Foreigner

No matter how hard they are trying to help you, you always stumble a bit when you enter someone else’s world. Two days before the second flat-lining, I had already gone into St. Catharsis Hospital for an EKG (I thought. Is that the same thing as an electrocardiogram? The letters don’t quite match up.)  I had gotten a slip of paper in the mail (doctors mail you things here in Canada), telling me I had something or other coming up, and I noted it on my calendar. (Not that that guarantees anything, but you should be proud of me for trying.) Then I got a phone call from my former clinic in Harbor Town, asking if I was coming in for my EKG there, which made me wonder whether I’d gotten the St. Catharsis detail right in the first place—the slip of paper was who knows where. So I called St. Catharsis, who didn’t know anything about the appointment but said they would pass on my question to Dr. Blue-and-Brown’s Super-Competent-Nurse Tish.  S.C.N did indeed call me back (nurses call you back in Canada) and said, yes, be there at 8:15. After I hung up, I realized I’d forgotten to ask where there was.

In I went. To the wrong place, of course. Apparently they don’t do those kinds of tests in the Cancer Clinic. No, you have to go to Central Registration. And stand in the middle of a bunch of people, looking for where to “take a number,” because there are no slips of paper with any numbers anywhere. Oh wait. You are supposed to tap a big screen, hanging right in front of your face, and then a slip of paper rolls out with a number. Then you sit down and watch other newbies face the same learning curve. The papers actually have numbers and letters on them (you go to the head of the line if you are in active labour--as opposed to unactive labour, I guess. I don’t ever remember having any unactive labour), and you have to get that right, too. Or get sent back to wait your turn. (Canada is so organized).

And then you get asked why you don’t have a health card. And get called Annnn. And get handed a receipt to take to the cashier (“You can pay on your way out, hon; the cashier isn’t open yet.” Registrars in Canada are so trusting).  “And just go through the set of brown double doors right next to ER (hmmm) for your…Muga Scan.” Wait. Wait. What was that again? (She wrote it down on a piece of paper for me. In red.) What in the world is a Muga Scan? I thought I was here for an EKG or something. You don’t know what a Muga Scan is? I mean, is it even for the heart? Yes, go ahead and sign me up. Someone will explain (but not, as I found out, the young volunteer holding the doors open and helping me find my fourth waiting room. “No, she said, if I tried to explain it, I would just get it wrong.”) Sigh.

The sign outside the double doors said Nuclear Medicine. Nuclear Medicine! How cool was that! I was going to have nuclear medicine done on me and not just any old plain EKG. A nice lady in  a lab coat called for “Annnn” and finally explained what a Muga Scan did. Yes, it was for the heart. She would be injecting me (twice—I offered the PICC line, but she wasn’t going for it) with radioactivity that would show up in a machine. She was going to take pictures of how my left ventricle pumped red blood cells back out. Ok, it took me several tries to get this figured out. I had to ask her to slow down and repeat things because she was talking way too fast for me, a foreigner in this land, with no spot in my mental dictionary for muga scans. She was patient, (but not a patient, which was me; not sure which is harder), and maybe I got the gist.

After waiting the proper 15 minutes in the waiting room for the radioactive red blood cells to take over my body, during which I mentioned to Robert I had forgotten my water bottle and was getting thirsty and had he seen a drinking fountain anywhere, and the other lady in the waiting room said, “Here, I have an extra one.” (People in Nuclear Medicine waiting rooms in Canada are nice), Nuclear Lab Lady called, “Annnnn.”

I lay down flat, got battened down with a big heavy grey strap, got a white blanket put over me, slid into the bowels of the great white Nuclear Machine that moved silently right up against my face, and fell asleep. My first nap of the day, probably one of several (I went out with three girlfriends to see Far from the Madding Crowd--great chick flick--and missed the whole visit in the car because I was on my second nap, bobbing almost all the way into Janey’s lap, and apparently narrowly missing getting whacked as she waved her hands about in her usual, emphatic, Janey way). When I sat up to leave, Nuclear Lab Lady asked me if I planned to be crossing any borders within the next three days. I would set off alarms, she said. Cool. Maybe I will try that, and meet more Polite Canadian and American Border Guards.

After that it was easy. I knew my away out, no longer a foreigner to the world of Muga Scans. Except Robert had to remind me about the cashier. And wait. What’s a muga?

P.S. The flat-lining incident yesterday kept provoking more new tests, and I kept offering, “I’ve had a muga, don’t you want to check that?” Foreheads wrinkled. I was told on the one hand, mugas are for oncologists, not cadiologists, and on the other hand, the tests are interchangeable.  Hmmm. I suppose every new culture has its mysteries.

And what's a beta?

When We Disagree

Today I feel disheartened. And it is not by the fact that as I write this, I am waiting for my pulse to slow. It’s near 200, I think. It sets my upper body to a gentle rocking and puts little catches in my breath. Robert and I went out for a walk at 5:30 this morning, and perhaps it was too much for me, panting already, just out the driveway, but I was determined to keep going. Surprisingly, Host

brother Ben was in the hospital for the same thing this week, but he got anesthesia and the paddles for his flat-lining. His was at 230

(we compared notes). Mine is only 190, so he wins on both counts. We can be the second set of twins in this family now, except he has all the hair. One would not expect tachycardia to be contagious, would one, but what do the doctors really know? Maybe we can be in adjoining rooms for our surgeries.

No. I am not disheartened by this but by a matter of the soul. The other day, Robert was discussing, with some people whom he respects, a topic about which they disagree. The fact that they disagree is not important. Robert disagrees with lots of people, as you know, and he and I disagree a lot, too, and we stay married, happily. I have to tell you this story: Once I was driving, and Sister Diana sat beside me holding the map (uh huh, a long time ago). We disagreed on where to turn. As the driver, I made the final call, and she kept protesting,

and I said, “Sister. It’s ok. We aren’t going to agree. That is why it is called a disagreement.” She stopped. Although she doesn’t remember the incident (I checked; I told her now I get to paint it however I want), I think a light went on there, because when we disagree now, she can let things drop, agree to disagree, and still call me sister. I love how Luke tells us about how Paul and Barnabas, two great missionaries, had sharp words during their disagreement, and parted ways in ministry, yet still considered one another holy brothers. They didn’t doubt each other’s faith, just, perhaps, each other’s sanity. We don’t have to work together. We have to live together. As family.

--interlude for going to ER for further flatlining by old friend, Bald Doctor, and same horrible choking feeling; I know the drill now--

Because this heart issue does not distress me as much as this matter of the soul.

I think that the problem does not come when we disagree. The problem comes when we judge the heart, or the motives, or the health of someone’s faith when we disagree. I think it is especially disheartening when people’s hearts get judged according to the ideas in their heads. Let me explain. When Jesus called people, he never called them to a checklist of truths but rather to a Person. “I am the truth,” he said. “Come, follow me. Come, pick up your cross, and follow me.” He always called people into a relationship with him. And when they responded, he rejoiced. When they turned toward him, he ran out to meet them like any Prodigal Father. If there was the barest lift of a face to call on Him, He was all over it. It’s all about being in relationship with this Man, the One and Only Son and Revealer of God, the One and Only Saviour of the world. It was never about a list.

Think about who was praised in Scripture for their faith: Abraham.

Who knew practically nothing about God except that He spoke in the night, showed up for supper, and commanded him to do unfathomable things. Kids. Who knew practically nothing about the Kingdom, except that they really, really liked JESUS! Abraham and the child on Jesus’ lap were never evaluated on their doctrine but on their love and obedience. The same goes for us. Can we give a 54-year-old the same grace we give a 4-year old? Can we focus with joy on the ways people turn toward God instead of carefully measuring their progress in the other direction?

 So I am disheartened when friends set me on a slippery slope to hell and assign me a cancer of the soul when we are both in love with the Saviour of the World but disagree on other things. Because hell is not just a place, but a condition of the soul that rejects God, that deems Him a liar, and says, “not your will but mine be done.” And heaven is a not just a place, but a condition that makes the soul say in all joy, “God, do your will here. Do it now. Start with me!” So when you judge a sister—me—by telling me that I am risking hell for what I think, I wonder, when did you hear my soul shut God away? Did you see this thing in my actions? Did you hear it in my words, this utter rejection of God’s will in my life? Because somehow I just don’t think it’s up to you to decide if I am “in,” or if I am “out.” Brother, sister of mine, with whom I sharply disagree. 

Spice Factory

Saturday night we went to a place called The Spice Factory somewhere in the hip, downtown part of Harbor Town. It was 10 o’clock, and there was no one on the streets. We weren’t sure where to park the car, or if our little Tiny Tin would be there when we got out. It was an adventure. I guess for people who do this kind of thing regularly, this was business as usual, but this was my first time to “catch the music scene,” or whatever the whipper snappers call it. It was a Showcase. (I learned what this meant. It’s not a place where you show off instruments or six different foot pedals for the electric guitarist—when he set them down on the floor in a row, all different colors, red, green, blue, yellow, silver, I asked Robert if he was setting up a tiny train set, you know, some kind of visual to aid the performance. Yes, go ahead and laugh.) Anyway, this Spice Factory was the wide, top floor of an old building, and it was dark in there, and there were a few chairs draped in black right up at the front (No, Robert, I am not going up there right now, just having walked in) with little tea lights lit on little, round, wobbly tables, and a bar at the back with a young woman with big hair, tiny body, and winning smile, dressed all in black (come to think of it, black seemed to be the color of choice), and lots of open floor space between the front and the back. Seemed to me there were crowds missing.

I was there to hear my friend Peter Tigchelaar, who sang at Dale’s Kenya supper, and whom I knew as The Plant Guy. Peter is about my age, I guess, skinny toothpick legs that never stop moving when he plays, John Lenin glasses, and a big mop of grey hair. His band includes the electric guitarist with the toy train, an imperturbable accordionist in a black (I looked this up) pork pie hat, as placid as the stars, and a fiddler, a young woman who sets both fiddle and vocal strings to dancing. Ah. It’s like I’ve never heard music before. Either they are just really good, and I’m hearing them for the first time, or something inside me has made me able to hear good music I just never paid attention to before. Peter was all over, bouncing, leaning over the guitar, stretching to get that chord, but in a “rockers in walkers*” sort of way, comfortable, gentle, natural, just his energy showing through. You could tell he and his band got along, just enjoyed what they were doing, and sang songs about bells, and about Francis St. of Harbor Town, and about his wife, “the mom of my kids,” how she lit him up.

And the lines kept coming through to me, lines that resonated, made sense, unlocked something inside me and made me say, “Yes. Exactly. You nailed it.” Lines like, “When you recover, turn and strengthen your brothers, your sisters and mothers, your one anothers,” and “momentum of grace,” which makes me picture grace as something growing inexorably (I love that word), outward, unstoppably, like wider and wider circles in the stream*. And he sang, “They have come to Throne River for a safe place to mourn.” And he sang a poem by George MacDonald. (George MacDonald! The guy who “baptized the imagination of C.S. Lewis,” and wrote On the Back of the North Wind, and The Princess and the Curdie.” I mean, how cool is that!) “Better to love in loneliness than bask in love all day.”

I asked Peter what he did for a day job. He told me he’s the Plant Guy, walking into businesses all over Harbor Town and beautifying them with plants. He keeps the plants healthy and full of life. “What is the most innovative thing you’ve done on the job?” I ask. “Hmm. I like that question. I guess I’d say I talk to the people where I work. They know me by now. I’ve been the Plant Guy for years.” I like that. A rocker who covers titles like Open* and Up Around the Bend*, and writes songs about billions of bells, and his wife, and grace--a plant guy, who doesn’t just perk up plants in those Harbor Town buildings.

*Bruce Cockburn, the other Canadian singer.

*Waterboys (I looked them up)

*CCR

Slow Dancing

The house is completely silent. Every member of this twelve-member (give or take, depending on the day) extended family is gone. Except for me. I look up, and the two (sparkling) picture windows break the scenery in half, all green grass and brown corn stalks covering newly planted beans below, and all bright, blue sky above. Off to the right, a flowerbed of stocky yellow and red and green and blue and silver farm implements takes in sun. Robert is off at the Church Work Day, happily busy, doing whatever can be done with a broken back newly healed, and I am home, monitoring heart flutters and waiting for the ache in the guts to die away with the gradual passing of the chemo drugs from my body. After waking up at 4, I’ve already had one nap, possibly the first of several. It’s an inside day.

I love inside days. When Robert has one of these, he makes sure he is productive, working resolutely on another article for the Anabaptist Witness or catching up on emails and reports. And he makes sure that there are not many inside days for him. Off he goes, at the drop of a hat, to find people to engage, tools to buy, widows to help. While I stay home. And think. And look at metal flowers out my window. And write. My best thoughts come on long walks and inside days.

I used to think it was only introverts that needed slow time. I was wrong. I was over helping Janey unpack boxes of kitchen stuff, and she showed me a slip of paper she’d found on the floor somewhere and tacked on the frig. It says: “You have a slow and unhurried natural rhythm.” She had both fists in the air, exclaiming YES! through clenched teeth in her emphatic, Janey way. Some Chinese fortune teller finally understood her! I always assumed that with all her energy and get-up-and-go she would be moving fast all the time. But she isn’t. Not when she’s wiping a counter, or putting things away, or deciding what to fix for dinner, or worst of all, staining stairs. (How was she to know that the faster you stain, the better it turns out?) It frustrates her, and frustrates me, to be rushed. It frustrates our husbands when we tangle things up with our slowness. Sigh.

It also makes me think of my friend Kath’s dance recital. She’s in her forties and has a grandkid. But she was up there on stage, dancing slow with

three other moms. Making grace. The older kids’ performances were a treat, jazz, dub step, break dance—I LOVE that stuff--but what I remember best is the two-year-old little girl right at the beginning, with her light brown curls, and her bright ruddy cheeks and her gold angel wings taped on her back with shiny gold duct tape. She was the daughter of one of the teachers. She kept looking intently up at her mom, trying to get the hand motions right, and not getting them right, and not needing to, because she was a complete, miniature dance just in her own little self. And it made me think that being can be just as beautiful as doing, and inside days are good days for just being, and as the blinded Milton said, “They also serve who only stand and wait.”

Confrontations: Daniel

Finished with Ezekiel, I am tackling Daniel. And right away I see these major confrontations between Daniel and one king after another. Daniel has to say some pretty heavy things. And since someone important to me had to confront me a while back, it got me thinking. Here goes.

So how do we do this terrible thing? And when? And how do I react when it gets done to me?

First of all, I’d say, if you are getting the earful, just listen. Don’t defend, don’t excuse, don’t answer back. Just listen. The other person is hurt, angry, scared, or just trying to right a wrong. You need to hear that first. Then, just process. Think. Be brutally honest with yourself. What is the truth in what he is saying? If there is one whiff of truth, you need to hear it.

Second, if you are confronting, know your audience. As it happens, I am not a confrontational person. I run away from confrontations, rabbit-hearted introvert that I am. Some people thrive on confrontation, but it appalls me. You have to realize that different people react differently to strong stimulus. Think of your kids, if you have some. Does one kid need stronger verbal queues to pay attention? Does one just curl up in agony with the first strong word or dark look? Something Robert and I are tackling in our marriage is our very different perception of anger. I say he’s angry; he says he’s not. I feel anger coming at me when he says he’s not radiating any at all. He says that’s not fair. I should not be able to decide he’s angry when he’s not. What is going on here! So know your confrontee. Is this a sensitive person who will wither with one word? How much do you really need to say to get your point across? Daniel was pretty brief. Because this is not about you venting, but about fixing something that’s broken.

Which brings me to what tends to break in confrontations: the relationship. I think that before confrontation happens, you have to make sure the other person knows you are on solid ground together. That person needs to know you are willing to tackle this thing together, no matter how painful, and move ahead.  And you can’t be carrying baggage from past, unsolved issues, blocking the airways, because then you are starting off without trust. (Interesting to see that after Daniel confronted the king, he got new robes and a promotion. In Mexico, this would be a sign that the Government was co-opting the prophet. But the book of Daniel makes it clear that this prophet was willing to face lions rather than compromise. The robes were a sign of respect.)

And you have to start by listening. We all carry such different backstories, always pegging other people’s actions according to how they fit in our own stories. Because our own stories are all we’ve got—until we listen. That is why Robert and I, in Mexico, insist and insist and insist that short term visitors come to listen first--to Mixtecs and Hispanics and Zapotecs--learning their back stories before speaking into their lives, before confronting them with a gospel message that might make little sense without a relationship to clothe it in. Isn’t that why we needed the Incarnation? Can you imagine how much listening needs to happen to bring together such diverse worlds? Even with people we think we know well, we make mistakes.  I’ve made big mistakes with my husband and my kids, and some of my biggest ones right in my classroom.  I have made assumptions about my kids that fit my own backstory—why they plagiarized, or why they balked at a project. And sometimes I blasted them first and listened last, and had to apologize. The unshared backstories are what kill relationships. If I had waited, given my anger time to fade, asked myself what I was telling myself about those kids, I would have done better. So wait, if that’s possible. Think. Daniel asked a lot of questions before he spoke out.

I do think there are times for public confrontations, which are horrible, and going to get you in hot water, so think before you go there. But sometimes you have to confront because power is being abused. Daniel had to confront three of the most powerful kings in the world. I think for some of us, power gets abused at church. (I think of poor Calvin confronting Moe when Moe steals his toy truck. He is up against an unassailable power wall; hopefully we are not.) Speakers sometimes say things publicly, and because we have some concept that they speak for God and we don’t so much (not at all a Biblical concept, by the way, if you believe in the priesthood of all believers), we just take it. I am not talking here about some honest mistake about whether Jubilee happens every 7 years or every 50. Just give the guy some grace.

No, I am talking about when the speaker insists that certain people are “in,” and certain people are “out” because they are Gentiles, or black, or uneducated, or unitiated in deeper truths, or difficult, or sketchy in some way. Twice in the last months, I’ve heard a preacher say that anyone not sharing their particular interpretation of Scripture was on a slippery slope. One added, “and calling God a liar.” I put my head down in my hands because I didn’t, and I’m not, and I wondered who else in the congregation had their 

head down. And recently I watched my kids (born to me or not, it does not matter) get put on someone’s “Sketchy List,” and then I dealt not with unease, but with anger. And you my sister, and you my brother, will you assign us a cancer of the soul and place us on a slide to hell when we disagree? Can you gauge where we stand before God using a doctrinal checklist?

(I guess writing like this is a public confrontation of sorts. And we all know how confrontations on social media can go; I’ve sat on this post for weeks).

Old Foot-in-His-Mouth Peter had the humility to later call Paul’s public correction hard, but necessary. If we are in leadership roles, do we accept correction? If not, we don’t belong there. Jesus always reserved his harshest rebukes for pastors, because in the end, all power is spiritual.

Finally, if the error happened in private, keep it private. Go to the offender first, without consulting anyone. If that fails, then seek help. Robert helped my friend and me be able to hear one another again. If the affected circle is wider, then confront (or apologize) at that level, no more. We are trying to heal, never punish. Never assume you know the other person’s motivations or their heart. You don’t. You know their actions, and that is all. Stick to that. If you hear yourself saying, “You are…” instead of “You did…” Stop. Listen some more. Don’t hang up.

 And when you are wrong, either as confronter, or confrontee, apologize quickly, "leaving your sacrifice at the altar," as Jesus said, because you are in the wrong place. And above all, forgive.

The Uncertainty Principle

In Science, the uncertainty principle says that you can tell where an electron is at any moment, OR you can check out its behavior, but you can’t have both, because by the time you nail the sucker down to one spot it’s actually been, it’s long gone, and you have no idea what it’s doing anymore. Kind of like kids. It gives, as one scientist calls it, a fuzziness to nature (I like that because I want to ask, doesn’t that make you wonder?)

In medicine it translates to this: the more doctors who see you, the less they can tell you about the behavior of your tumor. I have been seen and prodded and tested by seven doctors now in three countries. The last one, Dr. Gloom, could tell me where the tumor was¸ but not how it’s behaving, because he has never examined me before. But his examination did bring to light something I wasn’t noticing, and since I’ve actually been present for all seven examinations, maybe I’m allowed an educated guess. I have no idea where the monster is¸ haven’t ever been able to feel the thing inside me even though it’s over 5 cm across, but I think it’s shrinking! I’ll tell you why, and it’s a little awkward, but ladies, I’m just going to say the words because maybe it will keep one of you in the future from making the mistake I made, thinking that the changes I was seeing in my right breast were only more crazy effects of menopause. The right side was heavier, making it hard to jog in the morning. The tumor started dragging on tissue from the inside out, inverting things, like nipples. I should have noticed that much, but I didn’t know any better, and the Oaxaca radiologist that took my mammogram missed that, too. Or that particular effect hadn’t shown up yet. Who know. The thing is, now the inversion seems to be gone. Uncertainty principle at work there.

Cancer is all about uncertainty. The best the doctors can give you are prognoses, guesses, percentages, chances, rolls of the dice. My chances of survival are roughly 80%, according to Robert’s memory. My memory pegged higher, wishful thinking maybe, so right there, there’s uncertainty. I never know what to expect after each session in the Chair. Another ER visit? A numb mouth? More drugs with all their own side effects? Yesterday I had two moments where my pulse hit 200. Probably effects from the chemo. If the episodes hadn’t stopped on their own, I would have been off to another flatlining session. But they did after a few minutes. Whew. Will this keep happening? What triggers it? Uncertainty principle at work.

I also don’t know much about what happens after chemo. Mastectomy. What’s that like—not sure I even want to know. What will they find? Will there be daily radiation after that? Will it stop the monster? Will I be among those fortunate 80% who make it to 5 years? And what will all this poison and antibiotics and surgery and radiation do to my body in the long term? And when is the heart surgery? And can I wait that long without flatlining again? I have a dark spot on my ear that worries me. Dr. Gloom glanced at it and pronounced it nothing to worry about. Hmmm. Do I trust this doctor I’ve never met before, who doesn’t know about numb mouths and L-Glutamine? What does he know? Never would have been worried before about a spot on the ear, but now I wonder what causes what. What leads to what? Who really knows what they are doing? There is that uncertainty principle again.

And that is what it means to live in Oz. It’s not all bad. God actually invented the uncertainty principle when he created the universe and then had kids himself and risked everything to earn their love. And failed. At least for a while. He’s gaining ground. YAY! And He injected Abraham with the uncertainly principle when he told him to get up and go to a place Abraham had never seen before. And those of us that are Abraham’s spiritual descendants have got that same gene. We are all pilgrims in search of a better home. The gene keeps us from really settling anywhere else. Keeps us groping for God, for a Kingdom of God we know has to be there somewhere if we could only find it—or make it. Uncertainty keeps us longing for home, keeps us tasting that Gospel of Homesickness.

Bella Sisters

Tomorrow is Sunday, and I will be on my way to church. Church. We tell ourselves this is not a building but a congregation; then we promptly forget that as soon as we say it, and we pick up our keys and our Bibles to be on our way. And as Jesus told the Samaritan woman, we tell the truth when we say we are on our way to Church, because we are not there yet. We are very far from what God knows the Church really is.

Elai took me to see a movie, and all I knew is that it was a chick flick and had really good singing. It was a chick flick, and it had really good singing. The theatre was full of young chicks. But among the song and dance and love stories in the movie, there was something else, an inordinately strong sense of community. The movie was about a sorority and the community life of the sorority, and beyond that, the legacy and community of past sisters that stood behind that sorority, and by the end of the movie, when all the past, elder, wise Barton Bella sisters joined the stage with the young, maturing Bellas and with the younger, new-blood  Bellas, every chick in that theatre wanted to be a Bella sister. I wanted to be a Bella sister! Our culture is dying for a sense of community—just watch the news.

I think of the communities I’ve been in: 1. The college grads that staffed the refugee camps in Honduras, eating wormy food; tramping through swamps to take censuses (censi?); sleeping together on a bed of slats under the only available mosquito net because the bugs were brutal, where a mouse crawled up my arm as I lifted the net to shoo it out; or sitting in a pipante for hours and hours as it was poled up the river to the next village, and wishing it would turn over so I could pee. 2.The staff at Ryerson Camp that got up early to pray together, bleary-eyed, nodding off, but content to be there sharing it all, because the kids were saying the most awesome things about God. 3.My church in Oaxaca who will be praying for me tomorrow. 4.My Mexican team, that I am missing right now--four couples that are working among four different language groups, helping their friends fall in love with God. (I have a list. Stick around.) And there is nothing like this sense of community.

And by God and all that is holy, this is what Church is meant to be. We forget the most astonishing words that ever came out of Jesus’ mouth in the entire time he was on earth, and if I made these words up myself, you would stone me for heresy. He said: “…and may they be one as we are one.” This is His high priestly prayer. And there is one thing I know about these words. They are the heart of Jesus, Son of God about to die for us, High Priest and High King of Heaven. These words come true.

My friends, my sisters and mothers and brothers, you and I, we will one day be one as the Trinity is One. We will make the Bella sisters look like shadows. That is coming.

But how do we make this reality now? I believe this is the only question out there. The Church, with all its faults, is God’s agent in the world to make it fall in love with Him. We are his mouth, and hands, and feet. And if we fail, God fails.

But we will not fail. Jesus heads this thing up and breathes his Spirit through it all. And if we settle for Church that is just a building, or for Church that just meets properly on Sunday for an hour, or for Church that is not hands and feet but just a mouth that feeds (or blasts) the sheep, or for Church that is just a Sanctuary for the proper ones, or for Church that is not desperately, recklessly, relentlessly seeking to be One as He is One, not just with those on the inside but with the rejected ones outside in the highways and the byways, then He corrects us. And we are being corrected. Look around. What is happening to Church as we know it in our culture? Why? We need to stop bemoaning and start learning. Learn to be more Church; learn to be more community, where elder sisters mentor the new blood, and together they serve those in pain.

To somewhat paraphrase Paul: "You that are elders: practice hospitality. according to your culture and personality. Have people in your home or visit or at least phone someone every week. Disciple. Form small groups that care and get to work (when people are complaining, it’s  a sign people are focused on themselves, not reaching out. Serving others stops complaining.) The rest of you: take their example." There are no guarantees. Churches die. But we can be obedient. And in the end, we win this battle.

If you walk away from Church, you walk away from God. So if you can’t stomach any church out there, check your heart--for God’s sake, make it work. BUT it could be there is no church out there that speaks your language, that will take you without abusing you. So if you just wouldn’t fit in any church you know, or worse, your friends wouldn’t fit in any church you know, start something. I’m not kidding—it might be easier than you’ve been told. It might not. It gets some people killed.  One way or another, get into God’s community, God’s great dream, God’s solution to this world. Make it happen. You’re his kid. He’ll be glad.

Tortoises and Hares

One thing I find hard right now is being so far from my kids. Elai is a governess in California for the summer, where she has adopted two stray kittens (of course, she has). Philip is working at an internship in Chicago picking up eighty pound bags of abrasive powders. I want to hear from them every day, hear every detail. But that can’t always happen. They have lives, too. Sigh. But I think of them. Like this:

When my Hippie-Child Daughter was born, and I held her, she would squirm those little shoulders that had made popping noises in the womb and sent me scrambling to the doctor (“No, I don’t think you can hear popping noises in the womb,” “Oh, yes, you can, Mr. Doctor, yes you can.”) to keep me from holding on too tight. And when she could sit up, it had to be facing out. In restaurants I would be cutting my enchilada and turn, and find Elai goo-gooing at the family at the other table. I had to watch for that. All the world was a stage for her, and anyone might walk up and introduce themselves to…her, “Oh let me hold her!” I should have known when teenage girls in Culiacan, Sinaloa, first saw me pregnant with her and came up to me to plead, “Please, can I just touch your belly; it’s good luck.” And there we adopted our first stray cat that insisted on curling up between us, and we let it. And she climbed the castillo, the rebar structure next door, wafting eight feet up into the air, at barely 2 years old, and scared us half to death, and we tried to talk her back down. Calmly. It was Bob who saw her (having come to visit when Philip was born), my scampering hare, off to anywhere new.

When Philip was born, he would take that curly blond head of his and squeeze it between my collar bone and my jaw, as tightly into my neck as he could get, and just snuggle there. Forever. And I would purr like the cat. And it never mattered how tight I held him to me: he was content. And in the mornings, when we got up before 5 to beat the heat and get study and jogging in before the sun slammed down on us, we could never get up too early for him. At the first stir, he was up and in my lap, just sitting, being quiet, and figuring out the lay of the day, making it safe to move into. And he was a fixture at the back of my skirt, his safe place, his harbor, when we went somewhere that involved lots of people looking back at him, and he would stand there, in his harbor behind me, his fist clamped fiercely onto my skirt, and his little blond curls peeking, then peeking some more, creating a bridge from him to all those eyes looking back, creating a safe way to come out and explore this new place.

This was my tortoise, content to stay in one place and move only slowly to new places the rest of his life, but who would find his flippers constantly landing on patch after patch of new ground. And it was this tortoise who taught his mom to love tortoises. Because up until this time, I had no use for tortoises. Why, if God needed evangelists and church planters, did he make me a tortoise, and a woman? That was all a mistake. My dad had confirmed this, saying, when I was a teenager, “You live too much inside your head. This is selfish. Try to change this.” (He has repented a thousand times. It takes a while to appreciate tortoises)

I realized that I had no need for my tortoise to be anything else but what he was. I loved him this way, and wanted no one ever to make him feel he needed to change to please them. I didn’t know back then how useful it was to be a tortoise, I just knew it was good. Because of my bridge-building, safety-creating Engineer Son. Today, I know these sorts are like rocks in the stream, safe havens to stand on and find your bearing. Tortoises see things. Emily Dickinson never left her room but saw out her window, in one day, more than some people see in a lifetime.

My Hippie Child Daughter is all mystery, and startling thought, and theatre and movement, and color, while my Chill Engineer Son is grounded, as reliable as the sun coming up each day. We offered once to use his air miles to take him with us on our 25^th anniversary trip to Europe (that hasn’t happened yet; we were planning early). He calmly and firmly refused: we weren’t dragging him over any vast stretches of ocean, thank you very much. Elai was waving her arms in the air over his head: take me; I want to go.  Someday this trip will happen, though not now.

My Chill Son grew up two years in one his last year in high school, and went to a very difficult college at 17, and finished his year of mechanical engineering, building 3D printers and electric guitars, and buckled down and passed just fine after we thought he might fail, and he used those frequent flyer miles to fly a special friend down to Texas to visit. And his father’s stubbornness and loyalty live in him, and there is no one you would want to trust more than this boy. And he always thinks things through first, looking out from some safe harbor, and engineering a bridge of safety before stepping out to play, and work, and live. And he never lacks for a few excellent friends, and he never lacks for integrity, and I have a spray-painted sign above the entrance to my kitchen that says LOVE in five colors that he made for Mother’s Day, and well, when words fail, as they often did that last year between tortoise Mom and teenage tortoise Son stepping out into the world on his own for the first time, and when I don’t hear from him on the days I wish to, then that sign says it all, doesn’t it.

As if on cue, he called tonight. We talked for an hour, and it hurt to hang up, but my heart slept warm.

Bright Sided

“Always Look on the Bright Side of Life…(da dum, da dum, dadumdadumdadum.)” Our Host brother Ben invited us to watch a Monty Python movie with him: Life of Brian. And there is Jesus, singing this song on the cross. It’s so ludicrous, it makes you laugh. And then cry.

Yesterday I got a message from “Charlotte.”  I’m just halfway through my chemo, and tomorrow she starts her first of sixteen. Sixteen. My heart dropped to the floor. You hate it. You ask is there another way. But sometimes there isn’t. There  just isn’t. The cup of poison just sits there. And then what? There has been something bothering me for a while, and Charlotte’s  message brought it back. It’s about how not to pray for me, and Charlotte, and if I stir up trouble, you can tell me. Be gentle. You won’t be the first.

So as for me this week: Bring me soup. Send me funny cat comics. Text me about my last ER visit. But here are a few things I need you not to do.

A few months back, I was in a women’s get-together and in the middle of coffee and fruit salad, someone stood in the doorway and gave us the news that a woman we all knew had just gone into a comma. Something had gone terribly wrong in child-birth, and she had lost her baby and most of her brain activity. Women began to pray, but one prayer stands out to me that went something like this: “God, we pray against this prognosis. We pray against these doctors.” This made me feel so uneasy I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t get up the nerve. Pray against doctors? Against people who were doing everything in their power to help this woman and keep her alive? Pray against people who had told her grieving husband a blunt but necessary truth? Pray against fellow human beings whom God was using as instruments of care and truth? They had failed to heal—yes. But God had been there, just as he is here now through my Dr. Blue-and-Brown. So I’m thinking, whatever happens, please do not pray this prayer for me.

When Robert’s mom died, he was not a believer but an avowed agnostic. His best friends were a drinking, partying crowd all going to a Christian school on weekdays, and church on Sunday. Robert wanted nothing to do with the hypocrisy. His mother died of breast cancer, which metastasized eventually to her brain, where it killed her. She fought for five painful years, and according to cousin Michael, at the end, only Robert was strong enough to lift her body and shift her in bed. I can see him doing this: he was a nurse or surgeon in some past life (albeit an utterly practical one). Some people came to visit Joan in her last days, to pray for her and encourage her. They said that she was sick for lack of faith. It was not their faith that was lacking, or God’s willingness, so the fault obviously lay in her. While she lay weakened and dying, they undermined her faith that what was happening to her was God’s loving will. They filled her with doubt. Of all the things that happened in those days, this is what Robert remembers and tells me.  I do not think I want this kind of comfort.

I think there is something out there that shakes our faith in God and undermines our peace. It has many labels. It claims that what happens to us is for us to choose, if we can just drum enough faith and right thinking. It says we can force God’s hand by trying. We cannot. We are in this world, though not of it, and that means filling up the sufferings of Christ.  How can we face this mess we face without full confidence that God is holding us in his hands, sending absolutely everything that is good our way, working through everything and everyone, and no matter what our state of courage, keeping us safe? THIS is our right thinking.

Sure, we make stupid mistakes and pay for them. Lots of time we pay for other people’s mistakes, too, like putting too much pesticide on my tomatoes or too many chemicals in my air. See, the only way for Jesus to save us all is to keep us all connected like this, so that while the failure of one couple doomed all humans, now the life of one man undooms them all. He needs us to be connected so that His life can reach us all. That means suffering cancer and all the ugly consequences of sin along with everyone else. Sure, God longs to heal us, and sometimes he unmasks his power for reasons of his own and heals miraculously. But most often he is shy, working through unsuspecting, (perhaps unempathetic, fashion-challenged) doctors. Who fail.

And God cries when we hurt. He knows that to rescue this world requires not just the pain of Jesus hanging on a cross, but the pain of us all, and he hears every wordless groan. Read Paul. Pray for courage for me, laugh and grieve with me, but don’t, don’t reject what God sends my way. He needs it. I need it. And in some insane, backward way of Grace, the world needs it. How’s that for Drama Queen.

P. S. If you want to read a good book about the negative side of positive thinking, try Bright-Sided by Barbara Ehrenreich. Breast cancer got her writing, too.

Stump the Doctor

Today I stumped the doctor. It wasn’t Dr. Blue-and-Brown, because he was taking a well-deserved holiday. It was a younger, paler doctor, who smiled less and whose eyebrows gathered in gloom and doubt when I described my particular side effects. I’d done my homework and read the notebook, and it did mention that some people felt tingling and numbness in their extremities. One woman I know even had to stop her treatment because she was losing the use of her legs. They were slowly dying. Don’t you love how the doctors have to tell you all the things that can go wrong with you when you start your treatment? It’s not like you have a whole lot of choice, after all. “Take this stuff, which is our best shot, or die.” I’d rather not know, to tell the truth, but take it when it comes. How does anyone prepare for the hard stuff, anyway? And besides, I never manage to follow protocol.

Like I said, I stumped the doctor. I assumed that technically mouths could be considered extremities. They are kind at the end of something and have lots of extra nerves, like hands and feet. So it did not surprise me when my mouth went tingly, then numb, even though my fingers stayed spry. All I could taste was tomato soup. My friend Jana said someone she knew had gone through the same thing and recommended a powder, which I’m trying.  So I’m not the first one, just the first one Canadian doctors have heard of—they’re obviously not reading my Update that has Americans on it. Dr. Gloom kept asking me questions to see if he’d heard straight. “Two weeks, you figure?” He said. He took notes. I stayed firm in the face of doubters.

He offered me a prescription mouthwash with steroids and…numbing agents. Hmmm. Dr. B&B’s nurse, who checks my meds, wrote the powder name down to see if it would interfere with anything. Here’s the name: L-Glutamine. You’d think they’d know about these things, these cancer experts, but maybe there are too many alternatives to keep up with, and, anyway, alternatives don’t seem to be in the job description. The staff is busy enough.

Reminds me of the rivalry between home schoolers and public schoolers. Seems to me they learn from each other and keep each other honest: the home schoolers--bursting with new ideas and innovations because who’s to stop these keener moms from trying cool ideas on their flesh and blood--show the teachers what’s possible; and the licensed teachers, trained to apply proven, integrated methodology to thousands of kids, do the testing, and write the reports, and scramble to carry the nation’s educational burden and get the job done for us all. If they saw themselves on the same side, wouldn’t that be good. If my medical team knew all the good alternatives out there, and I didn’t have to struggle through the ads and research myself, wouldn’t that be good.

My chemo is done for today: those long hours beside a window, beside a parking lot whose residents come toward me in slow-walking pairs and wheelchairs. There are dozens of us here after the holiday. Men, women, young, old, mostly old. I never see children, who’d make me cry. The nurses are hopping, but Sheila still takes time to wheel in a chair, so I don’t have to lie flat for five hours and hold the laptop over my head, chemo tubes dangling. The guy next to me comes in alone, and gets his lab results back, and finds out his platelet count is too low (is 38 low? I know nothing of these numbers, but he does now), and something else is low too, and makes him light-headed and he's offered a transfusion instead of his infusion. He’ll have to take more days off work. How does he do this?

Before I leave, the gong sounds. The entire ward breaks out in cheers and applause. We know. She’s done. And she’s moving on to surgery or radiation or just waiting to see if her percentages hold. Will she survive the 5 year mark, and sit in a caregiver chair, or will she put on a yellow vest and a big smile, and bring us protein drinks and coffee? Because we all have stories. And we all have hope. And in some way every one of us has stumped the doctor and wants an alternative we aren’t getting.

Hansel and Gretel

Countdown 4: Hansel and Gretel.

Four. A number you can break in two. This was supposed to be countdown # 6, an easy one because 6 means man, and what ails him. Six could be the number for our Age, because though we look bright and shiny on some of our Northern Members, some of our Southern Members have cancerous lesions that ooze and threaten death to us all. Cancer plagues us--our bodies and our politics. But with my new treatment I am very glad to be halfway through today. So countdown number 4, a number you can break in two parts that contradict each other.

Of course the sickness that comes to an English teacher would have to be full of paradox and contradiction. What would I have done with just a simple broken back? No, that story of bolts and screws and slipping levers had to be Robert’s. So I get the silent, insidious monster called the Emperor of Maladies (no kidding here, the book by this title with its soulless crab on the cover sat innocently on my classroom shelf, unread, for a year, until I had Robert drag it up here to Canada so I could read it. Haven’t tackled it yet, though; it repels me). It all reeks of irony. I get the fairy-tale sickness.

Fairy tales. Had to make it to familiar ground here. Are you surprised? My children would not be. They cut their teeth on Cinderella and St George and the Dragon, really the only two tales out there, according to G.K. Chesteron, all the rest being variations on two themes.

But today’s fairy tale is a dark one, Hansel and Gretel, definitely not my favorite, but still true with those lost kids wondering in the woods. I have this image in my mind of little Hansel holding out a withered bone through the slats of his cage to the Wicked Witch. He's eight, and he's trying to trick her. She's in control, but she doesn't get it. She is like my cancer. I'm trapped in a cage of treatments, six slats, six chemo treatments, but I'm holding out this bone to Cancer: Come. Drink up. Let it kill you slowly. Let it wither away your haunches and shrivel your miserable hide.

Hansel and Gretel is an old, old story. It puts right on stage the fact that innocent people get abandoned in deadly battles with malicious monsters, and they have to buck up and fight back. They might not have many options, but they can stick that bone through the cage. Their wit and courage matters. In the face of faceless monsters like cancer, I need to know that any courage I can muster matters, and that the Witch can be tricked at her own game. Greedy as she is, she can't resist the poison coursing through veins toward her, and she just might shrink or even die. Else I will.

No one misses the irony that it's doctors slowly poisoning me to cure me. I drink the same potion that the Witch snatches from my veins, and it fills the caverns of my body with wails of mourning. No one misses the irony that we have created a giant, efficient Gingerbread-House-Making-Machine that feeds us cancer. We have placed the Witch in our midst and housed her. But I have this on my side, that I can take the cancer and shape it with my mind into whatever I will: a witch, a dragon, a monster, a cell. I can make a story. My daughter told me she started out her college paper with  G. K. Chesterton's quip,  "I had always felt life first as a story." This makes sense out of things for me. I'm glad she and I, mother and daughter, share this story gene. I suspect we all do. And I have this on my side, too. I know-no matter WHAT happens--who wins.

Tangled Cheese

Has anyone else had that recurring nightmare, the one where you are trying to get to class on the first day of school and you can’t find the classroom? I’ve been out of school for over 30 years, and I still have that one. (What does this mean?) The nightmare goes like this. I am hurrying to class because I’m already late, but then I realize I don’t actually know which class I am supposed to be hurrying to. I realize that before I find this out, I need to go to a different building to ask the registrar. But before I can do that, I need to find my way out of this building. And before I do that, I need to go back to my original starting spot because I forgot something there, and I’m not really sure where there is anymore. The classrooms are all full of strangers. And on it goes. I’m sure there is a lesson in there somewhere.

This nightmare works itself out in real life in Oaxaca. People have a joke about Oaxaca. It has to do with the string cheese they invented that is wrapped up in one tight ball. (I’ve got a picture for you, plus one of the tlayuda it’s used on that's making my mouth water.) 

Everywhere in Mexico this ball of cheese is called Oaxaca cheese, but in Oaxaca, of course, it’s just cheese. So what people say is that in Oaxaca, even their cheese is tangled. Southern Mexico, where 80% of the people come from an indigenous background, is a face to face culture. This means that you work things out through relationships, face to face, through extended networks of family and friends. It makes for tight and supportive communities. Families that stick together forever. North Americans with their Social Media culture (what is the right term, can anyone help me out here?) don’t have a clue how strong these ties are. Face to face is a good thing. But it does not make for getting work done easily on forms. In offices. No, that is the nightmare aspect of a face to face culture.

We’ve all come up against the tangled aspect of Law, of bureaucracy. I just ran into it when I was trying to figure out what to do about importing our rejected American car into Canada. I went on the government website, where I found a checklist:

Number one: Contact maker of vehicle to get a letter saying your car has not been recalled. Letter may cost you money. Please fill in boxes to find contact number for maker of your car.

Great. Ring! “No, I’m sorry, you have to call the American number for your car. It’s being imported from America.” Uh huh. I’m calling the number on the government website for importing an American car. Right.

Ring. “Hello, I need a letter from you saying the car I’ve got has not been recalled (I’m on a roll here. What could be simpler than this?) “…Wait. Slow down. Did you just say my car has been recalled?...What do you mean twice?...So I need to go across the border and take my car to a Dealer and leave it there?...Un huh. And how long did you say that might take?...Uh huh. And then how long does that take to get into your system, so I can get my letter?...Right. I call you back with this number…Right.”

At this point I didn’t have the heart to ask how I get the letter. And when, and all that. And I haven’t gotten to the rest of the checklist (it’s long, and involves making sure the odometer markings are correct, with a broken link to the page that tells me whether my car is going to need expensive corrections at some shop. And then comes the taxes and the inspections… The nightmare has started up in real life. The cheese is indeed tangled, (and this isn’t even Oaxaca). Meanwhile another angel is out there helping Robert get Tiny Tin registered and insured under his name, so I have a way to get to the doctor or to ER or to my Quiddler game or whatever.

A friend called us yesterday, blowing off steam about his most recent experience with tangled cheese. He’s trying to get his son’s Mexican passport, because his family is flying to Texas in July, and he went down to the Passport office for the final signature, or whatever. He’s been working on this for a while, and it’s a great relief to be at the last window where the guy is handing over the final form. But…he’s not. He’s saying that our friend’s American name is not matching up with Baby’s Mexican name. Now that he looks at it closely, Dad’s name has a little III after it (Dad is a “the third” guy.) So the entire process breaks down right there, and Dad has an interchange with the guy behind the window, and the guy enjoys the interchange so much that Dad gets a special escort to another part of the property. Some people don’t need to dream this stuff up at night.

We have to keep reminding ourselves that Government Beaurocracy is there for a reason, to protect us and organize us, and help us live together as a society. A little tangled cheese is a small price to pay, I guess, to keep the peace, and Paul reminds us to submit in good grace. But I’ll tell you one thing. In heaven, where the only Law there is, is written on our hearts, the nightmare will be over. There will be lots of Oaxacan cheese, and none of it will be made of paper.

Celebration

Yesterday I was standing in front of the mirror in my bathroom with my daughter perched on a stool in front of me, holding up a piece of aluminum foil in one hand and a bottle of bright blue teal in the other. There was a big black garbage bag on the floor, just in case. Just my luck, I’d have teal all over the mirror, the walls, the countertop…you get the picture, and just before Hostess Mom Marg’s BIG PARTY, too. She’s been cleaning for weeks, (okay, days; the baking has been for weeks). My daughter had to reassure me it wasn’t THAT hard, and indeed the only place the teal ended up that it didn’t belong was all over her neck and her ears, but I learned that acetone takes off anything in that department. I would never have guessed twenty years ago I would be painting my daughter’s hair, but I kind of like it. It’s bright and celebratory.

And I need something to celebrate. It’s 2:00 am, there are strange chirps and howlings outside my window here at Janey’s new house next to the escarpment and the Bruce Trail, and I just popped a Pepcid, but it’s the first day in five weeks that I’m not being poked or prodded or pilled with something or other. My family doctor (whom I like because he has exactly as much hair on his head as I do: a lovely grey fuzz) called me up (Does your family doctor do this? I haven’t seen him for some 18 years, not since he signed Philip’s baby picture so we could get him a Canadian passport to go along with his other two). Apparently pneumonia was not enough. I had to have some other infection or other as well, and yet another antibiotic. Two at the same time. Great. His parting words were “Don’t be a stranger.” Right. But I’m off all meds now, (ok, there’s the Pepcid, but it’s over the counter). I have May Long Weekend medication free. To recuperate. Yaay. Quiddler (got my own set now, thanks C.N.M.!) Euchre. Durak. Here we come.

I’d have to say the most memorable medicating so far was when my Volunteer Home Care Nurse Becky went away for the weekend (are they allowed to do that? Ok, so it was their anniversary.) I still needed a shot every day. My husband offered eagerly (he’s been dying to try this), and I turned him down flat. Can’t say why, exactly. Host Dad Larry also volunteered, not nearly so eagerly, and I said no, but then Compassionate Nurse Marianne was just getting off shift work and supposed to be sleeping, so reluctantly I agreed to give Larry a try. Marianne texted me that if it hurt too bad she would come over in her pajamas. I texted that if it hurt, then it was too late already, but I would be showing up on her doorstep for the next day.

At least I wasn’t his first guinea pig. I mean I wasn’t his first pig. I mean at least he had experience poking some kind of critter before, though I was his first human guinea pig. He assured me it had to be easier to do a human than a squealing sow whom he had to hold forcefully in one hand while he stabbed forcefully, as quickly as he could, with the other. (He did use the word forcefully.) Before she got away. You see, I was a willing victim. I was greatly reassured. He did fine, though I realized at the end I’d been holding my breath the whole time. I felt very bonded with Volunteer Nurse Becky when she got home.

But this weekend I have no shots, no needles. I can let my body work out the kinks (and there are a few, some of which make me reluctant to go out in public) before Tuesday when it all starts up again. My daughter is here for just two more days with her bright teal top, and I am celebrating. Here in the library. Surrounded by books. Ah. Perfect weekend.

P.S. Laura wrote to say that Rejected Car is doing fine, just suffering a few bird droppings. Thanks for asking. We’re working on it.

Bob...Charlotte

Today I got a letter that made me cry. It was from the husband of someone going through what I’m going through, only worse, and he was thanking me for our friendship. I’ve been wanting to write about her and about my friend Bob for a long time. They are fellow travelers on this cancer journey, and I love them very much. Bob gave me permission to use his real name. My friend Charlotte has a pseudonym until I get a go ahead there. Meanwhile I want to write about them because they are important to me, and because their stories intertwine with mine, and because their stories are beautiful, and because in telling their stories, I get to listen to them, too.

Bob is Philip’s godfather, the only North American visitor we had when Philip was born, and he’s one of Robert’s best friends, a friend from the Honduras days. He came to visit us in Guerrero, and we hoped one day he’d join us in Mexico. This never happened for various reasons. This summer he’s bringing his family down to Mexico again to stay in our house, where they will hang out with our friends and fill the back of our truck with silliness. If only we were there to join in, and listen to Bob playing on some guitar or other, and singing, “Has anyone here seen Hank.” When he found out he would be spending six days in San Francisco, isolated in a lead-lined room after an inhuman blast of radiation, he bought a guitar on Craig’s List and had it delivered to “his” room. Now he’s seeing if he can get it back to Chicago where it will join all the rest of the guitars stocking his living room.

Bob married Rebecca and they had three girls: Cayla, Emily, and Julia. Two Thanksgivings ago, Rebecca died. She fainted in an elevator at work, slipped into a coma at the hospital, and never came back. There was only Bob, with Cayla, Emily, and Julia. The parents from the girl’s Lutheran school brought Bob meals. For a year.  One of those parents was Gretchen, the widow of Kevin, who died ten years ago of cancer, leaving Gavin, whom the two decided to have anyway, knowing he’d grow up without a dad. Now it’s Bob, Gretchen, Cayla, Emily, Gavin, and Julia. But Bob has cancer. And it’s spread. His counts are good after the radiation, better than the doctor expected. Yayy!

And Charlotte, not her real name. Charlotte and her husband work…underground. We have good shared history, and they say we helped inspire them toward this work, and if that’s true, it makes me glad. They have lived in difficult places, and learned people’s languages (tough ones like Mixtec), and helped people fall in love with God. Charlotte was in another country for a conference, had a routine mammogram (our stories parallel) and was rushed home for treatment. She’s already had her mastectomy. Charlotte has five kids: four boys and a new baby girl (yayy!) whom she named for her Sister, also a friend I love. Our stories diverge a bit here. My cancer is HER2+, and there’s a drug called herceptin that targets it.   Charlotte’s is triple negative, and of yet, there is not a drug that targets it specifically. Chemo helps. And radiation. So that is the plan right now. But the prognosis is not what we would like. And I hate this. It distresses me. She writes to ask what chemo is like, and is it not a betrayal to our bodies and to God to poison ourselves this way. It is. But it is also an acceptance of the value of human work as a gift from God. However imperfect it is, however full of thorns and weeds, however mangled.

And what can I do? 

I write. I write about them, and hope, and try to whine only at the small things like borders and accents. Because these are nothing, nothing, next to Bob, and Gretchen, and Charlotte and Husband, and Sister, and all those nine gorgeous kids.