What's next?

come to the waters, you who thirst...
and you’ll thirst no more.
come to the Father, you who work
and you’ll work no more.
and all who labor in vain
and to the broken and shamed:

love is here.
love is now.
love is pouring from
His hands, from His brow.
love is near, it satisfies.
streams of mercy flowing from His side.
because love is here.

come to the treasure, you who search
and you’ll search no more.
come to the Lover you who want
and you’ll want no more...
~ Love is Here, Tenth Avenue North

Cancer is big stuff. It fills your life for a while. Eventually, it starts to fade into the background, a chronic source of loss and pain. Strangely, infusing your life with meaning and watering your life with new strength, even as the meaning and strength threaten to disappear in the dark pit of death's abyss. I have meaning and strength that transcend the grave, because Jesus did so...for me. Bought me. Filled me and made me whole, long before cancer. Now He proves it daily as I survive - and even thrive - all the ways that cancer has robbed me on this mortal coil.

The scan came in clean, and the question was: what's next, God? For what were you preparing me...us...this family? Aaron decided it for me, when He heard the whisper of God's still small voice during a random meeting at work, watching this video. We decided to start knocking on doors, and stepping through them, if they opened. And opened they have, at least all those we've knocked on so far. We are in the process of adoption. We hope to adopt through the state system for special needs children, and hope to become proud parents of an infant in the next year or so. Our fifth child. This one, we've picked, in some ways: we know we want to parent a child with Down syndrome...save a child like that from abortion, if we can. We don't know if our next baby will be a boy or a girl, what color skin he or she will have, where in the United States the baby will be born, or how old it will be when we bring it into our home. Nor do we know God's timing: we are praying to welcome a baby in late December 2009 or January 2010, which would allow the maximum amount of time between cancer scans.

I know you probably think I'm crazy. In my most human moments, I think we're crazy, too. But what you might not understand is that Aaron and I aren't doing this because we're strong, because we're amazing, because we're stupid, or naive, or unrealistic...or [fill in the blank]. We're doing this because we understand that we are the conduits of higher power, channels of an inexhaustible source of strength that can work through us, providing the courage, grace, wisdom and stamina necessary to undertake such a mission. God wants to save the lives of these precious children, and His glory will be evident through us as we submit to His plan for us. We pray that our lives, in the small details and big decisions like this one, fulfill the prayer of Paul in some small way...I pray that you, Thul family, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you, Thul family, may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! (Ephesians 3:17-21, names inserted)

Please take time to watch this video, made by my friend Kelly, whose courageous choices have helped open me to the possibility of this adoption, even before I knew I was being prepared for it.

Frugality at it's worst

Caleb is in a new stage of discovery. The object of his most recent inquiry: the toilet. Ahhh, dreaded moment of every mother's existence! He learned to flush it a few days ago, and is entranced. Various objects have already been put to the test. We lost a small wool sock yesterday, and one of the girl's headbands. Luckily, the hair products he tried to flush this morning wouldn't go down. Unluckily, each one would be replaced to the tune of $8 or more, so back in the drawer they went after their brief foray in the toilet and long foray being scrubbed and sanitized. Don't sniff my hair too closely next time you give me a hug! Aaron may argue this is yet another reason products shouldn't be put in hair. He is an "au naturale" sort when it comes to hair and make-up.

Today is Good Friday. The day He hung on the cross for me. An aura of awe and the pall of grateful - yet sickened - loss hangs about this day. He was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. (Isaiah 53:5) The girls and I had a wonderful time talking about the meaning of Easter in the car today. Singing this beautiful new hymn. Learning afresh that He conquered the grave. Rosy piped up and said, "He conquered the grave for you, Mama. He sent you back to us from cancer." I wept. We wept together - thinking of Grandma Fern again. Rosy misses her often, little tender hearted one. She was weeping because Grandma's body is in the grave, and I was able to help her understand, for the first time, that what makes Grandma Grandma is up in heaven, not in the grave. That through His death on the cross, Christ conquered the grave for us all, purchasing us a ticket, with His blood, that our souls might ascend to heaven.

Oh Lord You've searched me
You know my way
Even when I fail You
I know You love me

At the cross I bow my knee
Where Your blood was shed for me
There's no greater love than this
You have overcome the grave
Your glory fills the highest place
What can separate me now

You go before me
You shield my way
Your hand upholds me
I know You love me

You tore the veil
You made a way
When You said that it is done
~At the Cross, Hillsong

Love multiplies

Every mother with more than one child - and, I suspect, every father - knows that having more than one child does not divide your love...it multiplies it. Although one-on-one time changes as you add more children, there are myriad benefits as children form bonds with not only their parents but also each other. I was reading today how children from large families score higher in the areas of self-esteem, maturity, self-regulation, and empathy than their smaller family counterparts.

I am continually blessed...even on those days when I am ground down and oft-aggravated...by these little hands and feet that waltz through my days. Tonight I watched my son fall asleep, for the 414th night. He falls asleep like I do. First, he has a hyper period, followed by a long period of staring off into space, sometimes for twenty minutes or more. He occasionally checks that I'm still there by pushing on me with the palms of his hands, and glances over with that sweet, slow smile of near-sleep. Finally, he drifts off, and his deepest sleep is during the first 20 minutes after his lids close. That's the only time it's safe to sneak away to my work, as I did just now.

How like our children we are, in this, too. I think of myself as so independent...yet the very air I breathe and the ability to draw it into my lungs is literally a gift from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning (James 1:17). My children would love to think they can put themselves to sleep, but they can't (although they will occasionally drift off on their own without prompting somewhere around 11 p.m. or later, only to be unbearably crabby the following day). We aren't very different, are we? Thank God that I am not the one who determines how to number my days...or when it should be light or dark...or how many children this family should contain! On all counts, whatever He decides is just right.

this is the air I breathe
Your holy presence living in me

this is my daily bread
Your very word spoken to me

And I, I'm desperate for you
And I, I'm I'm lost without you
~ Breathe, Michael W. Smith

Growing slowly old

I will not be made useless
I won't be idled with despair
I will gather myself around my faith
My hands are small, I know,
but they're not yours they are my own
cause where there's a man who has no voice
there ours shall go singing
In the end only kindness matters
I will get down on my knees and I will pray
We are God's eyes
God's hands
God's heart
~ Hands, Jewel

I've mentioned my hands before this. They are the most ravaged by the radiation and hypothyroidism. Sounds silly, I suppose, but it's been difficult for me. It has also given me more empathy for my husband, who suffers chronic joint inflammation, probably due to osteoarthritis, and a dear friend of mine who suffers rheumatoid arthritis. My hands look old. They are covered in wrinkles, they are dry, callouses have formed over each knuckle, and the fingertips are covered in cracks and stains that I can't seem to scrub out. They are constantly sore, and I can't write by hand much at all during my weeks of recovery after being off my medication for six weeks in preparation for the latest round of tests. They ache so badly that it wakes me up at night. I can describe all this pain to little avail...hence the photo of my newly ugly hand. All this aching and falling apart of such a small, inconsequential body part reminds me of the verses that compare Christians to parts of a body: The eye cannot say to the hand, "I have no need of you," nor again the head to the feet, "I have no need of you." On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together. (I Corinthians 12)

Under the heading, "Joy of the Redeemed", I found these words of encouragement in Isaiah 35:
Strengthen the feeble hands, steady the knees that give way; say to those with fearful hearts, "Be strong, do not fear; your God will come, he will come with vengeance; with divine retribution he will come to save you." Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away.

As I process the latest news about my cancer this week, I come constantly back to the foundational truth that there is no knowing in this life. That tomorrow is an unknown, today is a gift. I am grateful to know that I will be home with my children again until December. I pray fervently that cancer stays far from me. Yet little harbingers of the long wait and battle ahead keep coming in like waves into a peaceful shore, turning the rocks over to reveal new beauty and undiscovered ugliness all at once. Other cancer survivors warn me that years of clean scans and undetectable labs are often followed up by recurrences of cancer, metastasis and more surgery and treatment. This particular type of cancer is the "long haul" type - something I am likely to have on my radar for the rest of my life now. Just like my hands. A constant reminder that the fleeting days are passing swiftly. So I abandon this writing now, to go redeem the time.

(Romantic as that may sound, I plan to "redeem" it by folding my laundry!)