Thank you for all the wonderful visits the past few days. All of the tests and meetings have caught up with me and made me very tired. Looking forward to an afternoon nap today, so we will not being seeing visitors for a few hours. God Bless.

A lot has happened since I first met Heather, but I promised to tell you the story of how I met her and here it goes.

I was getting groceries at Meijer.  I went through the baby section to buy diapers and essentials.  Typically when I leave that section I go into the main aisle and continue to the pop, butter and yogurt section and weave my way to the front of the store.  This time, however, I didn’t go to the main aisle.  Instead I turned my cart around and found myself in the housewares department by all the kitchen gadgets (spatulas, measuring cups, etc).  When I realized where I was I bolted down the nearest aisle to move along with my groceries (time is of the essence).  The aisle I was cutting through was the cake decorating aisle and muffin cups caught my eye.   Plain white muffin cups.  I wasn’t planning on making cupcakes or muffins or had ever wondered where plain white muffin cups might be, but there I was staring at them nonetheless. 

I shook my head and moved on to getting groceries.  A few aisles into it I was looking for the semi sweet chocolate chips and I saw a woman bent down looking at something on the bottom shelf.  I heard a younger voice behind me say “no those aren’t the ones I was thinking of.  I know I got muffin cups somewhere here before, but I don’t remember where”.  So I turned to tell her how I just saw plain white muffin cups in the cake decorating aisle, which at this point, was right across from where we were standing.  As I turned to face her I noticed she was wearing a scarf on her head.  I don’t remember my exact words, because they just started falling out of my mouth, but I said something to the effect of “how are you doing”.  She looked at me like I was on another planet.  I said “I see you’re wearing a scarf.  I assume you have cancer?  Is it breast cancer?”  She confirmed it was and continued to stare at me like I was crazy.  She let her guard down as soon as I told her I had breast cancer and beat it last November.  We started talking, her mom started tearing up.  It turns out that we both have/had the same rare type of breast cancer – triple negative.  She had some questions and I answered them to the best of my ability.  I remember getting groceries during chemo and how it was a battle to do it so I told her I would let her get going, but that I wanted to encourage her and to let her know that she can do this and she looked good (despite how she felt).  

I walked away and as I continued getting my groceries I knew that moment could only have come from God.  There is no way I would have just started talking to someone I’ve never met with a scarf on her head.  Someone told me to reach out to her that day and I did.  I’m glad I did too, because by the power of Facebook it turns out she knows someone I know and now she and I are in a small little support group we started (I missed our first meeting because of my pesky brain tumors). I can’t wait to get to know her and the other girls in our little group a little better. 

There are no coincidences in life.  Especially with muffin cups.