Okay Google, don't answer that question

"Okay Google," I said to my phone. "Can you wear a bra when you have a tissue expander?"

Yes, I seriously asked my phone that question. Before it could answer me Bob walked into the room so I pushed the off button -- hard.

I'm in that place again. The place "in between" that makes me do stupid things like search "tissue expander" online. Shudder. (Those of you with weaker stomachs, don't try it. There's stuff out there that I can't unsee.)

When I was first diagnosed with cancer but knew nothing about anything I found myself online searching. Waiting was too hard, and I was impatient. And after all, there's this thing called "the internet" the source of all wisdom. So I would search and end up going down rabbit holes on medical sites reading medical journal articles that may as well have been written in a foreign language. Nonetheless, I'd pick up some words here and there, understanding just enough to freak out. The other searches would lead me to the usual cancer sites, which all have the same basic information, so I'd end up frustrated. The advocates and nurses all told me to put the mouse down and stop searching. So I did.

Then there was the time after mastectomy but before chemo when I started searching again. This time it was about "preparing" for this experience. I found more rabbit holes and lots of things I couldn't unsee. My reality was a lot different than anything I read, confirming the frustrating-but-true theme song sung by oncologists and nurses and cancer patients: it's different for everyone.

The one thing I didn't go googling was radiation treatment. I don't regret just letting it play out. It was a pretty traumatic experience, but would reading someone else's cancer blog have prepared me or changed anything? Probably not.

So now I'm in a waiting period until the surgeon's office calls me with a date. So what do I do? Search.

Which is really me trying to live in the future. I want to know what's going to happen. But this isn't the way it works and I know it. Even with the perfect plan, even knowing what all might happen, I know it will be different. How long is it going to take me to learn this?

In the book Interior Freedom, Fr. Jacque Philippe wrote,

We have very little hold on the future either. Despite all our foresight, plans, and promises, it takes very little to change everything completely. We can't program life in advance, but can only receive it moment by moment.

OOF. That's a sock in the gut for a planner-aheader like me. But he's right.

I've recently been feeling pre-cancer impatience returning. Sitting in the McDonald's drive-thru can put anyone through the patience-paces, but I hate the way this feels. It starts in my chest. It's anxiety. I should be back to work by now, I think. The clock ticks. I obsessively look at the time on my phone. This feeling bubbles up and out in a very ugly way sometimes. I grunt and groan and shake my head. I have even banged the steering wheel in frustration. I just want to give them my dollar for my large Diet Dr. Pepper for crying out loud!

This is me living in a future where I'm on my way back to work, sipping "the sweet one." I'm all the way back to work in my mind, getting things done. In the future. And spending the present being frustrated and angry.

Now that I have identified this feeling, I can fight it. I fight it with prayer. I take a deep breath and look at those people in line at McDonald's and remember they were made in the image and likeness of God, and they are just hungry and thirsty, too. Don't get the idea I'm great at this (yet), but I have to start there to get my heart rate down, and to realize that work will still be there when I get there, and to live right now because that's where God is. From the same book:

Every moment, whatever it brings, is filled with God's presence, rich with the possibility of communion with God. We do not commune with God in the past or the future, but by welcoming each instant as the place where he gives himself to us.

I'm still asking my phone questions. "Okay Google, how many carbs in one ear of corn?" "Okay Google, what can I put on a spider bite?" And "Okay Google, name some medium sized dog breeds." I'll be tempted again to ask it about my future. But for today I'm going to go minute by minute.