Blue like me

Children's laughter floating on the breeze in the evening; diamond droplets of water cascading from splashing feet; 10,000 gallons of therapy just sitting in the yard waiting for company. We spend long summer days floating and laughing. The children are brown and sleek and sleepy after a day in the water. It calms the soul, distracts the senses, sends memories scurrying like water bugs off the surface. Here I can breathe, even without gills.

“They both listened silently to the water, which to them was not just water, but the voice of life, the voice of Being, the voice of perpetual Becoming.” ― Hermann Hesse

Campground ladies, sing this song...

We haven't been to church camp since a fateful, fearful time in 2010 that changed everything for our family. I felt a little like I was walking on broken glass...but we went, we relaxed, we made friends, we got bug bites, and it was all very normal churchy campy stuff.

I will go before you and make the rough places smooth. (Isaiah 45:2a)

A hammock bought for $1.25 outside San Salvador in 2001 provided many naps...

...and sisterly swings.

There were the usual kid antics, smoke in the eyes, and dirty toes.

And we had a little extra fun with water balloons, a tradition of 20 years

for this church we're calling home. (from the looks of it, someone took it quite seriously.)

(for Thul kids, nothing really gets done without sticking out your tongue.)

Rosy manages to add grace even when pitching.

Katy was trying out for the major leagues of water balloon baseball

(and had the wettest hair to prove it - the little kids were thrilled that

she didn't miss a single balloon and smashed them all to smithereens.)

The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. (Deuteronomy 31:8)

To taste July

We quaff the cup of life with eager haste without draining it, instead of which it only overflows the brim / objects press around us, filling the mind with the throng of desires that wait upon them, so that we have no room for the thoughts of death. ~Oscar Wilde

The cup overflows so fast and furious, my feet are sticky with the drips that cascade through my toes and over flip flops all the summer day long. Joy is everywhere we go, at gymnastics class where Rosy's soul expands until it fills the whole room with its radiance, and the little kids do headstands and tumble like weeds in the corner, copying the instructor's every move. In October, I caught fire from a little book and dreamed of a clutter free house, and now finally in the damp July air the seed of a dream flowers full, and our garbage can overflows with broken toys, unmatched socks, scratched cd's and chipped dishes. The wood floors gleam in expanses of emptiness we haven't seen in this house since cancer came to call in 2008. The kids and I stop by the local thrift store today with a truckload of donations, and we sit in the parking lot in fits of giggles over the antics of a blow-up balloon man they use to advertise sales, flipping over and punching himself in the face in the summer wind.

It's the time of year when the summer sun hangs forever in the evening sky, there's the constant sound of laughter on the breeze, the sprinkler sends glitter cascading through the air and the crickets sing a different, mid-summer song.

Love is all hot and sweaty and altogether real, like midnight cuddles with naked kids sticky under the thin sheets with the fan blowing full blast through air as thick as velvet.

We've long since learned to quit listening for the other shoe to drop, and to listen instead for the tinkling of laughter like a spoon clinking glass, the panting of the dog that comes with the smile on her face in the hot afternoon, the smack of a son's kiss through chocolate and vanilla ice cream after snacks on the porch.

The hay's been cut twice, and the corn is higher than any of the kids. The oats are burgeoning gold and the whole earth smells sweet. The cows' milk is like candy from summer grass, and the farmer calls us to tell us our beef will soon be at the butcher's. Summer is half gone before it's half started, but I've never been one to look back at the pages already torn from the calendar.

We are reveling in summer. Every t-ball trick taught. Every bug bite to scratch. Every lake swum. Every frog song and cricket call. Every late night sing-along and early morning walk through the dew-dripping lawn. Every bonfire and every charred hot-dog. Every firecracker, every sparkler. One marshmallow, burnt or brown, at a time.

Oh, how we give thanks, for small gifts and large ones.

Oh, if there’s only one song I can sing,

When in His beauty I see the great King,

This shall my song through eternity be,

“Oh, what a wonder that Jesus loves me!”

I am so glad that Jesus loves me,

Jesus loves me, Jesus loves me.

I am so glad that Jesus loves me,

Jesus loves even me.

In this assurance I find sweetest rest,

Trusting in Jesus, I know I am blessed;

Satan, dismayed, from my soul now doth flee,

When I just tell him that Jesus loves me.

~Jesus Loves Even Me, Philip Bliss, 1870~

The last day of summer

Rosy orbs of sunlight and dew

hang heavy in the last weak summer sun

A bite of heaven

or a jar of jewels

The earth harvest-heavy

for the ten-thousandth time

Hands of the thousandth generation scratched and old

and aching for rest in the soil they tend

The sun sends one last beckoning light

and returns to the other side of the earth

turns another world into day

and ours into night.

Charleston & Folly in photos

Aaron's Charleston series:

He caught me in one of those post-cancer moments:

cares tossed to the wind, I spotted a hill forming on the beach 

and gathered the kids to roll down it.  Never would have done that

before cancer.

Some of my photos from an evening at the Folly Pier:

What remains

Elisabeth Elliot's prayer today: Lord, deliver us from smallness and self-pity. "Make us masters of ourselves that we may be the servants of others"(Sir Alexander Patterson).

I have always been a very "in the moment" sort of person. The moment is the focus: if it's good, entertaining, sweet - then I am in a good mood; if it's bad, negative, draining, tiresome - then I am in a bad mood. Living with cancer, living with a child with new disabilities, requires that I step outside the moment.

I started that process by developing a constant scale system, completely internally and inside my own head. My "inner monologue" often had to do with weighing the pros and cons - adding a pro here or a con there depending on the moment, and then evaluating the sum. A good day had more pros in it than cons. After all, that's how many decisions are made, right? It was a logical system, right?

Unfortunately, this system devolved into a very complex matrix because I soon realized that I couldn't assign the same weight to different brands of "bad" and different moments of "good". A bad seizure has to have more weight than spilled milk. A moment of unexpected silence in the house in the busy afternoon is less than getting news your cancer hasn't grown in the past two months. So I scrapped the system.

I had an epiphany moment reading I Corinthians 3 aloud to my Rosy-girl one day when she was struggling with a bad attitude. (I remember the irony of the moment - occurring, according to Murphy's Law, on one of my very worst days, a day when I was certainly laying up more wood, hay and stubble than gold, silver and precious stones.) The words are hard ones: each one should be careful how he builds. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man's work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames.

Rosy looked at me and said, "Isn't God amazing, Mama? He saves our good works forever and burns the bad ones up. I am glad my bad works are gonna be burned up."

The thud deep in my soul was ground-shaking. That's right. The bad ones will be burned up and gone in a moment, forever, and the good ones will stay for eternity, a visual reminder of what was done right. Simply weighing the bad against the good doesn't capture the whole picture. It leaves Christ out of the equation. In Isaiah 43:25, it says I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins. He will not remember them. They are blotted out, gone, forgotten, burned up and destroyed forever. Is it possible that He burns up the failures so that they do not detract from the brilliance of those works done for His glory? Is it possible He does so out of mercy and tenderness to us?

This may be the key to rejoicing in everything, in everything giving thanks. If I burn up the bad immediately, if it is confessed and then blotted out and forgotten, isn't every day a "good day"?

What Christ did on the cross is inexorably shift the pendulum toward the true, honorable, lovely, commendable, just, pure, excellent and worthy of praise (Philippians 4:8). By destroying the sting of death, wiping out the penalty for the wrong words, the sullenness, the anger, the questioning and the fear, He has created a new paradigm for those who choose to believe in Him.

When He looked down on us yesterday, He did not see a bittersweet picture. He saw a redeemed picture. He did not see a 31-year-old woman with cancer, exhausted from the heat and afraid of fainting, riding on a horse because in that moment she still could: He saw a 31-year-old woman riding a horse, enjoying the friends He provided. Period. He has washed away cancer, exhaustion, fainting. What will remain for all eternity is only the good - because I have accepted His washing!

Yesterday, my daughter had a horrible, violent seizure that lasted over four minutes. I was afraid it would never stop, or that she would choke on her vomit. I felt completely and utterly alone. It felt like eternity. Yesterday, on the way to the clinic in Rochester where hope for these seizures is housed, our van broke down...again...at the most inopportune moment. My first reaction? "Wow, God, you're really piling it on!" We waited for a car, we drove through the heat without air conditioning - and it felt like eternity. At the clinic, we talked about the inevitable 9-1-1 calls, the rescue medications to prevent permanent brain damage or death, the spacing of medications that will require even greater responsibility as parents. Time stretched thin, the doctor's words echoing in our heads as we drove home through the crippling humidity and heat. Eternity.

The sweet moments seemed so fleeting yesterday, in the face of all the "bad" of the day. Yet this is what will last. The fleeting moments of "right". Sunset, on horseback, cool breezes, laughter lilting, sweet fecund smell of the ranch, cool wooden floor in the old farmhouse, cricket calls and frog songs, teenage hijinks full of life, and little ones tagging along after big kids. For eternity, those things - the pure, beautiful, excellent things - will live on in glorious, indelible gold.

Sorrow may endure for a night

Summer was looking pretty bleak, a few hours ago. The consummate pleasures of we Northern dwellers crescendo in the summer months...gardening, running around barefoot, swimming, the long shadows of afternoon sun glinting on aluminum softball bats, and the crickets song in evening. How much of that can you revel in, fighting cancer?

Deliverance.

Freedom.

"Sorrow may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning."

Aaron gave me a painting yesterday with four words in it: Dream big. [permission granted] And that's what God just did: permitted us to turn again to dreams. The pathology on the 2 inch tumor they removed yesterday came back, miraculously, benign. Which means a summer with hair, a summer without chemo or radiation or vomiting or slowly growing old. A summer without dying from cancer! My survival odds are back to 76% at 10 years. Which, albeit not great odds, is so much better than what we had to contemplate over the past week.

The cloud has passed over the sun, and we are bathed in warmth again. The rain shower has blown past on the summer wind, and we are left in the cool green fields of flowers and frogs singing. We are waiting to hear the katydid's lullaby and look forward to dipping our feet in the rushing ocean later this summer. I can sign the kids up for swimming lessons. I can take my comprehensive exam and continue pursuing my degree. I will be able to take walks, and stand being out in the sun, enjoy my friends coming to visit in June, go to weddings this summer and dance.

I can't wait to get my feet dirty in this field of joy.