Good news comes

The sunlight cascades through the woods and the whole world is magical, time suspended. The carpets of yellow, gold, burgundy like fairy paths under foot. I am learning to see beauty in a whole new way: appreciating it just for it's existence, for the joy it brings me. Not trying to figure out from whence it came or whether I am witness to something personal or universal. It doesn't really matter.

Good news came like a bolt of lightening yesterday, elecrifying the air and sending me skipping back out to my car and back to work. I had my cancer check-up yesterday, as I do every 3 months. At this appointment, I was expecting to get the news that I would need radiation this autumn and winter. My tumor marker in July was 4.9; at 5, we treat the cancer aggressively again. But instead of climbing past that ominous number, my tumor marker dropped. It was an unbelievable 0.02! Almost undetectable, the lowest it's been since December, 2008.

And so we are celebrating - my family, my coworkers, my friends. The every-3-month check-ups will continue for now. I will keep refusing dessert because the diet is obviously working. I've begun doing yoga daily again and hope to continue that practice. I am learning mindfulness - being present in the moment. All these things, might they be helping? I don't know. But I do know that TODAY I am still in remission, and I will not need treatment that would separate me from my family this year of 2013. It is a good place. I'm thankful to be here.

When it's all over

There is something about sunshine and open spaces that lights the fuse in little children. They're off and running before you can even shout a warning. It's infectious, it's beautiful, it's a picture of that full joy many of us spend our entire adulthoods trying to rediscover.

Yet, even in the darkness of persistent depression, you get days like this every once in a while. Today is one for me. I am too exhausted and drained from a heart incident yesterday that landed me in the ER - I can't jump for joy. But my soul is!

In the ER, they ran a chest x-ray to check on my pacemaker. You know those 30+ nodules they found last time, that they thought were cancer? They are GONE. Without a trace. It's not cancer!

The theory is that these spots on the previous x-ray were pockets of infection that came along with my pneumonia.

Thank you for your support through this "waiting game". So glad the wait is over and we can get back to normal - work, school, play, mining every day for nuggets of joy.

Feeling my way through the darkness

Guided by a beating heart

I can't tell where the journey will end

But I know where to start

They tell me I'm too young to understand

They say I'm caught up in a dream

Well life will pass me by if I don't open up my eyes

Well that's fine by me

So wake me up when it's all over

When I'm wiser and I'm older

All this time I was finding myself

And I didn't know I was lost

I tried carrying the weight of the world

But I only have two hands

Hope I get the chance to travel the world

But I don't have any plans

Wish that I could stay forever this young

Not afraid to close my eyes

Life's a game made for everyone

And love is the prize

~Wake Me Up, Avicii~

Particles of sacrifice reveal untold beauty

Northern lights in the middle of the sky above rural Wisconsin

on August 3, 2010; visible due to an explosion on the sun's surface.

A storm opens our eyes to see, our hands to receive the starry nights that follow.  An explosion - damaging, fire-gushing, volcanic, erupting - on the sun's surface sent billions of particles toward earth.  (A damaging, painful explosion of God's wrath above the Cross snuffed the life out of the Son of God.)  As the particles of that great light-filled body in the heavens float through the galaxies down to Earth's atmosphere, the northern lights become visible all the way down to parts of New England where they are never seen.  (So grace fell like a million drops of the Son's light on my soul, revealing hidden beauty beneath the scars of sin as His light reflected there in my black heart for the very first time, and every time since, when I confess.)

The storms of the spring and summer where suddenly eclipsed today in a dark doctor's office that has held nothing but sorrow for me since March, 2008.  Storms eclipsed, for once, not by more storms - but with a heaping pile of good news!  He took my neck in his hands, and felt no tumor where there has been one since November of 2008.  He looked at my lab work, and discovered that, for the first time since cancer struck back then, my body is fighting back.  I have lost weight, almost miraculously and effortlessly, on my no sugar/no starch/no alcohol/no over-the-counter meds diet.  That is why my thyroid hormones are out of whack - I need less medicine than I did before, because my liver is functioning at 100% and I have gotten a bit smaller.  (Less medicine is, at least in my case, a very good thing!)  My tumor markers are slightly more elevated, but that is probably because my own immune system attacked a tumor in one of my lymph nodes, one in a very inoperable location, and exploded it into a million tiny pieces that now float in my bloodstreams, innocuous because of the new antibodies my body is making.

And so I dance (a quick jig before getting back to work on my exam) and thank God for good news on an otherwise ordinary Wednesday.  For lighting the night sky with green and red, for sending dancing light last night as a harbinger of dancing feet today.  For helping me find better health, for using better health to trounce cancer, at least for the moment.  For keeping me with my family until my next scan, which won't be until October or November now!  God is great!  That is all.

Click on the little images to see bigger ones - the lights are faint,

but they are there!