Marriage mentors

I was very hesitant to bring the topic of my marriage to my blog as I want to be fair to Mark as there are three sides to every story: his, mine, and the truth somewhere in the middle. However, I'm glad that I did because my cancer has definitely affected and still affects our marriage and I want to be very honest in this journey. Mark and I met with our wonderful marriage mentors who we started seeing several months before my diagnosis, but stopped seeing them while I was going through treatment. They are a wonderful couple who head up Marriage Getaways through The Navigators. When I first heard they were from The Navigators I felt like God had given us "the big guns" so to speak to have them be our mentors and walk us through our marriage ups and downs. Finally meeting with them again after almost a year of doing marriage mostly on our own was refreshing and gives me a lot of hope. Mark and I haven't been communicating all that well lately, we have been assuming what the other is thinking and feeling and we all know how that turns out. What was surprising to learn is that we have both been detaching from one another lately out of fear of my treatment not working. Mark has been trying to prepare himself for possible loss and so building walls. I feel like a burden to him and have been thinking if treatment doesn't work, I don't want it to be a long, drawn out process. I would want him to be able to remarry and get on with life as soon as possible. Obviously, both of our methods do not create closeness and it's not God-honoring either. It was brought to our attention that we should really plug into a Christian cancer support group and while that probably seems obvious, it's not been high on my priority list. I know they are out there (and I've always advised my patients to go) but I figured now that treatment is officially over, I would put more energy into moving forward with life. However, it's hard to move forward some days with all the fears and the unknowns that only another person with cancer can truly understand. Needless to say, we are going to get plugged into a support group and hopefully that will help us sort through all of these "normal" cancer conflicts a couple experiences. We took a Christian-based personality test which to no surprise shows we have some major differences. I'm a lion-beaver and Mark is a golden retriever-beaver-lion, I'm a take charge kind of person and Mark wants to keep the peace with everyone. I find it humorous that sometimes it's the differences in each other that are really attractive during the dating days and then they can turn into annoyances after marriage. We are in that process of learning to embrace each others differences as many times Mark's strengths fit perfectly with my weaknesses and vice versa. Most days I can completely see why God fit us together, we truly make each other whole when together. Anyway, it feels good to know we are back on the path of working together through this journey as I'm sure God has big plans for our marriage BECAUSE of the cancer. I don't know what those plans are at this point, I just know God promises that good will come from this cancer experience.