Sticking Points - October 10, 2014
Yesterday
I really wrestled with what was important.
Today, too. Every day is a
juggling game. It’s always a juggling
game in this house. How early to rise,
do I dare a moment in quiet before the earth shatters downstairs or someone
forgets to sort laundry or take out the dog?
What do I expose my kids to? Do
we wrestle with headlines or do we just stay put and wrestle with one
another? How do we sort all the sticky
junk that just seems to ooze under the door and seep into our lives, even if we
try to stay in bed, hide under the covers, shut it out.
I
awoke to a blood moon a few days ago.
Some awoke intentionally. I awoke
because a set of boots clomped down the hall outside my bedroom right before
the early alarm went off. Toddler
stirred, hubby got up and showered, preparing to stand at the end of the
driveway past the reaching pines and witness a rare event. I stayed in bed. I didn’t really sleep, not much. Maybe it was hiding. The blood moon, its history, its connections,
just reminded me so much of how dripping red our hands really are. Did I want to get up and see, see what I’ve
witnessed before? Did I want to bring to the table the current, the tragedy,
the burdens beyond my personal ones that are so hard-hitting at the moment?
Abi
said that she was glad we didn’t have news running on the TV 24/7 at our house,
glad that the fear factor was not living at our breakfast table. Nice to be a child when the monsters are
still locked behind the bedroom door and all you have to do is shut it and turn
on the lights and all’s well with the world.
It’s not that they don’t know.
They do. My kids can describe
world events with the best. They just
don’t have so many visuals to go with it.
Tony and I choose that. They know
why Isaac and Ishmael are still batting in the Gaza strip. They, like much of humanity, can’t wrap their
brains around Islamic violence and even as adults we wonder why people can’t
just be nice on the playground and not bullies.
They are familiar the talking heads, leaders full of vitriol, lies, propaganda,
and sparse, occasional truth. They see
the roll of the impending plague.
And
then as I worked while sitting on the sofa, sounded out words while signing
another up for the SAT, it came bounding across my feed in all its ugliness and
deep sorrow. As if all the burying,
hiding under the covers that we’ve done is not enough. I have really been at the end of my tolerance
with a lot of issues, stupid insincerities that really get my ire up, blanket
statements spewed as news, opinion, even assumed truth. And this one story struck, snuck in my feed
and hit hard, hard enough that I wanted to duck that hard ball, hide back under
my blankets in my comfort and not expose myself to the haunting moon.
I’ll
put the link to the story at the end, but suffice to say, Brittany is 29, dying
of brain cancer, choosing to die, assisted, at her own hand. And the media, in full toxic pomp and
circumstance, trumpeted “choice” as truth yet again.
I
empathize. I get it. Only someone who has sat in her same shoes
could truly tiptoe with her at every single level, but I get it. Here’s why:
There’s
another story circulating, maybe not so mainstream, about a boy named
Shane. Shane was born anencephalic, a
condition where parts of the brain are missing, resulting in a very momentary,
short gasp of life. Shane’s parents,
knowing that they had limited time with him after birth, created a bucket list
of things to do with Shane while he was still in utero and celebrated every precious
milestone.
We
don’t own it. It’s most difficult to
believe when your baby Shane is on the altar, when you are wasting away moment
by painful moment with a dim prognosis, when you have few answers. But if we
can’t…if we can’t make baby steps toward hope and faith in the dark, when will
we? What is the point of our tossing around such words? Is there value in suffering if we toss in the
towel and give up hope of light at the end of tunnel, anywhere in the tunnel? I realize that it’s often used in a different
context, but what about the old adage, “no pain, no gain”?
I’ve
cradled a baby like Shane in my two hands.
I can only tell you that my momentary glimpse of that sweet child’s
face, fingers, and toes had not a millisecond of room for pain and all the joy
of the hand of the Creator. My own flesh
and blood has been there on the altar (see pic above) and though as a parent,
every ounce of you wants to snatch your son back, to spare your child pain, I
also have sat in that miserably uncomfortable ICU room chair, leaning against
the wall for days, with the very clear understanding that I was so totally and
absolutely not in charge of the outcome.
And there, not knowing the end game, the worst and most shortsighted
decision would have been to toss in the towel, call the game, walk out.
I’m
not patting my own back, but brave sticks by.
It may run to the bathroom for a few minutes’ breather, but it
sticks. Brave is the single parent on
the oncology unit, the father whose spouse didn’t stick when the daughter was
diagnosed with a terminal disease. Brave
is when the child sticks with treatment, day after day, month after month, not
for herself, but because to roll over and die and not give it a fair shot or to
crawl in a pity hole would kill her parents.
Brave, in the depths of chemo, built a gun table last year just to lay
prone or lean his elbow up to practice his shooting when he got to weak,
because you can be too prepared and you might as well enjoy each moment you
have. Brave goes to college as adult and
finishes in spite of a history of disease that can kill and a philandering
spouse because your kids need to eat and you want to eat many more meals with
them.
I
know the moon’s red. I know firsthand
that cancer simply sucks and I know I tell my kids to choose a more appropriate
word, but there’s not one. I know I awake each day to grumpy people who are
late for class, to a toddler who wants me now,
to two cars that seem to always take expensive turns in the shop, to the
reality that we are still going back and forth with Asa, not so often, but
still, for a long time still, back to the world of oncology, to a house that is
buried from the past few years of our turmoil, to the fact that cancer could
ultimately cost my child his hearing even though he survived chemo. But it’s okay. It’s got to be. It’s okay to be, because the story is
collective and it’s not mine. And the
reality that I wish the Brittany’s understood, that it can, no matter how ugly,
even with a tragic ending, be called good.
Brittany’s
story
Baby
Shane’s story
Many of you who have been along for Asa’s big, long journey,
know that there are a lot of sweet people, docs, nurses, volunteers, patients,
and families that we have gotten to know along the way. You just can’t help it. We are very sad to report that our precious friend,
sweet saint, Caroline, the one that we probably reported on most, requested
prayer for most, lost her battle with leukemia yesterday. We celebrate in ways as she is free, free
from the pain and torturous treatments, the ups and downs of chemo and pits of
side-effects, finished forever with the days of trying to survive being a teen
and living like a bubble kid, day after day of needing transfusions. We celebrate that she was born again and is
with her Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ and enjoying every minute of a new and
perfect body and all the freedom and joy in His presence. How exciting!
We sorrow with her family who loved and encouraged her (and us!) so and
fought so hard. Caroline’s presence
influenced so deeply all of those who met her.
She was a funny and delightful kid who just gleamed a holy content
whenever you saw her, pain or not.
Clearly, we ask for prayer for Caroline’s family. I know families with cancer grieve as they
go, but when cancer has been your life, when all is said and done, no matter
the outcome, you are sort of left not knowing what to do. Please pray for Caroline’s family. I know they want her memorials to reflect
Jesus. Pray for her siblings as they are
released to the next thing in their lives.
Pray for her parents, that they adjust back to civilian life well now
that the battle is done. It’s hard, so
hard. Pray long term. It’s a rest of the life, until eternity
adjustment.
This past weekend I went to my son’s college choir
concert. It was a hymn concert in
4-part+ harmony, featuring many old classics and their histories, standing room
only with overflow out of the concert hall.
I was struck by the truth of it all.
I have a partiality to old doctrinal hymns, even though I learned that
some in particular were scandalously modern when they were written. I think they bleed timeless into history
though, even the boat-rocking ones, because they are just so chuck full of
restated Scripture. Mid-concert, the
choir sang Spafford’s “It Is Well with my Soul.” As I stood in the back, just outside the door
of the hall, I thought of Caroline.
Though Satan should buffet, though
trials should come,
Let this blest assurance control,
That Christ hath regarded my
helpless estate,
And hath shed His own blood for my
soul.
I knew it was close.
The end. The new beginning. Even with good reports, we all knew. You are weighing in one hand the need for the
unheard of miracle, the Master’s touch and in the other, the truth of Psalm
116:15, “Precious in the sight of the
Lord is the death of his saints.” You don’t really know how the scales will
weigh. You are not out of time, but
stuck in the dead present, thinking you know the best solution, and, quite
simply, we don’t.
We only get the last two lines. We have been regarded by the Maker of heaven
and earth, the Savior of the world.
That’s all we’ve got. All anybody
has. All anyone can rejoice in, that we
have been regarded and bought with His precious blood.
So, for today, we sorrow, but we can also easily and
joyfully state that it is well with Caroline and for that, we are truly
grateful and even excited. Praise the
Lord, Oh my soul!
If you are not
familiar with “It is Well with my Soul,” the full lyrics are here:
And better yet, if you
don’t know they history behind this hymn, check it out here. What a story!:
I skipped it.
Somehow, I just skipped it. I
don’t think it was intentional or maybe it was in my pie-in-the-sky first world
growing up and moving into middle class wonderland adulthood. I really missed so much of what the Scripture
says about suffering, the deeply dug passages that offer the stark reality that
we will land face first in the dirt.
There was a funny last week.
I threw it on Facebook, because that’s what mom’s do. If you share social media with me, forgive
the overkill. Between Sunday school and
Bible time at home, there was some overlap, we had a week full of the escapades
of Abraham. Repetition is just
fine. We moved on one morning to the
story of Isaac and I was reviewing with my youngest set of kids the biblical
lineage of these stories, just so they would connect the dots hopefully,
perhaps grasp the root of world politics eventually. No grand expectations. We have been using this old Bible storybook
that was on the bookshelf for a change of pace.
I can’t say I care for it, mainly because its verbiage is often too
lofty or obscure for littler minds and I have to translate. Not grade level for sure. So, as I began the story of Isaac, I asked
broadly, grasping for snippets of retention, “Do you remember what happened
with Abraham?” Without time for a verbal
pause, my daughter pipes up, “He fell.” And
when we all looked at her blankly, she says much louder, “He fell on his
face.” And then it hit me. Face palm.
Between Sunday school and that out of date tome, she took it all literally
and remembered what she deemed the most violent part, which in itself is
comical, considering lots of Bible stories trend toward too much violence for
toddlers. Abraham fell on his face
before God. Bloodied his nose, skinned
his knees, needed a Mickey Mouse Band-Aid, fell.
We laugh, but neither you nor I really like that prostrate
place, our nose shoved deep in the grains of sand. But, we really don’t like it if it was a fall
not our choice. We don’t like it if it
does costs us calloused knees and sidewalk burned palms.
Every day we
experience something of the death of Jesus, so that we may also know the power
of the life of Jesus in these bodies of ours.
– 2 Corinthians 4:10 (Phillips)
This struck me hard.
We live for the so that moments,
but we forget the first half. Every day. Every day death. Every day suffering. Who signed up for that? Were we sold this? I don’t say that bitterly, but out of a
history of just not fully understanding the big picture, even though it is
painted in pure photo-realism for all to read all over the pages.
It is further mystery that bloodied nose and scraped knees,
poverty, loss, sorrow, wrong-doing, the dregs of the worst of the worst, is
knitted good. In this verse, it is “so
that power.” What does the word power have to do with
suffering? Living your life in a cancer ward?
Burying family? Twice? Watching
friends slip slowly away in deep physical pain?
But it’s true, this Kingdom Upside Down. You begin to see that catawampus is really
right side up, that broken brings glimmers of good and great, the right side of
great, the unselfish side. Not
easy. A lot of face in the dust
time. A lot of wondering how glory rides
on the wings of brokenness. But, it
does and somehow the Light cuts through the sorrow more strongly.
Yesterday was a day where I got to think a lot. In reality, that means I had to put my
chauffeur cap on and Asa refrained from screaming in the car while I dropped
off and picked up non-driving minors in my household. I get to think a lot, because most of my days
fit that description.
And as I sat and sucked my coffee and wondered why traffic
was so bad and muttered about how I got turned around taking the back way, I
got to thinking about the friends hanging on by a shoestring by God’s grace,
the gut-wrenching suffering we are so exposed to second hand, the horrid puking
and barfing and lack of appetite that goes with chemo and why on earth that is so
necessary to kill this nasty disease, if it does. That wandered to thoughts of decisions about
college yet again, a process that happens every few years around here, a
journey that is always entertaining at best, trying to make good decisions and
waiting for God to show up with the financial miracle, and spending months
playing through the mind-game scenarios in anticipation of how it will really
play out. All this mental meanderings in
sharp contrast to my fuzz-headed contented toddler who had wolfed down his
yogurt and French toast and was peacefully taking a morning snooze in his car
seat. My mind drifted a bit too far and
I missed a turn somewhere in a wretched maze of a rural neighborhood and had to
stop, look at my GPS on my phone and figure out where in the world I was and
find the nearest exit.
It was a God moment.
I pulled to that exit and got my bearings, realizing that I needed to
turn right into a detoured mess of traffic and in the waiting and waiting and
waiting at the stop sign, I spotted a dog.
A stupid dog. She was loping aimlessly
through a field having the time of her life, precariously close to the edge of
a major four-lane road, clueless that she was about to play a game of chicken
and lose. A nice man in a college shirt,
clearly headed to watch the game as was everyone else on the road not headed to
the birthday party, stopped and tried to call her to no avail. She came close, laughed at him, and tore
off. He gave up, kick-off calling. I got a break in the traffic and crossed to
the other side to a side street, opened my side door, called the dog, and she
walked right up to me. Lacey the Beagle,
wearing an ineffective electric collar, lumbered into my van and wagged her
tail while I read her tag and called her mommy.
I have NO idea what I was going to do with her if she hadn’t had a
family or a number. I hadn’t thought
that far. I guess she was going to go to
a birthday party with me and run errands.
But Lacey’s mommy was home.
She called me right back and she lived about a mile away. I pulled into
her drive and was greeted by a teen boy and young girl shaking their heads at
Lacey. And it struck me, all the
silliness of it, yet the seriousness of it.
We tend to elevate the importance of fluffy companions sometimes, but
God cared enough about that sweet family to rescue the most ADD, wandering,
flighty, stupid member of it and scoop her up in warm rescuing arms and deliver
her right to their front door.
How could he do any less for all those people, all those
scenarios I was fretting over. I was worrying
about loss that hadn’t happened, but our hairs are numbered, hair or no
hair. It’s easy to number zero. God cares for the sparrows. Why would I wallow in despair so over those
feeling so wretchedly ill. Yes, we
should share burdens, but we should also push ahead even painfully with the
pretense that our backs are covered. We
know who wins. We just don’t know which
side of eternity. And, lest we forget,
even in our ditsy lostness, wandering in the middle of the traffic-ridden highway,
we are loved, cared for, sought after, known.
This post is probably taboo, TMI, for some folks. If you are one of those people, skip
this. And, besides that, what on earth
does nursing a toddler have to do with 31 day writing theme of suffering and
redeeming loss? Anybody who’s nursed a toddler
knows the answer to that one.
Everything.
Perhaps you know the lovely cliché stolen from the biblical
story of Hannah and Samuel? “For this
child I prayed.” Well, as much as Asa was more of an Abraham and Sarah laughing
story, I didn’t pray for the child to be here, but that the child, once he was
here, would nurse. And now, that’s sort
of a joke.
Asa slid out, lay his slimy head on my chest and latched and
nursed like a pro. Problem was, after a
week or so, we realized that he wasn’t getting anything. Everything got blamed but the real
problem. Too old? Plumbing just doesn’t work anymore? Made me feel royally lovely. I had already felt like I failed with one
child, a ridiculous thing to feel considering that I had successfully nursed 7
children at that point and especially considering that the failure had to do
with my son’s mouth formation. But mommy
hormones and illogic just yelled, “You failed!”
So, Asa, like his brother, was headed downhill with my emotions, until,
staring sleep-deprived at his pitiful attempts one day, I realized that his
tongue was not involved in the process as it should be. A trip to the lactation consultant later,
(well worth the $$ by the way, the cost of 2-3 cans of formula) my suspicions
were confirmed, Asa was tongue-tied.
Another trip to the pediatrician, a few minutes of mindless fussing, and
that problem was solved. Asa became the
suckling champ.
It’s a good thing, because when cancer struck, nursing
became essential, this blessed curse that drove me bananas. When Asa was in critical condition, when
chemo killed his appetite, all he would consume was breast milk. Everything else was a no go. No food, no formula, no bottle, no cup. Occasionally coffee. I had never ever fought so hard to nurse a
child. Nursing allowed him to go home
and spend very minimal time with a feeding tube up his nose, something that is
so totally practical with a toddler anyhow.
Not. Nursing gave him antibodies
that he would not have gotten elsewhere, antibodies to fight adenovirus. So, no matter how much pumping time, how much
biting, fussing, waking up at night, we fought on, both Asa and I.
It paid off. I know
my prayer was answered, certainly not the way I ever imagined, but God answered
and Asa survived.
So we enter the recovery and rebuild season now and I’m
wondering about the former endurance and suffering because nursing is now a
torturous comedy. An absolutely
distracted toddler with 12+ grinding teeth who thinks Mom is breakfast, second
breakfast, lunch, afternoon snack, dinner, and dessert. Of course, so is whatever the offering on the
high chair tray, milk, formula, half and half, goldfish, crackers, grapes,
yogurt, and anything he can swipe from other warm bodies in the house. It just all needs to be topped off with the
cr̬me de la cr̬me РMom. I might as well
just moo like a farm animal for all to hear.
I think I need to decide how much more suffering we can
endure. We are in the clear medically
speaking, so moving on past being a permanent attachment to mom is a real
consideration. Others were weaned when they could stand up and nurse or
verbally would come up and ask, “Muh I peas ha a ______?” One, who will remain nameless, because he’s
now an adult, got cut off when he wanted to stand in my lap, eat, and watch
Sesame Street, all at once. I think Asa
has now redeemed about as much he can out of this symbiotic relationship, because
it’s really no longer symbiotic as I’m on the losing end, feeling a bit like a
mother dog stretched out with that sunk-eye look of exhaustion.
Back in Hair - October 3, 2014
We’re back in hair around here again. It’s part of recovery mode, the return to
whatever normal might be for one’s pate. Unless you are blessed with the male
pattern baldness gene, I’m not sure most of us think so much about hair or the
lack thereof, until cancer, and then hair is a hot commodity.
If you live in the land of normal, it’s so odd to be
hairless unless you are a Kojak type or one of those cool young receding
pastors who shaves his head because it’s just trendy. Don’t venture to the grocery store with a
bald kid. You’ll discover just how
“cute” it is. But in a ward laced with leukemia and solid tumors, hairlessness
is the norm and honestly, gets really sort of funny at times.
I know there are lots of laments when it falls out,
especially for girls. It’s really
mortifying. When Asa’s fell out, it was
as they predicted. We just found strands
on his pillow one morning. Asa was odd
in that he didn’t lose it all at once.
It took a while, like several chemos a while, so he sported this very
sparse comb-over look for a long time.
Lost eyebrows and eyelashes, but still the strands lingered. I suppose we could have cut it where it was a
bit more uniform, but when you are going through chemo torture, you grasp at
every strand of normal childhood you can find and hair was just one of those
things. And, besides, no one wants his
kid’s first haircut to be leftover hair that the chemo didn’t root zap. We just wanted to hold on for dear life to
that little glimpse of red.
But it is comical.
It’s never a true buzz cut look when the hair comes back from damaged
roots. I’ve seen mothers shave their
heads in sympathy with their daughter, but apart from looking a bit masculine,
it just looks military. But a chemo kid
is different. It’s like the head can’t
seem to decide what to do or which way to shoot out hair. It’s as if the hair is reluctant, wondering
if it’s going to get zapped again, afraid to face the reality as much as the
patient. Nurses say lots of kids come
back blonde and curly because chemo affects the shape of the hair follicles,
but I’ve seen just as many wiry-headed, and sparse wiry heads full of dark dark
hair.
And it’s baldness embraced, sometimes with a hat, but most
often with a go with it attitude, an obnoxious over-the-top bow, a superhero
cape, a bandana all its own, sort of like Duck Dynasty’s Willie, a signature
style. Asa had a ninja turtle hat and a
SuperAsa cape. You have to grab, hug,
and hold on for dear life to the non-normal, the funny little losses that
become signature joys. I can still
remember spying four precious very stages of balding teen girly girls giggling
away playing board games, joy abounding.
Asa is moving on. I
think we are, too, as much as that ever will happen, because you leave pieces
of you behind and take other new ones with you.
Cancer grasps at you always and like forever altered hair follicles,
doesn’t leave you the same. We are so embracing of Asa’s new fuzzy peach look,
still wondering if the down up top is still red or if it’s just now mousy
brown. It’s not blonde exactly as
predicted, though his eyelashes are a leftover mix of remaining dark and new
blonde. It’s a fun waiting game. Will he be curly? Will he be a ginger to match his recessive
blue eyes? We don’t know. We’re still waiting for the first haircut.
Eeyore's Options - October 2, 2014
Eeyore. I’ve always
been a bit that way. Too busy observing
the glass, wondering when the water levels will start climbing again. Maybe it’s human nature.
When I teach art, I tell my students that the primary thing
I’m doing the first year is to teach my students to see. Forget the results. Just see.
And then use your hands and arms and whole body, whole being to move in
the direction of what they see. We don’t
even delve into color at first, certainly not Technicolor. We’re just looking, catching the Designer and
His design somewhere between our eyes and our paper.
I need to see. I
think I do, but it’s just so darned easy to see what’s dead in front of
us. The fact that I made an espresso on
a machine this morning that no longer has a glass carafe, but a lousy measuring
cup stuck under as a sub, a machine that no longer has a nice silver frothing
pitcher because someone, someone called a toddler or negligent other took off
with it, never to be found again.
Instead, I use a coffee cup about the same size. And I’m too lazy, too cheap, too distracted to
order replacements from Amazon. I am
just not going to mention the fact that I found the previous day’s coffee cup
aka frothing pitcher replacement shoved back behind the espresso machine and
certainly not sent through the dishwasher, much less seen a sink. And the potato peeler, though unrelated, it’s
gone AWOL. Again. Third time.
I don’t want to see this junk, but it’s smack in front of my
face. Daily. And before I’ve gotten that cup o’ Joe down
my trap, nonetheless. It’s arresting.
Very irritating. Brings out the worst in
me, like caffeine-withdrawal grumpy psycho worst. And I’ve got to choose. Eeyore or no Eeyore? Coffee cup empty or
full? I must choose. Will I be a happy-go-lucky, albeit delusional
or clueless Pooh or wallow in Eeyore’s coffee dregs?
I have to see, practicing my seeing movements, drawing a new
picture. It doesn’t come by osmosis,
just by missed keys in the song, missed and repainted, repentant
brushstrokes. Suffering has taken me
there, to forced practice. My mom used
to tie me to the piano bench growing up, not literally, but it sure seemed that
way. Total and complete drudgery. I wish I could say it made me a good
musician. It didn’t. It did perhaps teach practiced persistence
and that no matter how much we try, we again fail. That’s an Eeyore statement, but it’s
not. Eeyore can be scraped up off the
concrete, drug by the collar to standing to try again. Every step is move forward to thanksgiving, a
stroke to a new start.
Redemption now? Redemption later? - October 1, 2014
My box has been filled to overflowing. I like it.
I like the warm fuzzies. Fat
babies, soft newborn skin new on mommy’s chest.
Long awaited. Prayed for.
Surprised with. Joyed over. And the pics of grandbabies, apologies for
the obnoxiousness of dumped whole albums on social media for the world to see,
but none of us perceive joy as obnoxious.
We just lament that we are not there to squeeze the warm flesh ourselves,
share a bit in a grandparent’s pride.
But there’s other stuff there, hiding in my feed, lingering
in my email. A different joy. I’ve shared some of their names in the past,
but I can’t capture them with a lens like I can Asa. Sometimes hospital protocol, privacy acts are
so restrictive that you and I can’t even venture into their world unless they
venture out. But they followed us
home. Not to be insulting, but it’s sort
of like a friendly mutt with mange that loves so unconditionally, that you
attach to with a first love such that you can’t forget them, leave them out of
your story. So you make more space. You think you don’t have more space because
you’ve already lived and written three lifetimes of chapters of your own saga,
but you do, you shove over and make room for more.
We don’t know what to do with them. We do.
We pray. We wake up at
night. We sorrow, we wonder about their
eternities, we wonder about their now.
We sit here in healing and they still sit in the dust, some surrounded
by friends, some not, wondering when or if theirs is coming. Is redemption now or later or for some, ever?
But you feel every ounce of their sorrow, every ounce of their momentary joys,
want to know their winding story.
I want to introduce them to you. A few I have.
A few I can. So many remain
private, some by choice. Suffering can
be so so private. I want to show you
their funny hair, the face of their spouses who are run ragged, the wonderings
of the mothers who waffle between the hope of a cure and the hope of eternity.
Many tell me that they couldn’t ever work the wards where
we’ve been. I couldn’t. I had to be there. But, “had to” has gradually become, I choose
to. Part of it is because you just can’t
choose not to, but part of it is a selfish unwillingness to run from the flickering
joy that rides alongside suffering. No
one asks for pain, no one begs for the fellowship of suffering. Ever.
But in some weird and holy inexplicable way, it’s irresistible, like the
sad dog illustration, joy unhinged.
So, no pics today.
How can you capture this? It’s
only in the eyes and in the heart and it’s so personal that I’m not sure it can
be stolen that way. I don’t know how to give you a diatribe of thankfulness
here, other than this is something different to learn to be thankful for, the
privilege of knowing others. But, I am
giving you a list of names. There are
SOOOO many more. I hate to list them
because I might, am positively, leaving off some. And no list shows the trickle down to the aching
parents, the siblings, the grandparents, the friends, the nurses, the doctors,
those who feel every ounce of suffering alongside. So, for Caroline, Kevin, Brendan, William,
Mark, Jake, Tacey, please pray. Pray
desperately and continually. Some are dying, some are living, and I suppose it
doesn’t matter which way they seem to be headed because none of us know our day
or hour, how the game plays out individually, we can only strangely rejoice in
the One who redeems now or later.
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