Hello, this is Kent. For those who are unaware, I am married to
the most amazing and very much alive Kimberly.
I've been invited to be a guest poster on this blog, and I am honoured
to do it. The invitation has been open
for months, but I have been hesitant to pick up the pen (or keyboard) and write
until there was some way to say something that is worthy of the quality that is
seen in the rest of the posts. Still not
sure that that is the case, but here it is:
Kim has never counted writing among her strengths. Nor has math been something she ever has
opened her eyes to in the morning hoping to see, but thankfully blogs are usually about words, and we‘ll set aside
the numbers as much as possible in the following paragraphs. In fact, these
things have taunted her and worried her and caused her to sweat. Sorry: men sweat; women
perspire. So when she told me she going
to journal her journey through her cancer fight, I was all at once nervous for
her, excited and interested to read her thoughts, and broken because of the
circumstances behind the text. I’m happy to say, and somewhat jealously so,
that Kimberly is now an accomplished writer, and words flow much more freely
from her head to her keyboard than they do from mine to ...mine. There is no need for her to be afraid of
words any more. Now, to tackle
numbers! En Garde!
Every blog post was
absorbed deep under my skin, and I know for a fact that many other people were
intensely impacted because Kim's blog content has been real, transparent,
tragic and triumphant, and relevant. In
many ways, she was writing under duress.
The phrase 'the fog of war' is well known in military circles. It describes the loss of situational
awareness and certainty, that leads to confusion and wasted responses on the
battlefield. She was compelled to
continue her story, yet I can attest that many days she struggled and fought
through pain, nausea, panic, and the mind-altering effects of medication, to
complete her posts. Not everything was
clear. There was no guarantee where or
when or how the battle would end; a thick mist shrouded the path forward. Partly for that reason, she did manage to
offend several people over the months, but I stand behind her, knowing that each
entry in her blog was a snapshot of her moment in battle, and it was her story
to tell.
A most poignant post for me
was her very first, "And so it begins..." An aptly-chosen moniker: simple, but ringing
with ominous dark implications. And yet,
from the 1st, the theme that Kim set was openness and faith in the face of
uncertainty. She couldn't have known at
that time how closely God would walk with her at every step, nor how terrifying
it would become at times, in spite of that fact, but she found the faith to
believe even at the start. Astounding to
me.
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