Light

When I reflect on 9/11, when I remember what helped me that week, when I hear stories new to me of heroes and helpers and humility and hospitality, I am reminded to reread “Light at Ground Zero.”

A beautiful collection of Scripture, prayers, and photographs

When Erika was in high school, I got to chaperone the WHS choir trip to New York City. Hearing their voices in St. Paul’s Chapel, which remained standing less than 100 yards from the World Trade Center site, was sobering, moving, tear- and hope-filled. To be in this space, which housed rescue workers for months, was a profound time on holy ground. So many people made this a space of relief and refuge, of respite and nourishment. It is such light and hope I want to never forget. May each of us find renewed energy for selflessness, unity around the greater good, and care for the broken. God help us be the light we want to be.

Here

Mile markers. In my running days, passing any mile marker was a boost. One more mile to log in my notebook. This past week included a different sort of marker, a five-year mark, as I let go of a medication I have taken for five years, since earlier in my cancer journey. It felt like one tool in my kit and I’m a little bit unnerved by letting go. What if?

And yet . . . letting go, even for good reasons, always holds a step into an unknown future. My controlling side needs reminders of that. Reminders too, of the long days when I could hardly picture or dream of getting to this 5-mile mark. Yesterday I was here to celebrate our oldest’s 30th birthday. I am here to watch wedding plans unfold. I am here to hear heartwarming stories from our daughter’s life as a teacher. I am here to not help our kids move apartments. (Always learning 😉 ) I am here to get to know our children’s significant others. I am here to soon watch my mom light 91 candles. I am also here to pray and listen as others are in the midst of their own grueling marathons. C, A, K and C, I pray for your milestones and I cheer you on.

Lower case thanksgiving. Upper case Gratitude.

On a Monday like today, five years ago, I received the call that yes, it was cancer, three different varieties, no less. Pictured are three nurses with me one year later, when I thought that detour was behind me. Well, LOL, I had no idea that the journey was only going to get more, well, complicated.

The word metastasis was new to me but I could not have defined it. Now I can. But more than that, I can better define gratitude. (I have read that gratitude can change your brain, which in my case is especially appreciated 😉 The state of being grateful. It is a good state to live in. I cannot express enough gratitude to these nurses, for their kind and compassionate care, now with added layers of masks and face shields. I don’t have the words for the depth of heart that so many teachers are trying to pour through screens into young lives. I am in awe of the creativity of musicians and artists and writers and preachers lifting our hearts and touching our souls when we are weary, when they are weary. I pray for parents younger than I, doing hard things. My family endlessly shows patience when circumstances are not what we hoped. Resilience abounds.

Little did I know how I would mark the five-year mile stone. A walk, a Zoom call, no frantic cleaning the house for Thanksgiving. But no matter the changing nature of each day, the worries of our troubled world, who-knows-what-is- around-the-bend, I’m sure happy to be here. To Every. Single. Person. who has touched these past five years, thank you.

May your Thanksgiving week abound with resilience and hope.

Love and admire these nurses and hope I don’t need them for a long time.

We rolled fruit . . .

Once upon a time in Decorah, we celebrated teachers, shall I say, memorably? Ridiculously? Perhaps a student teacher was wrapping up her semester or a new teacher was moving to a bigger school. Each of us was to sneak in a piece of fruit to be hidden in our desk for just the right moment. I am not sure if this memory survives because of the sneak factor, always a winner, or the oddness of it all. Probably both. On cue, someone would invite the teacher forward. Hands with varying degrees of recess dirt, dug into desks. Then, 3, 2, 1 . . . every classmate brought out the hidden fruit. Fruit roll! Ideally, each piece is directed at the teacher’s feet. A steady stream of colorful fruit for the teacher. Reality? We are talking kids, misshappen fruit, lobbed into in a classroom obstacle course. But add some young excitement and send it as  noisily as possible toward the smilingly puzzled adult. Oranges rolling forward, pears stuck spinning next to a desk leg, apples picked up for second attempts. Inevitably a banana. Was it a room mother’s idea? A creative take on a fruit basket? Why? So many questions. West Siders, do you remember this?

Those classrooms are dusty memories, but the sound of the gifts rolling toward the front of the room is indelible. Today, I think of so many students and teachers and student teachers wishing they were close enough to celebrate one another, sharing whatever misshapen but heartfelt gift each wishes to pull out of their virtual desk. What wishes would that fruit basket hold?  So many kudos to the kiddos and teachers, missing creative new traditions.  Celebrating everyone trying to roll with life right now.

Know the love rolling your way, teachers.

Grateful for the familiar

I was drawn back into the infusion world this week. Not my preferred afternoon out, but still a time of lift. (Deets below about this non chemo detour) Returning to the space and memories of four years ago was a bracing step into a familiar portal—jarring, nerve-racking, memory-laden,and yes, even a bit comforting.

The gift of a familiar nurse warmed me more than the heated blanket. Hearing a known voice, remembering a comforting laugh, being reminded of your years of expertise, is treasure. Seeing the same, hard-working, compassionate faces was yet another reminder of the steady and ongoing work of healing all around us. Such a strong heartbeat. To everyone giving what they have, to whatever labor of love life has called you into, I pray that continues to you fill you.

As I looked at those around me in their own chairs, I wondered what their work and passions were. What and whom might they be missing? Under their masks, I still heard kindness, smiles through pain, honesty, and connections to strangers close by. To all who steady on, or who desperately wish they could, I hope there is appreciation in your day. For the calming work of the staff in that place, strength for the journey.

[in mid-March, I began struggling to type or write with my right hand. It is unsettling to have one’s right hand startle you by moving by your shoulder unexpectedly or missing a light switch by an inch. Virtual doctor visits and an MRI led us to a series of four staggered infusion treatments. The goal is to settle the area of my brain that has had past treatments and experiences swelling. Seeing slight signs of improvement and we are hopeful. Reliant on voice-texting and patience around typos.😀]

Amazed

Four years ago, we awoke Easter morning in Madagascar. Having traveled since Good Friday, we were exhausted. Yet, I still wrestled with attempting to find an Easter celebration. We would not be able to travel to Erika’s home until the next day, but she advised us that worship would be crowded, hot, long, (6 hours!), and we would not understand a word of Malagasy. We opted to sit with the words of gospel readings instead.

On this snowy Easter morning, when we will celebrate the resurrection with our faith community online, I think of that other unusual morning. May the countless the ways we approach the empty tomb, help me grow in ways to treasure depths of new life. While I crave the people and Easter celebrations I love, I hope today is that the amazement grows deeper and richer no matter how and where we live resurrection. Alleluia!

Dance me through the panic

An acquaintance shared how he and his wife faced the empty nest years. With passing years, they could easily have drifted further into their own worlds, so they got intentional. Together, they chose a song often played on the radio. They agreed, that whenever each heard the song begin, he and she would stop what they were doing, meet in the kitchen, and dance.

We might all need a dance party right now. A breather, a calm moment of sweet music, an escape into memories of your dancing days. For some, your favorite Hamilton tune, maybe Beautiful Crazy, or something more along the lines of Jumpin’ Jack Flash. Hey, the choices are endless. My brother invited friends to post their favorite get-yourself-moving playlists. I’m building mine. Dance alone, dance wildly, dance virtually, dance however you can. Dance like no one’s watching. Because, probably, no one is.

Leonard Cohen’s Dance Me To The End of Love is among my go-to songs. I am partial to a more recent version by The Civil Wars. May these lyrics soothe you, as they do me.

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic ’til I’m gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
And dance me to the end of love
Please dance me to the end of love.

 

November 18, 1989

Thirty years ago today, I locked my keys in my running Toyota Tercel. I was cold and in a hurry to brush off the windshield, racing to a wedding. Ours. Pre-cell phone, of course. (To the child who will resonate with this story . . . sorry, it’s genetic 😉

I made it. (On time to our wedding, I mean.) We still shake our heads when we think back to the year we met and married,  all during 1989. By our first Thanksgiving, and Christmas together, we were already sending out thank you notes.  Even more surprising to me was digging out photos today to realize the verses we chose for the day.

Colossians 3:12-17 and John 15:9-12. These words have come to mean more in recent years than I could have imagined thirty years ago. Abide in my love. Clothe yourselves with compassion and patience . . . Bear with one another . . . let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts . . . and be thankful. Layers of meaning that deepen over time.

No couple can see thirty years into the future. What a gift it likely is, that we cannot. Experiences that were more than either of us could imagine, seasons we would never have chosen. Still, gifts await, riches unfold, carefully chosen words come to mean far more than newlyweds understand. And, through it all, we hold the gift of someone with whom to be thankful, to bear with one another, to find Christ’s peace in the midst.

And if you still buy each other similar cards, bonus!

But if we rest there . . .

Two weeks ago, major surgery. Somehow that escapes me at times, when the clock ticks by too slowly. (God, give Jon patience . . . I may not be driving for weeks. Heaven help us both.) Grasp of words has been slow too; the mind is amazing, resilient, and sometimes disobedient. Keep resting.

Part of this exercise in patience is the waiting that comes with healing, and delays in results, and appointments that have to happen in sequence. Which is all to say that we don’t know some things yet. But in the midst, we are relieved, giddy even, over these words: Rare atypical cells, negative for viable carcinoma. 

Isn’t that grace sufficient for today?

My friend Mary shared a well-timed poem during this time of resting.

But if we rest there . . .

Trough

by Judy Sorum Brown

There is a trough in waves,

A low spot

Where horizon disappears

And only sky

And water

Are our company.

And there we lose our way

Unless

We rest, knowing the wave will bring us

To its crest again.

There we may drown

If we let fear

Hold us within its grip and shake us

Side to side,

And leave us flailing, torn, disoriented.

But if we rest there

In the trough,

Are silent,

Being with

The low part of the wave,

Keeping

Our energy and

Noticing the shape of things,

The flow,

Then time alone

Will bring us to another

Place

Where we can see

Horizon, see the land again,

Regain our sense

Of where

We are,

And where we need to swim.

Not Quite What I Was Planning

 

I love this book of six word memoirs. Love the concept of the power to tell a story in six words. “Legend has it that Ernest Hemingway was once challenged to write a story in six words. Papa came back swinging with, “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” Truth or fiction, I don’t know, but it is a rich exercise and a book that is witty, poignant, and sometimes hilarious.

The title example sums up so many lives, and certainly ours at present. Monday I have a craniotomy to remove two concerning tumors. I’m prolific that way.

One of this book’s memoirs is Cursed with cancer. Blessed with friends. Six words that say so much. I remain grateful for, and truly carried by,  the many praying us through whatever lies ahead. God’s peace indeed.

The last time I faced brain surgery (Who says that?!) we were recently returned from Madagascar and very aware of living at the heart of a medical epicenter. Perspective. One reason my Monday surgery has been a bit delayed is due to visiting with a couple neurosurgeons. Multiple, highly-recommended options, right here in St. Paul.

Choice of neurosurgeons. Could be worse.