For most of this year, I felt caught in a sort of limbo…a kind where I didn’t want to plan anything. I knew surgery would be looming at some point, I have infusions every three weeks, I’m considered immunocompromised—all of that severely limits what I can do. Or rather…what I felt I could do.

But there’s a phrase I’ve heard over and over again from my team—from my oncologist, from my surgeons, from my radiation oncologists. And it is this: “You have to live your life.”

It’s never said as a rebuke, always as encouragement. When I mention that maybe I’d like to do something and ask if it’s possible, that’s what they say: “You have to live your life.”

The first time I heard it, back during Chemo Treatments 1.0, I didn’t fully appreciate what it meant, because at that point in time, treatments had an end date. Of course I would live my life, in between chemo and surgery and radiation. I’d squeeze things in, with the knowledge that soon it would all be over and life—full life—would be waiting. So while we didn’t get to take a summer vacation, we took a Christmas one. My spring retreat had to be canceled, but we did a fall one.

This year, though, the encouragement lands differently. This year, everything has felt less certain, even with clear scans. And since the summer, I have had other words spoken by my new oncologist playing through my mind, hovering back there waiting for the moment to pounce again: “It’s not a matter of if it comes back, it’s a matter of when.”

Those words have been like a specter hovering in the corner of the room. And they solidify every time talk turns to the future. Planning anything feels a little bit defiant—I will go to the Christy Award gala and the Read Write Rendezvous, even though it means rescheduling an infusion—so take that, cancer treatments! (To which, of course, my team says, “Of course! Go! You have to live your life!”)

But then, when conversation turns to plans farther out than a few weeks or months? It doesn’t just feel a little bit defiant. It feels…brave.

We’d like to retire down here. That’s what David and I were dreaming of when we were at the beach in September. We love Hatteras Island. The bookshops there feel like home. The locals feel like neighbors. And we feel so close to God there, we feel like healthier versions of ourselves. We would love to retire there someday.

But “it’s not a matter of if it comes back, it’s a matter of when.” The words bully their way forward. And in their wake comes the inevitable question: Will I live long enough to retire?

I don’t know the answer to that question. The truth is that none of us knows the answer to that question, but I’m very keenly aware of that lack of guarantee. With Stage 4 cancer, they don’t talk about 20-year survival rates. They talk about 2-year survival rates. Maybe 5-year survival rates. Even knowing I’m NOT typical Stage 4, that’s all the data they have to give me. And that’s…scary. It’s sobering.

And as someone who has always loved to plan, who had her whole life sketched out by middle school (and hey, I’ve stuck pretty close! Marriage + kids + homeschool + write novels = Roseanna’s Dream Life), it’s disconcerting, to suddenly have that check on my dreams. To have a caution light that blinks on whenever my mind turns to the future. To be constantly wondering what plans I dare to make.

Because that’s what it feels like. A dare. It feels brave. It feels courageous.

I want to say “It feels like faith.” But I’m going to draw a different line there—because I’ve come to realize that faith can’t just be faith that I’ll be miraculously healed and will live decades more. Faith means He’s with me no matter what; to live is Christ and to die is gain. I pray He’ll give me more time…but I trust that if He doesn’t, then it’s because the time He gave me is sufficient for the work He wants me to do here on earth.

So no. It doesn’t feel like faith that everything will work out the way I want it to. It is, instead, an act of courage in the face of the known-unknown.

This is something I was almost afraid to talk to my husband about, because he (understandably) doesn’t like conversations that hint at my death. But last month when I was having a bad day, we went for a walk, and I confessed this feeling to him. How planning a vacation had felt a little bold, how planning next year’s retreat feels a little defiant, but how planning for the future…that requires bravery. I admitted the questions that are always there, now, in the back of my head. We talked through the doctor’s statements that led to that hovering specter. We talked through how hard it is to feel like dreaming itself is out of reach in some ways. We talked through the frustration of not knowing whether my scans are clear because the problem is gone or because the treatments are just holding it off until The Next Time.

No one told me about this part of cancer. No one told me that part of the grief, part of the struggle would be the loss not of the dreams themselves, but of the feeling that I could dream.

And I’m not ready to give that up. I will not cower. Because while faith can’t be “I trust that everything will work out like I want it to” faith has to be, “I trust that He’ll be with me, whatever comes, and that He wants me to live life in pursuit of Him and walk out my calling as long as I’m able.”

So I will sign that contract for book releases that take me through 2030, and I will do it with courage. I will dream about that “someday” with my husband, and I will do it with bravery. I will reclaim what health I can, and I will dream my dreams, and I will live my life.

I will live it more aware than I ever expected to be of how finite it is. And I will find the gift in that—the blessing in the unexpected grief. Because it makes me appreciate each moment I have. Each moment I live out loud. Each plan I make and see through to fruition.

And that…that feels like faith. That feels like hope. That feels like joy.

It doesn’t give me certainty…and it doesn’t require it. It gives me something better. It gives me freedom. Freedom to accept whatever the Lord has in store. Freedom to stand tall in the face of that foggy future and bravely say, “I don’t know if it will actually happen—but I know I need to dream it anyway.”

It gives me freedom to dream into the unknown. And that is what I will courageously cling to as long as the Lord gives me breath.