Joy and Sorrow on the Same Scale

A while ago, before Rachel started chemotherapy and before Hyfield belonged to us, I wrote something I never published. I called it Joy and Sorrow on the Same Scale.

At the time, Rachel was getting ready to have her port placed. Chemotherapy was a week away. Her body was already being pushed into a medically induced menopause at twenty-five years old, and all of us were trying to figure out how to carry something none of us had ever imagined we'd have to carry.

At almost the very same time, after decades of dreaming and looking, a piece of property in Missouri had unexpectedly appeared. Eight acres. Woods and rolling hills. A meadow. A pond. A creek. A barn. Room to gather. Room to dream. Room for whatever might come next.

We hadn't bought it yet. We didn't know if we would. I remember coming home after looking at it with John and realizing that no one was trying to convince anyone else. We all saw something there. John said, "I need to go home and pray about this."

So we did.

And somewhere in all of those emotions, I pictured an old-fashioned balance scale. On one side was Rachel's cancer. The diagnosis. The treatment. The fear. The grief. The unknown.

On the other side was this property. Hope. Excitement. Possibility. Family. A dream we'd carried for years.

I wrote then that maybe joy and sorrow were allowed to exist in the same moment. That one didn't have to leave before we were allowed to feel the other.

Yesterday, I understood that in a way I couldn't have when I first wrote it.

Because yesterday we spent our first real day at Hyfield. Our property. Not a listing we were considering. Not a place we were praying about. Not a possibility. Ours.

And it was wonderful.

We weren't doing anything particularly monumental. We were simply there, beginning. Looking around. Talking. Working. Imagining. Enjoying the land and each other. Seeing possibilities everywhere we looked. The place we've spent so much time talking about and planning for had finally become somewhere we could put our feet.

And I was happy. Really happy.

But there was something else sitting on the scale.

Rachel.

Just days before, Rachel told her oncologist that she thought her tumor felt bigger. And he agreed that it was concerning enough to investigate. Now there are tests scheduled. And we wait to find out whether what they are feeling is actually growth. Whether the chemotherapy is doing what we desperately want it to do. Whether the plan stays the plan. Or whether everything changes again.

There is that word again. Wait.

It seems like cancer contains an awful lot of waiting. Waiting for biopsies. Waiting for pathology. Waiting for scans. Waiting for treatment. Waiting to see how her body responds. Waiting for answers to questions you didn't even know you were going to have to ask.

And now we're waiting again.

Except this time, while I wait, there are pictures on my phone from a beautiful day at Hyfield. There are plans running through my head. Where should the trails go? What could we do with the barn? Where will everyone sleep someday? Where should we put the garden? Could there be a little farm stand at the entrance? Where will the grandchildren run? Where will we drink coffee in the morning?

And isn't that strange?

My daughter's tumor might be growing. And I'm thinking about where to put a garden.

Both things are true.

For a moment, that can almost make joy feel inappropriate. How can I be this excited about something when someone I love more than my own life is facing something so frightening?

But I think I'm finally beginning to understand the picture God put in my mind months ago. I don't think He was showing me a scale because joy would eventually become heavy enough to cancel out sorrow. And I don't think He was promising that faith would make the frightening things less frightening.

Maybe I've misunderstood the scale. Maybe it doesn't have to balance.

Some days sorrow is going to slam its side all the way to the table. Some days joy will surprise us with its weight. And some days—like yesterday—they will both be sitting there at exactly the same time.

The work of faith isn't pretending one side isn't heavy. Faith doesn't require me to look at Rachel and say, "I'm not afraid." I am. Faith allows me to say, "I'm afraid, and I still trust God."

It doesn't require Rachel to be okay for me to enjoy Hyfield. It doesn't require me to stop dreaming because we're waiting for test results. It doesn't require our family to put joy on hold until cancer gives us permission to have it again.

Cancer has already taken enough. I'm not giving it yesterday too.

Yesterday was beautiful. Yesterday was a gift. So is Hyfield. So is Rachel. So is this family. So is every ordinary day we get together.

Maybe that's part of what God has been teaching me all along. Life on this side of heaven was never promised to come to us neatly separated into seasons. Here is your season of joy. Now here is your season of sorrow. Finish that one and we'll give you joy again.

It doesn't work that way.

They overlap.

Birthdays happen in hospital rooms. People laugh at funerals. Families receive terrible news and still get hungry for dinner. A mother can worry desperately about her daughter and still stand on eight acres of Missouri ground and think, I cannot believe we get to call this ours.

There is no betrayal in that. There is life in that. And maybe there is faith in it too.

Because faith isn't my ability to make all of this make sense. Right now, some of it doesn't.

I don't know what Rachel's tests will show. I don't know whether the tumor has actually grown. I don't know what her doctors will recommend if it has. I don't know what Hyfield will look like five years from now, or ten, or what dreams we haven't even dreamed yet for that land.

I know only what is in front of me today.

And today there is joy. And there is sorrow. There is fear. And there is faith. There are questions. And there is still God.

The first time I wrote about that scale, I ended by saying that God was weaving all of these threads into a tapestry and that this wasn't the whole story. I still believe that. But maybe I understand it a little differently now.

I don't need to see the tapestry. I don't even need to understand why these particular threads are lying beside each other. I just need to trust the hands of the One doing the weaving.

So I will pray for Wednesday. I will pray with everything in me that those tests show us that treatment is working and that what we're afraid of isn't what is happening. And until we know, I will keep asking God to move my heart from "what if" to "even if."

And I will also thank Him for yesterday. For dirt on our shoes. For plans that are probably bigger than our budget. For woods and hills and a pond and a barn. For the people standing there beside me. For laughter in a season that has also held tears. For something beautiful to look forward to while we're carrying something hard.

I don't know what tomorrow's side of the scale will hold. But yesterday taught me something I don't want to forget: I don't have to choose between joy and sorrow.

I can hold both. I can be afraid and still have faith. I can grieve what is happening and remain grateful for what is good. I can pray desperately for one thing while thanking God wholeheartedly for another.

And maybe that isn't a contradiction at all.

Maybe that's simply what it means to be fully alive, fully human, and still trusting God in the middle of a story that isn't finished yet.