life lately...

I haven't blogged all fall.  No words can express what a heck season in life it has been.  Here are a few excerpts from several emails updates on my mom...

From my mom's friend Paula:

"Sissy’s life here -  today, in Houston – revolves around humidifiers and pain meds, irrigating a trach tube, and figuring out how to swallow foods soft enough (yet rich enough) to gain strength.

This is Bethlehem, right now, but you have to look with spirit eyes to see this particular Bethlehem, or maybe to see your own. 

Just for a moment, while reading this, just stop. Pause.

Spend a second or two to look around with your eyes.

The view from our window is a parking garage, salmon colored, chipped paint, water stained and dirty bricks.  It doesn’t look like anything at all at first (or even second) glance.  All day yesterday they were cleaning inside the

garage and the deafening noise was anything but choirs of angels, until you pause long enough.  Long enough to catch the narrow stretch of blue sky above the top level of the garage and some long strings of stray clouds floating overhead.

Then you realize that you have another day.  
You have life, and with that realization you see the first shepherds in the distance."

From Paula again:

 "Yesterday was a long day for Sissy. As pain intensifies from the radiated sites, it meant visits to her surgeon, oncologist, pain management team, as well as more radiation. There were long waits, long corridors to navigate – some tears shed – but not a complaint from her. As each doctor told her that this is the home stretch, and the necessary state of things right now, I visibly watched her color the space surrounding her with acceptance.

Sissy’s beautiful daughter Turner and her two friends, Erin and Hannah, arrived at noon.  Their twenty-five year old exhuberance was a pain med in and of itself. A high dose of life. I watched Sissy’s face as they put her in a wheel chair and raced down the long hallways with her.  All the statistics in the world are one thing…but joy/kindness (the extraordinary kindness of Sissy’s surgeon and oncologist)- the joy of these girls- all the statistics cannot account for that which moves in life in secret rhythm and is larger than everything.  None of the statistics can account for the Peace.

Last night as Sissy got up and down through the night, she noticed a light flashing on the two decorative Christmas trees and the flowers on a nearby table.  A flashing light from a smoke alarm? The reflection of the phone’s message light?  It’s irrelevant. A light flashed over the scene and Sissy reports that she felt an ever deepening sense of walking with Christ – Prince of Peace -…Her response was glory and praise, the peace of God…not as symbol, but as living reality.

From Alaska to Florida, from Boston to southern California, your prayers go out, aimed at this small room in a medical center in Houston, directed at the heart of us all via the heart of one small woman.  In Alaska they’ve made ice candles and have them burning for her…set out where Sissy once sat, on a small deck in a pristine Cove.

The Peace of God.  As we face another day – another tangle of medications and radiation… as you face whatever fills your hours…we wish you dearly the peace of God that has settled into us here, right in the very midst of all things difficult. Light for the world."

From my mom's friend, Ellen:

"So…here it is the 29^th of Dec. and Sissy only has one more radiation treatment!  After 43 treatments the skin around her neck where the trache belt sits is raw and she is on a mostly liquid diet.  But, our little champion has kept her weight up and displays an obedience to all directives that is quite remarkable!  Our days pass quickly in the way that time seems to be doing in general in these latter years.  I knew this would be one of those blessed weeks, one that is so out of the ordinary that it will make a permanent mark on the landscape of my mind.  I am so glad I am spending it with Sissy.

Sissy is very brave.  Her throat and the burns on her skin around her neck continue to worsen and the pain increases, but she bears up through it all with patience and an uncommon buoyancy.  The dressing of her wounds and the trache cleaning are made easy by her extremity.  It reminds me that all things are made easy when done with love.  For those who doubt their capacity to perform these deeds when their turn comes I would simply remind them of this truth.  Few of us know our true capacity to serve.  Taking care of a person in need with love is not a hard thing to do.  There is so much of God in it that any inadequacy vanishes as all thoughts of self are submerged by the need of the Other."

Life hasn't slowed down and hasn't been easy.... Forrest has moved to Tampa.  My mom has been in and out of the hospital fighting thyroid cancer.  My aunt passed away unexpectantly.  I am moving to Tampa in May, but in the meantime, I am in Atlanta running 4 Younglife clubs.  Life is hectic, but my perspective is focused on all that the Lord is doing and redeeming and saving.