Post #25 - Learning to protect myself too.

The Power of Words: Learning to Protect Myself too. 

Over the weekend, I was at a clambake and had such a great night. I saw so many friends I hadn’t seen in a while, connected with new friends, laughed a lot and genuinely had a blast.

But there was one conversation that night that has stayed with me.

Almost immediately after I arrived, I ran into a friend who said,

“I was thinking about you the other day. A good friend of mine passed away. She had breast cancer six years ago and beat it, but then it came back with a vengeance, and she passed away shortly after.”

I stood there listening, and inside, I felt crushed.

The power of words cannot be underestimated.

When you have been given a cancer diagnosis, there are certain fears that you work very hard not to live in every day. You learn to move forward. You learn to celebrate life. You learn to trust. You learn to be grateful for today.

And then sometimes, without warning, someone tells you a story that speaks directly to one of the fears you try so hard not to let control you.

As she continued talking, I tried to be polite and compassionate. She had lost a friend, and I knew she was grieving. But inside my head, all I could think was: "How do I get out of this conversation? I don’t want to hear any more."

But I froze.

I stayed in the conversation much longer than I should have, and those words followed me home. They circled through my thoughts that night and were still there the next morning.

I know this friend didn’t intend to hurt me. I’m sure, in her own way, she was trying to connect with me because breast cancer was something we now had in common.

But it taught me something important - I can be compassionate toward someone else while still protecting myself. Looking back, I wish I had simply said, “I’m so sorry for your loss, but this is really difficult for me to talk about.”
And that would have been okay.

The next morning, I went to church, and the conversation was still circling in my mind. I found myself trying to reconcile what I know in my heart with what fear was whispering in my head.

I know that God has a plan for me.

I believe that.

I believe my path has already been carefully and meticulously laid before me by Him. I don’t know what tomorrow holds, but I know Who holds tomorrow. And if I truly believe that, then I don’t want to spend the days I’ve been given living in fear of all the things that could happen.

God loves me.

God is with me.

God has carried me this far.

And God will continue to guide me.

Does believing those things mean that fear never creeps in? Absolutely not.

Here I am, still battling my own thoughts. I trust God’s plan, yet that conversation is still dancing around in my mind. That’s the reality of faith sometimes. We can trust God completely and still have moments when fear gets loud.

For me, the work is recognizing when that happens and intentionally bringing my attention back to what I know to be true.

And I also learned something else that night.

It’s okay to protect yourself too.

If you’ve walked through cancer, illness, grief, trauma, or simply a season that has left certain parts of your heart tender, you are allowed to have boundaries around what you can hear and talk about.

You can say, “I’m sorry, but I can’t have this conversation right now.”

You can change the subject.

You can walk away.

You can love someone and have compassion for what they’re experiencing without absorbing something that is harmful to you.

I wish I had understood that in the moment instead of freezing. But hindsight is always clearer.

So I’ll take the lesson with me.

I’ll continue trying to lead with compassion. I’ll be more mindful of the stories and words I share with others. And I’ll also remember that taking care of my own heart doesn’t make me less compassionate.

And when those fearful thoughts inevitably creep back in, I’ll keep returning to the same place:

Trust His plan.
Trust His timing.
And live fully in the day He has given me. 🩷✝️