps I will never get to the place of arriving. And maybe that’s OK. So, here I go again. I’m back. And I’m going to try and share, with what truthfulness I can bear, the messiness of the journey. 

xo