R E E E A A A A C H !!

     This week as I was driving to Memorial, because that's what I do now, I passed some men working on the side of Brainerd Road.  They've been working there for at least three weeks.  I'm not sure what their project is, but they have holes dug all along the side of the road.  They are near the completion of their project, and up until now it has been bland and uneventful as I passed by them.
     Until Monday.  As I passed by Monday afternoon, I almost missed it.  There was a hole in the ground just big enough for a man to fit it.  There was a guy laying on the ground trying to reach something, whatever, that one thing he needed to get his hands on and fix.  Or maybe he dropped his phone in there, who knows.  Apparently the thing was just beyond his reach, though.  So, right then another man grabbed his ankles and, with a little bounce, got a secure grasp on his legs and lowered him down, head-first, into the hole.  Thank God for rear-view mirrors or I would have missed it! 
     It all happened so quickly, but as I processed the situation I began to laugh out loud.  Literally, I threw my head back and opened my mouth and LOL'd!!  Can you imagine the first guy's shock as someone grabbed him and lowered him into that hole???  I think I would have had a little fear going on there.  Maybe even panic.  After all, I don't know how deep that hole really was.  Don't let go, man!  What are you doing?!  I wonder if the guy standing up gave the guy in the hole a warning?  What would OSHA say?
     As I read back over this, I don't think by reading this you can get the picture and enjoy the laugh as much as I did, but you get a little understanding about it.
     I've enjoyed the laugh and the memory all week.  Although, it did give me reason to think.  How many of us are like that first guy.  Head stuck in a hole while everyone else stands around and watches our struggle.  Maybe we have lost something down there that is important and needs to be retrieved.  Maybe we just want to hide away from the bustle of the world.  Maybe we just think there is something down there that we need and are groping blindly for hoping to eventually get the mysterious answer.  Whatever it is, as long as we are laying there, half of our body in the hole, we are enveloped in the darkness and dampness.  We can't see because the deeper we go the less light there is.  That thing we are desperately reaching for will always be just out of our reach.  Until we let God help. 
     We get stuck in the mud a lot of times, don't we?  The harder we try, the harder it is to get our feet pulled from the muck.  The muddier it gets, the deeper we sink.  Until we let God help.

     I waited patiently for the Lord;

he turned to me and heard my cry.

He lifted me out of the slimy pit,

out of the mud and mire;

he set my feet on a rock

and gave me a firm place to stand.

He put a new song in my mouth,

a hymn of praise to our God.

Many will see and fear the Lord

and put their trust in him.

Psalm 40:1-3

 

 

     Will you be the one who just stands around watching, or will you allow the Lord to use you and reach your hand of support and encouragement out today to a friend, or even a stranger, who is hurting?  Who can you text, call, or visit?  What if you bought a card and mailed it to someone?  Even a message on Facebook will brighten someone's day.  Will you be the one? 

     If you are the one stuck in the mud, call out God.  He will hear you.  He will extend his hand of mercy and place your feet on a rock.  I've been there.  I've had my share of struggles.  I know he will.  He has given me a new song!  



    

The Passage of Time

4 years 

1,421 days

35,064 hours

2,103,840 minutes

126,230,400 seconds

 

 

     Four years ago today my family was gathered in a small room.  I remember there was a window, but it seemed so dark in there.  My mother sat beside the bed most of the time.  We were waiting.  We had been waiting.  For what seemed like eternity.  It was a Saturday.

     It had started the Sunday before.  I went to the grocery store.  While there I decided that after the groceries were put away I would go visit my parents to see how my dad was.  I just had a feeling in my gut that things were not right.  I had left my phone at home, but that didn't matter - they would be home.  But when I got home my husband was waiting in the garage.  Put the perishables away.  They have called an ambulance and are taking your dad to the hospital.

     Why?  What happened?  How serious is it?  I should have gone earlier!  Thoughts and questions whirled through my brain.  Panic wanted to set in.  My husband was so calm.  His calmness washed over me.  Hurry.  Where are they taking him?  How long ago did this happen?  Why didn't I have my phone!

     As it turned out, that was the last day we would have any conversations with my dad.  I was with him and he was his typical self.  Everything is fine.  I feel better.  Let's get this done so I can go home.  Until the doctor said that he was in bad shape and had to be on life-support so that he didn't stop breathing.  They were puzzled.  What was this thing growing in his lungs?  It was a mystery and it took days to solve.  So we sat and waited. 

     My mom was not going to leave that hospital until she knew her husband was out of danger.  We slept on vinyl covered recliners and ate sandwiches the churches brought for lunch.  Friends would bring us hot meals at night.  When she couldn't take it anymore she would power walk around the hospital hallways.  No one could keep up with her.  We didn't need to.  It was her only escape from the dreariness of a waiting room full of people waiting for answers and the noise of multiple TVs on multiple stations trying to distract us from stark reality.  We gathered around her to protect her and support her, but she was a rock.  Full of faith and trust in God.  No matter what. 

     We waited as they ran tests, did scans, consulted, questioned, and diagnosed.  Then Friday came.  He wasn't going to get better.  He couldn't live through this.  His oncologist cried.  We cried.  Time to take him off the life-support and let him go.  We were all there.  We gathered around his bed to quickly say our good-byes and let him know we would be ok.  To give him permission to go.  Only he wasn't ready to go.  As the nurses realized this could take a while, they started to scramble (at doctor's orders) to find a recliner to put in that little room for my mom.  They came bringing chairs for us to sit in as we waited.  They gave us a little room at the entrance to the unit that provided us continuous access to the MICU.  We had unlimited access to this place that was so strict with visiting hours and the amount of minutes you could spend with your loved one.  No more two at a time, just be in there whenever you want.

     We waited the rest of the day Friday.  And Friday night.  We waited all day Saturday.  We waited together.  All of us.  Then, early Sunday morning, just before the world would start to wake up and get ready for church, Dad left us for heaven.  It happened fast.  I had finally laid down to sleep when they came to get us.  I didn't make it to the room before he died.  As I walked past the nurses sitting at their stations, they kept their eyes down, faces blank, staring at computer screens and charts, whatever, but not looking at me.  I knew.  They were grieving too. 

     God gave us so many miracles that week.  My dad didn't have to suffer for months through treatments for something that couldn't be cured and pain that would go with it.  I will always believe he knew there was something wrong and he did this on his own terms.  I am thankful for that.  This thing had been fast growing and it took him quickly.

     When mom called his siblings to give them the news, his brother-in-law said he had been awake since four, just could not sleep so he got up and made a sandwich.  His youngest sister said the same, woke up at four.  He died about 4:20 a.m.  Funny how God works.

     I will be forever grateful for the way God provided for my child.  She was at college and I had to call to tell her to come home.  God had ordained it.  It was freshman move-in day.  Two people who love my child like their own were there to move their own little girl into the dorm.  Caitlin went straight to them and they comforted and loved on her as her heart broke with the news I had to give her.  They know who they are, and I want them to know what a special place they have in my heart.

     I'm not normally a crier, but I am crying now.  Not because I am sad.  Yes, I miss my dad.  I miss laughing at his silliness.  I miss talking with him.  I miss him constantly mowing the grass.  I am also so very thankful for the testimony he left.  For the foundation he poured into me.  For the faith I have in God because of my parents.  For how I have seen my mother endure such painful loss and move forward with life.  For how I have seen her find her place serving the Lord by ministering to people who are suffering the sorrow of death.  I am crying because of the multitude of marvelous things God has done for our family.  

     As the song says, "Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping into the future."  Four years later we have been through a lot.  But God.  God has brought us through and we carry on until our own work here is done.

 

   

My Watched Pot

     As the old saying goes, "A watched pot never boils."  My mom used to say those words to me in an effort to teach me patience.  Ugh.  I never pray for patience.  You know why.  I never have been good at waiting.  Now, I'm not one of those people who demands her way all the time, but when it comes to waiting for a process to fulfill itself, I'm not good at that.
     On June 30th, when I took my last chemo, I began to look forward to having hair again.  Not that it's bothered me to be bald, it really hasn't.  Wearing that itchy wig was annoying, but I did that for the kids.  Over the summer I had my cute ball caps to wear, and honestly, it's been nice not having to worry if I would have a cute curly day or a frizzy what-will-I-do-with-this-mess day. Until the hair started to grow.
     I have had a silver sheen for a couple of weeks now.  Peach-fuzz covering the baldness, sort of.  My eyebrows and eyelashes are coming back.  There is hair on my arms, and I am now shaving my legs again.  Yippee.  But the hair on my head is not so quick to return.
     I saw a lady at the radiation center on the first day I was there.  She had some hair.  I say some in a generous way.  She wasn't bald, but she didn't have a head-full of hair either.  She was a mixture of peach-fuzz, short hair, and random straggly longer hair.  I imagine myself looking like that soon. 
     And I imagine myself looking like the lady I saw getting in her car last week.  She has a beautiful short hairdo.  Very short.  It is "real hair" as opposed to "chemo hair," and she must have had it styled based on the first lady's spastic look.  She looked so cute.  If she hadn't been in her car already, I think I would have asked her how long it took to get that beautiful look. 
     I don't want you to feel sorry for me or think I am feeling bad about the way I look.  I do not have a low self image due to the cancer.  That's not the case.  I just hate to wait!  Watching hair grow is like waiting for the tea kettle on the coldest winter day...how long CAN it possibly take to get a hot cup of tea or a beautiful head-full of hair?
     In the meantime, I continue to get my radiation treatments and take care of myself as I recover from this cancer experience.  The question remains, will my hair be gray or brown?  Salt and pepper wouldn't be bad.  I do hope I don't get the brown with big patches of gray back, but even that would be ok.  Will there be curls?  I hope so!  
     For those of you who haven't seen my new look, the hair around the sides never really came out and it is a beautiful white color.  The top of my head was pretty slick.  Basically, I look a lot like my husband.  I suppose that explains my impatience.  Come on hair, grow!   

Living the Good Life

     Ah, retirement.  Last week was my first official week of "living the good life."  That was the week I would have returned to work.  Today is the day the teachers returned, and I admit that I miss the craziness of this time of year.  I love the controlled chaos of getting everything ready for the first day of school.   However, I am enjoying this new stage of life.  Instead of working between ten and twelve hour days last week, I went out to lunch with my mom and daughter, painted pottery for the first time, walked early every morning, cooked meals for my family, and had a lunch date with a friend.
     I see that God's timing is perfect in all this.  Today, with one week left until school starts, instead of working to the point of exhaustion, I began my radiation therapy to rid this cancer from my body.  Every time anyone at the clinic talks to me about it, whether doctor, nurse, or technician, they repeat the same thing.  Sometime toward the end of next week I can expect the fatigue to set in.  They have suggested naps and an earlier bedtime.  OK! 
     Yes, God's timing is perfect.  I thought I was leaving my job because I was facing surgery.  Turns out the surgery wasn't as severe as I expected.  However, adding fatigue from my therapy on top of the physical exhaustion of work, would have been too much.  I need to take care of myself now more than ever. 
     

I will give thanks to you, Lord, with all my heart;

I will tell of all your wonderful deeds,

I will be glad and rejoice in you;

I will sing the praise of your name, O Most High.

Psalm 9:1-2

 

     I am so thankful that God is leading the way in my life.  Without him, I would be a disaster.  There are so many things to tell...the peace that has been a blanket around me these past seven months, the relative ease of the chemotherapy while I was working (I won't say it was easy, but somehow He got me through it.), friends who are always sending words of encouragement at just the right time, strength to take care of my family and do things that need to be done, energy to continue to teach my class on Sunday mornings...

     It really doesn't matter that I am retired, my life is good...cancer and all.  It's what you make it.  Don't look for the negative, look for the positive.  Don't be like the lady I saw today who is obviously in a worse state than I.  I am sorry she is having a hard time, but I want to encourage you because of what I saw.  Don't gripe about everything.  Don't expect people to jump whenever you issue a command.  Don't live life and behave as if you think the world owes you.  Rather, look for the good in people.  Find something to laugh about.  Spend time enjoying and loving the people God brings into your life.  Speak words of encouragement to whomever you encounter in your day.  Appreciate the effort someone makes to help you.  Turn up the music and sing!  Life IS good, if you want it to be.