Memories of nightmares

My mama always sighs when the sunshine beams out from all around a cloud. Tonight it was a cool lemon yellow, the shadows all lavender and gray. I was bone tired, lazily listening to the children's chatter about their day, their art projects, watching the fields go by: corn 5 feet tall in the low ones, then a rusty sun burnt patch of soybeans, more corn, but this only up to my knee. The wind bounced off the mustardy corn tassels, almost like thousands of invisible fairies running across them. We were belting out "Jesse's Girl" to the classic rock station, and it was the fourth song I remembered. In a row. My thoughts caught a ride on that memory, how old I'm getting when my kids relate better to pop songs than I do, and all my favorites are on the oldies station. Then the mind swings and hooks on to the lyrics again. I am suddenly back in reality with a jolt, still singing along with all the rest. Except somehow I don't feel old any more; I feel like I'm sixteen.

.............................................................

I am awake with the stars, my loves all heavy with black velvet slumber, as if the night sky had descended and covered them in the dark. I'm running through memories that won't stop coming. Trying to fly and float simultaneously, for I could feel the undertow of the funneling brain dragging down into the darkness. I remember floating down rivers in gangs of high school and college kids, and going through the whitewater sections, we all would lift our arms and legs out of the water, pointing our toes, clutching tubes so that we wouldn't be caught by a sudden drop or a deadfall's rotting branches.

As each thought spins and catches the next, springs that and the next, and so on - one memory latches on to another. I am sixteen and singing with my best friend and driving way too fast. Then I remember doing my penance on the way home, trying to somehow defeat what fun or happiness I'd experienced. Emotions churned unnamed, almost unnoticed, the steel of my mind's resolution to contain emotion slowly descending like ice through my veins. Numb, I remember putting my hand to my face slowly, and I thought, this is what they mean when they say "her eyes glinted". My other hand slowly grips the steering wheel harder, I set my jaw, I swerve to the left into the oncoming lane, go over a hill almost flying. Then squeal back into my lane after playing chicken with the first car. That sudden, visceral mixture of extreme pain and extreme pleasure that burns up intensely and quickly, then suddenly is receding from your core. Sixteen has been gone eighteen long years and still the memory brings back all that sensation - WHAM! Just like that.

You ride out the adrenaline and rush of the memory of sixteen, fastforwarding lackadaisically through your life. You hit on twenty-one, when you graduated and moved to Minneapolis and bought your first house. You remember the numbing effect of work on all those vagrant thoughts and sensations, the more you could throw yourself into technical details, the quieter were the longings and the broken heart. And there the memories finally stop flowing. You pause, catching your breath. Yes, they're gone.

..............................................................

I wish I could sleep, shut off, rest. The hours creep by and the panic builds..."How can I live on 4 hours of sleep..." "oh, now we're down to 3 hours! Hurry up and go to sleeeep!" Often these days the gray dawn begins to creep into the bedroom, and I haven't yet slept. So I sigh deep and aching, shuffle out to the kitchen, have a cup of coffee with you. Some kind of mania or hyper-awareness comes occasionally. Almost as if my wires are too finely tuned and respond to the slightest signal. Vascillate rapidly between almost-awake and almost-asleep. Funny, I've always thought it odd to wish someone "golden slumber"; I crave complete blackness, unconsciousness, completely isolated from my mind and body, suspended in some netherworld of sometime dreams or nightmares and long periods of silence when the brain waves slow and the deep whir swelling from their revolutions lulls you into spellbound, still and staring.

Is it wrong to be looking for a shut-off switch for memories and ruminations? Could I dull myself to passive somehow, be less complicated? There is no manual for one's own deconstruction. 

Perfect timing

I watched you, long and lean, waiting for the waves. You've been my little water baby since your first trip to South Carolina when you were five months old and I took you to the beach in the hot July sunset and you stripped off your diaper and went in head first.

You've got the timing down now, and you're a pro at body surfing. So much so your father and I hold our breath every time you catch one, waiting for you to swirl up from the surf and breath air again. It's hard to let go of your long little fingers since you're only 5 years old. Your swim teacher says you're the best swimmer she's ever taught, but the ocean is a fierce competitor.

It was on one of those sun-drenched ocean days that I noticed the lump on your neck was so much bigger. Your papa took your tiny neck in his big brown hands and squeezed it, too, and our eyes met over your tawny lioness head and we shared a drink of fear together. But we were far from home, and we had to wait some more. You are a fierce little girl, stronger than most we know, tenacious and lion-hearted and brave, but cancer is a fierce competitor.

Even once the doctors felt your neck, the waiting continues. We won't know until sometime next week if we're looking at cancer or infection. We won't know if you need surgery, or chemo, or nothing. We pray over you at night, cuddling you between us like we did when you were a baby, the hours too precious to send you off to your own bed. Our eyes meet again over your little lioness head while you sleep, and it is a drink of peace and fear all mixed together like a dry wine, bitter and savory all at once. For we are savoring these moments. You learn that, when cancer has come to call in your life before. Waiting is not so bad. There is hope while you wait. Once the waiting is over, and the answer is given, it is like the bang of the judge's gavel and reality descends, hope dissipates, and you are adrift on an ocean with few choices and a whirlwind of activity pummeling just like the endless waves.

Linked with Lisa-Jo for the prompt "Expectation"

Please post this blog button all over the internet and rally prayer for my daughter as we face the uncertainty, grief and fear of the coming weeks.

<a href="http://turquoisegates.com"><img src="<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/yellowfarmhousephotography/7333866990/" title="Amelia-blog-button by Yellow Farmhouse Photography, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8016/7333866990_4945a025f3_o.jpg" width="250" height="304" alt="Amelia-blog-button"></a>" /></a>

The purpose of mystery

I turned in my dissertation on Tuesday. I'm on pins and needles waiting to find out if I passed the written portion, so that I can travel down to South Carolina to do my oral defense. I was trying to describe written and oral defense to my kids while we celebrated on Tuesday evening, ice cream dripping down our chins. Rosy looked at me, confused, "What happens if you don't defend it, Mama? Will they tear it up?" While I laughed uproariously at this little 7 year old statement, inside I was wondering the same thing. What if they DO want to tear it up?

And why always with the waiting, God? Sometimes I feel as if I'm a professional at waiting. I'm always in the no-man's-land: waiting for news of cancer blood tests, waiting to get my hearing back, waiting to de-clutter my house until the dissertation is finished, waiting now for news of whether I passed or failed.

And so I ran to the Word this morning, trying to calm my nerves. And in the devotional book I'm reading right now (The Place of Help, Oswald Chambers - a book you'll only find in used bookstores these days), the title of today's reading is "At God's Discretion".

I pause, and say those familiar words from the Word, "Not my will, but thine be done." (Luke 22:42)

O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! how unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past tracing out! (Romans 11:33) The purpose of mystery is not to tantalize us and make us feel that we cannot comprehend; it is a generous purpose, and meant to assure us that slowly and surely as we can bear it, the full revelation of God's will be made clear.

The baby is not so "baby" anymore

His birth was fast and crazy and downright shocking.

I remember my friend crying on the phone because we had a boy at last.

They came to get me for my tubal just 2 hours after he was born.

I just couldn't leave him, and there was a niggling doubt somewhere,

deep in my subconscious: was he meant to be our last?

Six weeks later, I had the surgery anyway.

A month after that, I was diagnosed with cancer.

And we praised God for His direction 

as I couldn't get pregnant while in treatment.

After my first clean cancer scan in March, 2009, Aaron came to me with an adoption dream. From what I read, it's unusual for the husband to be the one dreaming of adoption instead of the wife. We started paperwork and announced our plans to our friends and family.

But cancer came back, and paperwork stalled, and adoption 

is a far distant dream instead of one that will be realized quickly.

And in the autumn of 2009, I prayed for that next baby, 

Caleb's little brother or sister,and God answered in crazy ways, 

and I got pregnant, even after the sterilization.

I gave in, heart and soul, to the dream of another baby. 

It didn't feel like a dream at all, because it was so God-sent.

But it withered, and died, and I had 3 surgeries, and no baby to hold.

My abdomen filled with blood and my heart filled with grief.

We buried our baby, all 14 weeks of him, on the hillside in a silver urn.

The kids still count Theodore when people ask them how many siblings they have. I feel embarrassed. Who grieves a baby one never met? Yet another thing in my life I should "just get over".

Two more years pass, and I still have cancer.

No adoption.

And I don't have any more babies.

He is still my "baby".

Our family is growing up, and new vistas open before us.

An overnight date this weekend with my husband

(can't do that with a nursling).

Trips are easier to take.

Little hands learn chores and daily life gets easier.

We revel in new stages, having little readers,

children who play outside for hours.

Happy birthday, my sweet baby boy.

(February 21st, I'm a little late with this)

I don't know what the future holds,

whether or not you will ever have a baby brother,

but for this moment, I love whispering in your ear,

"You are my favorite boy in the whole world."

The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied;

those who seek him shall praise the Lord.

Psalm 22:26

Lamenting the loss of normalcy

Sometimes it just hits you in the gut like a ton of bricks.  There is nothing left in your life that is normal.  You watch, on Facebook, at church, through blogs and e-mails, as your friends and most of your family progress through a "normal" life, with fun pictures of holidays, updates about jobs, all the little details that make up "normal".  And you realize there is nothing left you can claim as normal.  I found a photo taken a few weeks before we lost normal.  What brings the tears the quickest is my children, my husband.  He looks so young.  I look at Caleb - just born - and Amelia, not even 2.  They don't remember "normal".  I see Katy's innocence.  I had never asked to learn to do laundry or cook a meal or clean a bathroom yet.  She has had to grow so fast.  And Rosy, so easy going and self-motivated and happy.  She just gets lost in the shuffle of the non-normal.  How can I make my peace with these losses??  How do I see this as a gift??

One of our last days of "normal".  Two weeks before my cancer was found.

Life was messy, and crazy, and hard work.  And wonderful.

Most cancer patients go through this, as their life gets ripped to shreds by cancer, its treatment and the treatment side effects.  An even smaller number continue to go through this for a long period of time.  That is where our family fits, once again in the statistical margins, defying the definitions and the predictions.  Even worse, it's not just cancer that has our number.  It's everything from infections to accidents, and "normal" life problems gone awry, like food poisoning and routine surgery or vaccinations.  Nothing goes "normal" for us.  Not in 2 1/2 years.

I walked into the bathroom today because I forgot.  I looked, for the first time, at the remains of the toilet.  It's not just broken.  It's shattered.  It stuns me, when I see what I hit and with what force, that I am typing right now.  That I have one hairline fracture and a small amount of bleeding in my brain and this will probably go down in life's history as a fantastical and horrific...yet short-lived...memory.  Just mire at the very bottom in the clear water of the rest of life.

I have to write it, this broken heart that longs for the day when I look back and realize no one has been in the hospital for several months.  The day when I realize that I have actually managed to care for my own children for a whole month without asking any relatives for help or spending any exorbitant dollar amount on childcare.  The day when I realized I've cooked every meal and swept every floor and wiped every nose and taken every picture and maybe even passed a test or gone on a real...restful rather than healing...vacation.

I know, deeper or truer than most, that life is a gift and every day, however flawed, is a blessing.  I know that my life is already a half-blown seed pod, and I need to be mindful of how and when and where I blow those seeds remaining.  But there is such longing to just be normal again.  I remember with longing a day I was frustrated because I forgot about dinner until 4 p.m. and had to rush to defrost something.  I look back at a day when I cried over the 10th poopy diaper and pleaded with God for an "out" from the drudgery of motherhood, and I laugh at my near-sightedness.  I recall a vacation when I fought with Aaron because of a difference of opinion about a leisure activity, and I wish I knew then what I know now.  I also know that, should God ever grant "normal" life to me again, I will forget all of this, most of the time.  I will take things for granted, and throw away blessed moments for the sake of my pride, and I will choose the wrong things to spend time on, and I will wound people and shock myself at how stupid I can be again so quickly.

A cross-processed photo from Mother's Day.

It is kind of like yearning for childhood as an adult.  This longing for something easy for a change.  It is like looking at photo and wishing you could cross-process it and bring out a new color that you know is there, you just couldn't grip it with your camera lens.  God says to give up my life to find it.  Okay, Lord.  You've got my life.  It's long been given up.  Please help me find the new one in the wreckage.  Please heal us.  Please rescue us.  And please let me never forget.

Growing in rocky places

This little fern caught my attention, amongst the huge boulders of basalt on the North Shore, clinging to some little tidbit of nourishment or vein of soil beneath them.  I am the fern in the rocks.  For the past few days, I've been battling what I assumed was heart failure returning (due to stress, I surmised).  I was quite swollen by today, with no sign of making progress with my usual herbs, so I called my doctor - the regular one.  He told me to go to the emergency room.  My reaction, of course, was "Pshaw!  Go to the emergency room because I am a little swollen??  Of course not!"  So I called a second doctor, and he said the same thing.  I reluctantly agreed to go...after working on my paper for another three hours.

When I got there, I expected something to remove the excess water and a quick return ticket home.  Instead, I am admitted.  Lab work shows my thyroid hormones are sky high, despite reductions in my medications at the previous two clinic visits.  This means a probably return or resurgence or increase in cancer, something like that.  And that is what is causing the swelling, and the odd heart rates, and my intense impression that I might die if I sit outdoors in the heat for more than a few minutes.  I received some medications to control the chest pain I was having, and now I am waiting for more tests until tomorrow, from both my oncologist and my cardiologist.

When we dream, it's of the wind, blowing cold and hard
When we wake up we still live in a house of cards
~ Mary Chapin Carpenter

Passed from darkness into light

(Colossians 1:13-14)

Sometimes the buffeting of this world tempts me to forget. There are days when I don't feel Him at all. Whole days. Comfort comes as I read the Word He provided for times like these. I open the Book, and I feel the comfort flowing immediately. Regardless of present suffering, I have so many blessings to remember. Instead of dwelling on what He has not done, I choose -mindfully, willfully, doggedly - to remember what He has done. Remember my word for the year - "abide"?

Remember those earlier days after you had received the light, when you stood your ground in a great contest in the face of suffering. Sometimes you were publicly exposed to insult and persecution; at other times you stood side by side with those who were so treated. You sympathized with those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property, because you knew that you yourselves had better and lasting possessions.

So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded. You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised. (from Hebrews 10)

Long-suffering

Many of our prayers are directed toward the quick and easy solution. Long-suffering is sometimes the only means by which the greater glory of God will be served, and this is, for the moment, invisible. We must persist in faith. God has a splendid purpose. Believe in order to see it. "Our troubles are slight and short-lived, and their outcome an eternal glory which outweighs them far. Meanwhile our eyes are fixed, not on the things that are seen, but on the things that are unseen" (2 Cor 4:17, 18 NEB). ~ Elisabeth Elliot (daily devotional available by e-mail, subscribe here)

I guess I've always thought of "long-suffering" as "patience". A virtue. Not an experience. This long line of never-ending and escalating health trials has me seeing that particular fruit of the spirit in a new light. I never really thought of "patience" as a virtue that persists and pervades for months on end. I've always thought of it more in terms of the heat of the moment, the ability to withstand or wait for something for a few hours or a few days. Waiting for God's healing for our family has gone on now since June, 2008. Almost 2 years. Looking backward, it seems like we've weathered it surprisingly well, surprisingly intact as a family, as a couple. Looking forward, it is daunting. What if God calls us to be long-suffering for years and years more?

As of today, the waiting continues. Aaron was unable to tolerate the 3 ounces of chicken broth he sipped yesterday. He has been restricted, once again, to just taking sips with pills for another 24-48 hours. There is no end in sight to his hospitalization. Tomorrow is his last day of short-term disability pay. I don't have a good handle on the financial implications for our family. We have a small emergency fund saved, which has obviously taken major hit after major hit with cancer, encephalitis, and now this. I am starting to look into more work through Lippincott, the publisher I currently write for on a very part-time basis. I am also looking into renewing a few of my certifications and taking a job in the per diem float pool in the Cities. I spoke with my old manager today, and she is ready to hire me if I wish to do it, and can probably guarantee me 1 to 2 12 hour shifts per week between the pediatric and adult intensive care units. It would mean finding childcare, traveling, and relearning some very dusty clinical practice skills. But I will also be the first to admit I find the prospect a bit exhilarating! It may also be that God is providing an opportunity that will one day enhance my ability to work as a professor, because my clinical practice experience would be much more recent.

Caleb is also "resting" on IV fluids after a failed attempt at drinking this morning. He continues to have lots of blood in his poop, and his blood counts are consequently still dropping. The pediatrician did mention the possibility of a blood transfusion at some point in the future if he continues to bleed in his intestines. He has a bit more energy today, although he is already on his 3rd nap at noon as I write this. He did sit up in the wagon for one ride, and has sat in bed to play with toys for a little while today.

Prayer requests, if you would:

• Aaron's rapid healing and ability to return to work
• Wisdom for doctors as they continue to try to make a diagnosis as to cause of this illness
• Wisdom for both Aaron & I as I pursue possible short-term employment
• Healing for Caleb & that the bleeding would stop before a transfusion is necessary
• Peace for Caleb tonight as he is without me - I am going to attend our friend's funeral this evening, leaving him alone for a short time with Kelley Downie
• Peace, good behavior, and sweet times for my girls, who are without both parents for an unknown period of time
• Strength for all those who are assisting us with everything from childcare to meals and constant prayer!

A 2nd round of fog

"He can practice the discipline of unshakable faith as he dances in step to a melody that is currently out of earshot, or he can close his ears to the possibility of ever hearing the music." (Carol Kent, When I Lay My Isaac Down)

Twelve hours away from home. Exhaustion hovers over me like a loose shroud, the molecules of my mind pounding like surf one against another, in constant motion as if to escape the inevitable reality that must hit. This day brought back recollections of the Indian summer, beetle-buzzing afternoon nap I unexpectedly took. My late November gift from God. My dose of radioactive I-131 didn't come on the morning shipment and I received a phone call just before leaving my children: "Don't come for a few hours." So we fiddled around town with Grandma Debra until 4 p.m., treating ourselves to a few things at an unfamiliar store, hugging the baby. Holding hands with my girls as we meandered down aisles.

We can hug our hurts and make a shrine out of our sorrows or we can offer them to God as a sacrifice of praise. The choice is ours. (Richard Exley)

Back to the clinic. A dozen hugs, a few tears. After days of sobbing at bedtime, I was expecting drama from all sides when I left today. None. Just a prolonged, rather joyful goodbye. Processing done ahead of time in Mama's arms, I suspect. I walked through the doors, feeling as if doing so began a 15-minute metamorphosis from living human heart to petrified wood beating coarsely in my chest. Rocky. Wooden. Unresponsive. Frozen in time, waiting for reality to become unhinged or unsuspended, one of the two. Followed the nurse back. Spoke with the nuclear medicine doctor. Swallowed Alice's little blue pill once more. Fell back down a (more familiar, this time) rabbit hole.

The kind of faith God values seems to develop best when everything fuzzes over, when God stays silent, when the fog rolls in. (Philip Yancey)

Back in my car. No sense of taste, except a brief metallic burn. Two boils sprang up on the tip of my tongue within a half hour. At first I wondered if I was imagining things. Smell gone. Eyesight magically, and immediately, changed. The world is sterile again, like a desaturated photo. I never knew how much I smelled until most of my senses left me like chaff in the breeze. The end of a gray day: laughter with family, crude jokes, a meal with lots of nice textures (and no iodine).

Now the real waiting begins. What does Thursday hold? Distant spread of cancer? A little left, another treatment needed? Or those golden words: "clean scan" - a get-out-of-jail early token, and off I go, home by Sunday. Prayers, please!

New reality

Have courage for the great sorrows of life, and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake.
~ Victor Hugo

Tonight my body is worn from a day spent catching up on a million things that had been laid aside for cancer treatment. My heart feels worn, too, the jagged edge of fear wearing away at the veneer of Christmas spirit I've thrown over my eyes. As though the dam might break if someone saw too clearly what lies beneath the surface. Waiting is so hard. In Deep Survival, I read that survivors are those who adapt to changes in reality: absorb new truth, and act on it, rather than the old truth with which they are more familiar. I struggle to integrate this new truth, cancer, with all my old truths, mother, wife, student, daughter, friend. I have made many decisions in life based on a simple algorithm: if I gain more information about this, will if affect my ultimate decision? I can't seem to fit that with my current circumstances. If I learn that I have more cancer, or less, than currently believed, will it change my ultimate decision? Of only one thing I am certain, and on this rock will I rest my weary head tonight: knowing more or less about my cancer will not change where I am going when I die.

In bitterness of soul Hannah wept much and prayed to the LORD. And she made a vow, saying, "O LORD Almighty, if you will only look upon your servant's misery and remember me, and not forget your servant but give her a son, then I will give him to the LORD for all the days of his life, and no razor will ever be used on his head." As she kept on praying to the LORD, Eli observed her mouth. Hannah was praying in her heart, and her lips were moving but her voice was not heard. Eli thought she was drunk and said to her, "How long will you keep on getting drunk? Get rid of your wine." "Not so, my lord," Hannah replied, "I am a woman who is deeply troubled. I have not been drinking wine or beer; I was pouring out my soul to the LORD. Do not take your servant for a wicked woman; I have been praying here out of my great anguish and grief." Eli answered, "Go in peace, and may the God of Israel grant you what you have asked of him." She said, "May your servant find favor in your eyes." Then she went her way and ate something, and her face was no longer downcast. ~ I Samuel 1:10-18

So much to learn from such a small passage: I can pray out of great anguish and grief; I can expect to feel those things in this life. I will be deeply troubled. I will pour my soul out to the Lord. And then I should go away, go back about my business, and my face should no longer be downcast. I pray the clouds in my spirit lift tomorrow.

Pearls

The way of mercy
Takes me to the least
Down the road of suffering
To the wedding feast

For I know that You are faithful
As we walk these fields of white
To the weary and the hurting
let Your Kingdom comes
~Faithful, David Ruis

Prayers are always answered. Yesterday was a glorious day, a string of pearls unfolding before my very eyes as I opened gift after gift streaming straight from the hands of the Father into my bruised heart. Just when I thought I was at the end of the necklace, another bead glistened in the warm, Indian summer sun. The morning began with waiting...but not for the radioactive treatment, rather the glorious arrival of my newest niece or nephew! Megan was admitted to the hospital Sunday night, and I couldn't believe God was granting my prayer that I be able to hold their little one before I was quarantined! I called early in the morning to see about delaying my treatment, and was told I could come anytime before 4:30 p.m. Another pearl: a beautiful, sunlit day to treasure my children, share life with them, breathe in their sights, and sounds, and smells. Fill my cup up to overflowing so I can spill some drops of joy into my barren lap on a darker day in the November that will surely come.

We went to music class and delighted together in the cacophony and chaos that is kids and music and dancing in a high-ceiling art gallery lit with eastern windows and glistening pine floors. We gloried in Kosher salt at a local deli and beautiful, crumbly goat cheese that a low-iodine Mama can feast upon. We napped together in the lazy, beetle-buzzing afternoon in the unexpected bliss of open windows and the sound of corn husks rustling in the warm, summer-like breeze. I packed my car slowly, savoring every quiet moment of the house God has given us, listening to the children sleep and staving off sorrows that threatened at every moment. Still waiting for the call announcing the birth of that beautiful babe...

Late afternoon came, and no baby. Confounding! The day was a gift just for me...brought about by the "impending birth", which didn't happen. A glorious, free day that I wasn't expecting. A drive back into the reality of the city with the children bursting at the seams from our joyous, momentous, and totally ordinary afternoon. Hugs, hugs, more hugs, holding tears in with iron bands of will as I smiled and hugged some more. Swallowing the largest lump my throat has ever known...swallowing it a hundred times, tasting it's salty bitterness, and thanking God for my afternoon of pearls. One hundred times easier to swallow the large blue horse-pill of radioactive iodine. Primed with grief and disbelief, my throat found that an easy job. Sitting in a sterile little room with my husband beside me, I stared down into a little lead canister, took out the glass vial, unscrewed the cap and tipped it back to accept this cure that threatens to be worse than the disease that now invisibly ails me. The ache of forgetting a good-bye kiss before the poison passed my lips. Walking away carefully observing the "3 foot rule". Feeling the world open up like a chasm before me.

That longed-for freedom...that abyss of unlimited choice...the silence as the "fetters" of motherhood and wifery dropped from my ankles and wrists and shattered around my feet. How shall I now live? Adrift once again in a sea of strangers. Floating along in the tide and whim of self. What moors me? What steers me?

Underneath, there He is. His heart beat still propels me. My joy is still in Him. What a pearl to discover, that after all this time, and all these externally imposed guides and rigorous boundaries, I have continued to internalize the lessons He is teaching, to integrate them as part of my self and what propels me and gives me meaning. I am not adrift. My ways and means have shifted, and my purpose is the same. In this, as in all else, I am here for His glory. I exist for His service. I pray for His guiding hand. I long for His touch.

Waking this morning, the world is tasteless and odorless. The world is magically sterile, and glitters with new sparkle through my eyes, swollen and skewed from the localized effects of the radiation. There is a philosophical lack of focus, an attendant lack of agenda and timeframe; and a physical reality, an inability to perceive the visual all around me. Words and worlds are as hazy as time and duty are.

Pearls of sleep, and friendship, and deep, uninterrupted drinking at the Well of meaning and Truth. I curl up by the Well for a good long rest after five years of many thirsty moments.

That is what it's like to leave your life, your home, your job; everything behind you, it feels. Everything in front of you different and intimidating and wonderful all at once. For me that has been 24 hours of radioactive cancer treatment. Now, only 456 hours to go...