Simple Becomes Complicated

When I received my cancer diagnosis, I didn’t spend much time doing research on cancer.  After all, the doctors first thought the liver cancer was caused by cancer in the colon, which turned out false.  Then they thought it was kidney cancer, and then pancreatic cancer.  A Cat Scan settled the issue that it was lung cancer that metastasized to the liver and back and now the brain. 

I didn’t ask many questions at first because I didn’t know what questions to ask.  In my own way I guess I didn’t want to know what was happening inside me.  I sat through the chemotherapy with really no idea of what chemical cocktails were being injected into my body.  After a few months, I started to look on the web for answers.  That was confusing as there is a tremendous amount of information hundreds of web sites.  I wanted to keep it simple but soon found myself scouring the web for more and more information concerning symptoms, medications, side effects, chemo brain, stages of cancer, etc.  I tried to digest it all and became overwhelmed.  So I stopped my research and now trying to keep it simple, again. 

The same thing happened when I began my spiritual journey.  I started slowly, particularly at the beginning of my chemotherapy sessions.  I would ask God to help me through it.  As weeks went by, I started to read the Bible, ordered spiritual books online, and soon what was simple became complicated.  My plan was to complete the Divine Office daily, read the Magnificat daily, pray the rosary and the Chaplet of Divine Mercy every day, and spend an hour daily on Bible study along with other spiritual books.  This was quite an ambitious plan for someone who begins at zero.  It wasn’t long before I found myself putting off one, and then another, due to lack of time or some other excuse.  So when my daily plan didn’t work out, I felt guilty and quit completely.  I was overwhelmed and believed I had let God down as I usually did.  For the next few months I stayed away from any spirituality.

But I felt an aching inside for weeks.  Finally I knew that once again I took what should have been simple and made it so complicated that I was overwhelmed.  But now, rather than quitting completely as I did before, I’ve decided to try a different track.  I’m now back at “keep it simple stupid” and have to remind myself daily to follow that.  It would be so easy for me to once again complicate any spiritual growth.  Like a man who has been without water for days, I must sip slowly.