No two sunrises are ever the same. Each day's spectacle in the sky is altered by particles in the atmosphere, the tilt of the Earth, the lengths of different waves of light. Debbie Wagner knows this better than almost anyone else. With earnest devotion, she has risen in the darkness more than 2,200 times so she could observe and paint the sunrise. She's rarely missed a morning since December 2005. As a brain-tumor survivor, I lost so many of the loves I had, like reading and writing and mathematics," said Wagner, 56, who had two cancerous, pear-sized tumors removed from her brain in separate surgeries in 2002. "My visual journal became essential to my attitude for the day. When I look at a sunrise, it represents a new beginning. I'm just so happy to be here another day and see my kids do different things and go to dinner with my husband. I suppose that's the addiction of it - it puts me in a state of mind focused on gratitude. You go through this mourning-type period of sadness, and then you realize that you're a different person and you have to redefine," Wagner said. "My husband jokes, 'Well, I've gotten to be married to two different women without having to get divorced!' " Her brain tumors and surgeries may have robbed Wagner of much, but they also gave in unexpected ways: She said she wound up experiencing a heightened visual perceptiveness and an irresistible pull toward art. "I started painting pretty much right away, maybe five or six months after my surgeries," she said. "It just happened. I had to express myself."