Plan A, Plan B, Plan C

Blink, blink. Your eyes open hazy and unfocused that first second of consciousness in the morning. You see the balloons of light dancing in patterns. Rub your eyes.

Suddenly everything is in focus, and you drop your feet off the side of the bed and get up. Go through your morning rituals. Then comes the crux of the day - what will you do? Who are you scheduled to see? Where might you go?

You make your roadmap for the day. Mine is always linear, logical, hour by hour, light the straight strips of sunlight coming through the slats under the boardwalk. I'm in the middle of two weeks of research, and I find myself thinking over my tasks like a gambler focuses on rolling probabilities. Right now I'm on Play A but tomorrow may find me on Plan B, and eventually that might even fall through. So of course I've planned C as well.

What I always forget is that God doesn't want me to place myself blindly and independently on a task-oriented line. Very few verses in the Bible say "if this, then this will happen". He doesn't want me to waste one minute of remorse over the undone lines of my to-do list. He simply wants me to do His will - and then I will soar with Him in the non-linear freedom of wind and sky and sun.

Why do the nations rage? Why do the people waste their time with futile plans? The kings of the earth prepare for battle; the rulers plot together against the LORD and against his anointed one.  "Let us break their chains," they cry, "and free ourselves from this slavery." But the one who rules in heaven laughs. The Lord scoffs at them. Then in anger he rebukes them, terrifying them with his fierce fury. For the LORD declares, "I have placed my chosen king on the throne in Jerusalem, my holy city. " The king proclaims the LORD's decree: "The LORD said to me, 'You are my son. Today I have become your Father. Only ask, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance, the ends of the earth as your possession. You will break them with an iron rod and smash them like clay pots.'" Now then, you kings, act wisely! Be warned, you rulers of the earth! Serve the LORD with reverent fear, and rejoice with trembling. Submit to God's royal son, or he will become angry, and you will be destroyed in the midst of your pursuits -- for his anger can flare up in an instant. But what joy for all who find protection in him!  ~Psalm 2:1-12

Lord I come to You
Let my heart be changed, renewed
Flowing from the grace
That i have found in You
And Lord I have come to know
The weaknesses I see in me
Will be stripped away
By the power of Your love

Hold me close
Let Your love surround me
Bring me near
Draw me to Your side
And as I wait
I will rise up like the eagle
And I will soar with You
Your Spirit leads me on
In the power of Your love

Lord unveil my eyes
Let me see You face to face
The knowledge of Your love
As You live in me
And Lord renew my mind
As Your will unfolds in my life
In living every day
By the power of Your love

~Power of Your Love~

Plans, plans

But every heartache will create space that I alone can fill. And I will. You will learn to wait in Hope. 'My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the LORD...Blessed are those...who have set their hearts on pilgrimage. As they pass through the Valley of Baca, seasons of weeping, they make it a place of springs.' (Psalm 84:2, 5-6) ~ from 66 Love Letters by Lawrence Crabb (see sidebar to purchase book)

The verdict is in.  My oncologist plans further testing based on my tumor marker, which will be back on Thursday - probably a PET scan and a radioactive iodine scan on the same day to try to detect whatever small tumors must exist in my body, creating this thyroid storm.  And tomorrow I am scheduled to get a pacemaker.  I have fought the pacemaker idea since 1994, and feel happy that I have bought 16 years of freedom from it with faith in God's hand.  I have never had peace with the idea before.  Today I do.  Having the pacemaker implanted will allow the doctor to attempt to treat my potentially life-threatening high heart rates with a medication instead of a surgical procedure.  This is so much more preferable to me.  I had a horrible experience with my last surgical procedure for the same problem (electrophysiology study and cardiac ablation), I will forever cringe at the idea of undergoing it again.  The pacemaker seems like the most conservative route to treatment of this heart problem that has plagued me for so long.  I have high hopes that it will provide great relief, as it did for my Grandpa and several other family members with similar symptoms.

Once I find out the time for the pacemaker implantation, I will post it in hopes that you will offer up prayer for my safety and witness during that procedure.  Thanks to all of you who read here for holding hands with me on this hard, exhausting and beautiful journey.

I was reminded once again today during my devotions that it is not the doctors in whom I am putting my trust. I trust God to give them wisdom and skill and to provide for me in whatever manner He sees fit.  "Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation.  When his breath departs he returns to the earth: on that very day his plans perish.  Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his God, who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, who keeps faith forever." (Psalm 146:3-6)

Scrap the plan

Four o'clock in the afternoon often comes around, and I look at my to-do list for the day and realize I have yet to earn the privilege of crossing something off. Before cancer, before Amelia's encephalitis even, I hurriedly got to work - shooing the kids up to watch a cartoon or outside to fend for themselves for an hour so I could attend to the housework, schoolwork, or ministry that had been neglected all day.

And then my whole life turned upside down. In those long hours spent apart from family each time I have a treatment or scan, in the timeless solitude of the hospital room tending Amelia and longing for home, a new reality emerged. I never once regretted the undone chores on my to-do list. But I did regret all the small lost opportunities to nurture, build relationship, simply be with these changelings that are my children.
So what do I do, these days, when I face the to-do list never embarked upon? I crumple it up, toss it in the garbage, and grab a new sheet of paper. Today, I scrapped one that said:

• Call Sara F re: garage sale
• Lippincott writing
• Produce podcast for Kelechi's class
• Meet with parents re: IWU job
• IRB revision

On the fresh sheet of paper, I wrote another list - the one I actually worked on today. The path that God pointed to, instead of the plan chosen by my own 3-pound brain.

• Plan summer school with the girls
• Cuddle Caleb for ___ hours (fill in the blank)
• Read at least 5 board books aloud - at least twice through each book
• Make a picnic lunch
• Fill the pool
• Water plants
• Mop the kitchen floor two times
• Mop the dog corner once
• Wash swim suits - twice
• Play space ship on the porch with the chairs removed from the kitchen
• Call someone to set up a playdate for Rosy

As a Type A personality, God has definitely used the trauma of life to cleave me away from Plan A and ingrain the perspective that it is the busy application of my talents that He desires - not the busy application of my talents only in certain endeavors. He does not care a wit about my list, but He does care if I stick to the list to the exclusion of what He calls me to do each day. I never once dreamed that cancer and encephalitis would be the capstone lesson in a lifetime of learning flexibility.

Join me, perhaps? I start one list in the morning, titled "To Do". I write a second list in the evening, to prevent depression when I look at my still-to-be-done list from that morning. I title it a "Done" list. Sometimes keeping track of what you have actually accomplished allows you to review your day from an entirely different perspective.

Let's try something new! If you keep a blog or other online journal, link back to this post with your own thoughts about priorities, list-keeping, and expectations for your days. Just click on the link below, and add your blog information and your photo. The instructions are very easy - and it would be fun to hear your thoughts.

Fashion plates

I found them at a garage sale...and was transported, instantly, to my friend Erica's yellow farmhouse, the fertile must of the cows, the murmur of machinery, the hot, stifled air of the piano room at the front of the house. I never had this toy, myself. But she did...and I think she was rather confused by my interest in it as the fascination, for her, had long ago worn off. The quick and easy perfection of your creation as you slid the wax stick over the raised fashion plate, the hours you could spend coloring in your own combinations of dresses, pants, tops, hair styles, accessories...I was smitten! It seems funny to me now, looking back at my childhood, which was mostly a story of sports, outdoors, tomboyishness - those fashion plates, and my dozen or so baby dolls, were the feminine moment.

Rosy, of course, loves them. We've had a few half-sunny/half-rainy days since my surgery, and the air is cold and dank. So we are huddled inside, mostly. I am in pain, and curled in bed with books for the most part. The kids all have a head cold, and they've been pretty content with quiet activities. I think we are settling in to the news that summer is going to be different than we had thought. Settling into the goodness of it, and getting a feel for the different sort of work it will be. I can't just be idle...either in my humanness or in my faith. I am just not wired that way. Aaron and I are busy discussing the grand possibilities of the non-cancer life: work? School? Summer vacation? All seem possible again. We step - tentatively now - forward. So many times we have thought the carpet was finally still beneath our feet, only to have it yanked out in a new and unexpected direction.

Days of quietness are unequivocally the gift of God. I praise Him for these past few. I find it interesting that themes of "peace" and "quietness" are often given a feminine slant, like this in Isaiah 32, to the women of Israel:

The fruit of righteousness will be peace; the effect of righteousness will be quietness and confidence forever. [wow - imagine that forever!] My people will live in peaceful dwelling places, in secure homes, in undisturbed places of rest. Though hail flattens the forest and the city is leveled completely, how blessed you will be, sowing your seed by every stream, and letting your cattle and donkeys range free. (verses 17-20)

Fun-filled weekend

Aaron and I are off to a conference on love this weekend. Then a wedding (I'm assuming the focus of that will also be love). Fun is fun...but it can also be exhausting! My pain made a major resurgence the last day of vacation, and continues today. Wondering how I will make it through a 14 hour day tomorrow, and how Percocet will affect my ability to soak up the conference. Prayers, please?

Time in a bottle (or breast)

Incline my heart unto thy testimonies, and not to covetousness. Turn away mine eyes from beholding vanity; and quicken thou me in thy way. Stablish thy word unto thy servant, who is devoted to thy fear. ~ Psalm 119:36-38

How quickly the human heart turns something created for God's glory into an idol! "Beholding vanity", such a beautiful phrase of Old English found in the King James Bible, is substituted by most modern translators with the term "worthless things". What is worthy, and what is worthless? Breastfeeding is certainly held up as worthy in our society at this stage of history, the gold standard in infant nutrition and perfectly designed to promote both physical and psychosocial development. It is a beautiful, precious act that at times has seemed sacred to me...never more so than in the past six weeks as I prepared to give it up. While it is worthy - God gave me these children to feed, clothe, protect, nurture and teach, after all - it is not sacred by any definition of the word ("set apart for worship", "dedicated for one purpose or service", or "entitled to reverence").

I tend to think of idol worship as bowing down physically before an altar. What would I be willing to humiliate myself for, in other words? I would certainly never bow down to my breasts (oh, horrid thought)! Yet was I, in a more subtle sense? Do I really believe that my ability to give and receive love with my child is bound in such a finite, limited act, the ability to perform which is bound quite certainly in the present and would shortly pass, whatever my situation? What I am really mourning, if I mourn this loss, is time. I am experiencing that inevitable marching on of days that God Himself put in motion at the creation of the world (Genesis 1). In a few short months, my sweet, happily breastfed son would have been done with that need, and would be gleefully independent of me and I of him. Would I have shed as many tears if weaning had taken place in the way I planned it?

As always, I wind up at the end of a long string of questions with many new ones left unanswered. How much is it appropriate to mourn such a loss? Mortality - that grim truth we are all facing when we speak of time and our days being numbered - still reigns, and in it Satan. That I can mourn. Even then I must guard myself...am I crying tears of sorrow or righteous anger toward the enemy, or am I crying tears of pity for my own self? Do I believe that God will turn this - and every sorrow - into dancing in the end? Yes, I do believe that. On that I must act: a smile for my children, a hug for my husband in greeting at the close of each day, a sigh of relief to my Savior who has borne me through yet another storm. Let my tears be something God can heal and answer, not an unanswerable state of bitterness and settled depression.

Lord, still my waves, the waves of my sea
That keep me tossed and full of fear
Open my eyes to see my Jesus, my Friend,
Over all, and yet so near.
~ Debra Holmen, Eat and Drink