On this eve of my 10 cancer checkup, it is not lost on me the miracle that I get to experience every single day.

Miracles come in all forms. Saving you from something, saving you for something. Making something from nothing and making nothing out of something big. We experience miracles every day and yet overlook them in the minuscule ways.

Daily, I’m continually amazed by the miracle of life. 2 tiny things meet and form this little organism that grows in to a baby. And then this baby comes in to the world by a process that’s a miracle on its own. Then you feed and water that tiny baby and it just grows. Fills out. Plumps up. It’s all a miracle.

If you’ve not known me for a long time, let me rewind to 10 years ago and explain even more why I’m mesmerized by the whole thing.

After a couple weeks of tests, appointments, emotions and just really hard days, I had my first visit with an oncologist. We covered lots of topics together – medicines, lifestyle changes, losing hair, fatigue and freezing eggs. Yes, you read that right. Harvesting and freezing eggs. I was days away from my 25th birthday, I was single, I had no prospects in sight and I was just trying to figure out how to preserve my own life, how could I even think about the life of my future children? It was really unfathomable, yet it was a decision in front of me.

I was given a weekend to make this decision. Honestly, it really wasn’t something I wanted to think too much about. I had my facts in front of me – the only place at the time that I could harvest eggs was in Chicago. I would have to put off treatment until we could make that happen and I would have to pay for myself to travel up there and the whole harvesting thing (not really something insurance covers). I talked to my friends that were with me that day and consulted my parents. I think I knew right away what I wanted to do, but I felt like I needed to run it through some filters so I wasn’t just making a selfish decision.

Where I landed after the weekend was to take my chances (not something I typically do, but cancer made me do a lot of things I wouldn’t normally do) and not harvest any eggs. I just didn’t feel like I needed to put off my healing to pretend and play in “somedays”. <now, I need to add in here that I do not think harvesting is a bad decision. On this side of the railroad tracks had my circumstances been different, I think we would have harvested. But, as a single female facing 25, the decision before me was just to treat and heal. I’ll also say that there were not real stats that I had to go off of that let me know whether having a baby would work or not. I know people who had my same diagnosis and froze eggs and had to use them for their miracle babies, others who froze and did not use them and others who did not freeze and have adopted and still others who did not freeze and were able to conceive on their own.>

After all that, I did have to make a decision with my one fact in mind – To save my life meant I might not get to make his.

GULP. Yeah, take a deep breath for a moment.

It was the weight of part of my emotional healing post remission. It was part of my early 30s healing of being someone who wanted to be wanted and trying to knock everything off the list that made me less valuable. It was part of the awkward conversations as Mr. McKinney and I became more serious in our relationship.(I mean when you exactly drop that bomb?) It was a like a dangling carrot out there of something I just may never be able to do; conceiving and having children may be something I’m just not good at. Those were all steps I had to heal through and frankly I’m glad weren’t on my mind when I signed that paper.

After that weekend, I went back in to the doctor’s office for another appointment, maybe even my first chemo treatment and I signed the paper. I knew the decision I had made and I was totally ok with it.

To save my life meant I might not ever get to make his.

For obvious reasons the night I took a home pregnancy test and the blue lines showed up, I just sat on the couch in disbelief. I had prepared my heart for a hard road. I had prepared my mind for hard decisions. I had laid the groundwork in my marriage of transparency and vulnerability of squashing a dream to conceive on our own.

And yet, the miracle happened… all on its own.

Every day I stare at his little face, mesmerized by the miracle of life. His. Little. Life. I stare in to his eyes. I talk to him. I ask him to grant me grace. And I pray and beg God to teach me what to do to keep him alive and raise him into an incredible man. I’ll mess up (I already have, he was hungry his first 2 weeks of life) but I hope to learn and do better in the next stage.

Over the past month, I’ve caught myself many times breathing in deeply as I looked at the calendar. I was at a wedding the week before my diagnosis and I saw that couple post a picture on Instagram with a “how has it been 10 years”. That was my thought exactly. How have they been married 10 years and then I remembered. Miracles. No, not a miracle that those 2 people have been married 10 years, but more the miracle that 2 flawed human beings have made it work and added 4 more human beings to their mix. Marriage is a miracle every day.

The day I thought I about writing this post, I had just text a friend of mine Happy Birthday.  Followed by a  “10 years ago, we were sitting at your counter trying to process some really hard news” text. Friendship too is a miracle. Oh that someone would know all your flaws and has potentially experienced them with you and would still choose to spend time with you over and over again knowing everything they know.

Miracles. They abound, all around us, every day. May we never loose the wonder!

I have to share this…while writing this post, I had been listening off and on to a podcast episode on Being Women podcast. Its hosted by one of my college roommate, but it has just come to be a light or reminders and encouragement for me. This particular episode was featuring a lady I knew who is also a Cancer Survivor and still going through treatments. Of course it ministered to me, but when I hit play after editing this post, she read a verse from Hebrews and I fell at my desk in sobs. Our God is so faithful in the way he shows up and meets us. Please take a listen…it will do your heart so good!