By: Howard Crosby Jr., Sergeant Major*
I love spending time with my family, I love riding my
motorcycle, and I love building things and working on home projects. It’s easy
to be happy when I’m doing the things I love. But happiness can come and go
from one life event to another. Different events in my life can cause the
emotional response of being happy, sad, angry, etc. However, one thing I’ve
learned over the years is that “you can’t always choose what happens to you,
but you can always choose how you react to it.” This is where choosing joy
comes in.
But how is it possible to choose joy when something devastating happens in your life? The ability to choose joy comes from spiritual fitness and at least one of its three attributes: Service and Sacrifice for the Greater Good (SSGG), Pursuing Meaning, Purpose, and Values (PMPV), and for some, their Personal Connection to a Higher Power (PCHP). Since not everyone believes in a higher power, some might only have two attributes of spiritual fitness. In my life, I draw my strength primarily from the personal connection to a higher power as I learned from my mother, and am able to choose joy because of that.
Choosing joy in my mom’s battle with cancer
When my mom was pregnant with me, the doctors diagnosed her
with breast cancer and gave her the choice to go on radiation and chemotherapy,
or continue the pregnancy. Since I’m writing this, you can tell she chose to
continue her pregnancy!
The one dominant core attribute of my mother’s spirituality
was her personal connection to a higher power. She prayed and read scripture
continually to strengthen her personal connection to a higher power. She prayed
that God would give her the strength to see all her children graduate from high
school, which she viewed as her purpose that tied to her meaning, purpose, and
values. She used her time and energy to serve others—whether it was family,
friends, the church, or the community—where we lived. She did that with the
belief that God wanted her to serve those around her, which tied to her service
and sacrifice for the greater good.
I only have one memory of her ever complaining—despite having
her vertebra replaced with bone from her hip and fused, rods put in her neck,
then longer rods put down her spine, then a plate attached to her skull
connected to rods all the way down her back, and all the times she was in pain.
That one complaint came when she was confined to a hospital bed that we had in
our living room, and she was unable to get up to make her kids breakfast or
lunches for school that day. She said she felt like a “basket case,” because
she was unable to serve her family. That was it. No memory of complaints that “I
hurt, I’m too tired, or my life is so hard.” She always chose joy.
After I, her youngest child, graduated from high school and
went off to basic training and Advanced Individual Training (AIT), the cancer
rapidly spread to her whole body. I received the Red Cross call two days before
I was to graduate AIT that she was on hospice care and not expected to make it
much longer. I flew home the next day, arriving late that night. The next
morning, my sister and I went into her room to see her and hold her hand. She
wasn’t responsive as she was in a coma, but my sister and I told her as we
fought back tears that it was OK to go and meet her heavenly father, as her
kids were all grown and she had completed her mission here on earth. We left
her room to eat breakfast with the other family members who had come, and the hospice
nurse showed up a few minutes later to let us know that she had passed.
How my mother’s faith lives on in me
