CHASE AWAY CANCER

A Hard Calling

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“M-o-o-o-o-m-m-m! Mom! Help! He’s…”

The rest of the sentence was cut off in a breathless pant as my oldest boy ran into the shelter of my arms, and just as quickly shifted to hide himself against my back, effectively placing my body between himself and the force of nature coming at him.

Chase. Angry Chase.

Though Aid stands over a head taller and a year older, he is no match for the fury in Chase’s eyes. I can hear his teeth grind together in his fuzzy head as his fists clench and his voice is a guttural scream: “How. Dare. You!!” He punctuates each word with an angry step as he advances and I can feel Aidan try and curl even further into my back.

One Lego. That’s all it took to produce the fury.

These moments of anger come like a wave, crashing on the shore and then ebbing just as quickly. For this is what it looks like when the damage to a little one’s brain messes with emotional control. Anger – swift, furious, and awful.

After deep breaths, calming phrases and prayer; after hugs and peace-making and promises to use words and not violence in settling the next dispute, the boys go back to playing and I feel the weight pushing on my shoulders as a sigh escapes – a sigh that does little to dispel the tension.

It’s like this all day, every day: fast anger, swift retribution, calming words, rational instructions, make it right…and repeat. Over and over. I don’t possess the wisdom or knowledge to understand what of each interaction is common to raising young children and what comes from deep, cancer survival damage. All I can do is put myself between them (often literally) and talk and pray until they listen.

So I hang my head and as I do, I see Aid, standing in the doorway, his young shoulders slumped like mine.

“What’s up, sweet boy?” I look up and try to paste a smile.

“Why is it so hard?” He answers a question with a question – the son of my heart for sure.

“With Chase…” My words are more a statement than a question for clarification. I know what he means. I can feel it radiating off of him. The frustration and exhaustion on his face a mirror of what I feel in my own heart.

“Honestly, sweet boy, I don’t know. But I know one thing for sure. This is your calling. I’ll be honest with you…” I take a deep breath wondering if these true words will relieve or burden. “Being the brother of Chase is probably one of the very hardest things you’ll ever do or be in your whole life. But it’s something Jesus has for you and it will make you strong in ways you can’t imagine. This is just something you…we…have to do. Jesus will give us the strength.”

He nodded against my arm, having crossed the room for a hug as I spoke to him.

I long to answer his question with a time frame. Just two more weeks of life-rending harsh moments and then you’ll be done… You’ll be strong enough and it won’t hurt like it does now. Ha. But so often, there are no time limits set to our sufferings and hard days. I just want limits so that I can make sense of it all. If it fits in my paradigm, then I don’t have to hold so very fast to the promise that God’s plans are good when I don’t feel or see them being so.

Your hard thing and mine…they are our callings. They aren’t the actions and interactions that keep us from the perfect life – rather; they are most often the God-planned life perfect in and of themselves. And they are ultimately, finally, sometimes-only-at-the-end-of-the-story for our good. So, lean in and learn.

Moment by moment.

September 2
“For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.” Jeremiah 29:11, NLT
^“For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory.” 2 Corinthians 1:20, ESV

Choosing Hope In Our Awareness

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September.

The month second only to Chase’s diagnosis – when it becomes difficult to breathe in the days.

Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.

Do you know what it’s like to breathe in further awareness of something that already fills you like a heartbeat? Sometimes it’s like a refreshing rain that whispers, “See? You are not alone.” But other times, it’s like electricity sparking on frayed ends, a painful, grating thing that rasps, “See? You are not alone.”

Over the last several weeks, I’ve felt this month creeping up on me slowly and with it nagging questions.

What now?

How do I put a different, new spin on the same old? — This that must feel so old to everyone but those of us who breathe it and live it like our beating hearts: The underfunding, the over-treating, the pictures engrained in forever memory of sobbing mothers holding their babies as the last of this earth air leaves tiny wasted bodies.

Why should you be more aware of childhood cancer than refugees, poverty, and starvation? Because it is my personal pain and therefore somehow worth your time, your energy, and your tears? I cannot be that callous. There are no hierarchies in pain, sorrow…loss.

The weeks of questions force me to dig deeper. If I am to write through this month of extra awareness with all it’s intensity – when all the stories and pictures come out and my social media feeds turn bright gold, I need to know it’s for a greater good. Awareness it’s own sake is good, but awareness that encourages and leads to action is better.

So, I want to dedicate this month to a greater good. No, more than that, I want to devote this month to a greater good.

Devote.

After prayer and what feels like endless thought, I’ve decided that as often as I write this month, it will be in devotion. It will be a cancer story or a piece that has spun out of the cancer, but it will be short and it will devote purpose to lesson, life, and glory. For truly, if there is no higher awareness outside us…if our painful stories aren’t held up to the light in search of beauty and redemption – why?

As a dear cancer mama often tells me, hope is always available and it is most certainly a choice.

So, in this month of awareness, I choose hope.

Hope for the children with cancer.

Hope for the weary mothers and the fathers with empty arms.

Hope in the promise that our stories are more than ourselves – they are pieces to reflect the Light.

Moment by moment.

September 1
“This is my command—be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid or discouraged. For the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” Joshua 1:9

A Hopeful Surrender

Monday.

This day that brings a new start; a new week. Why does it betray me on the regular?

The weekends are full – sometimes precious, sometimes hurt-filled and disappointing, but always tiring. And then here it is a new morning and I feel like I’m starting a fire against damp, weak wood. I’m out before I’ve ever started. I don’t even have the energy to even fake it and somehow, the hours leading up to 9:00am are chalked-up full of the classic one-two punch – sometimes literally.

One child has a cold, drama, and undone homework.

One is having trouble breathing and can’t find inhaler, glasses, or gym shoes (which turn out to be wet and muddy when found).

And one has a headache which leads to a vicious unraveling – a spewing of anger and frustration on everyone in the house.

Between thinking about a healthy breakfast, trying to care about lunches, drying shoes, finding glasses, and hostage-negotiating the bald headache victim, I can’t find my own breath; my own pace. I can’t even hear myself think.

These hours are full of reaction, not planned pro-action and I feel my senses filling up with overwhelm.

Why me? Why now? Why is it always this way? What am I doing wrong that the wheels not only fall of the wagon, but seem to be forever lost?

How do I fan a flame for life and diligence when the day feels ruined before it’s hardly started?

I find myself searching like the drowning. Where is the salvation that will allow my head to stay up and breath through just one more day. One more moment…

I heard it yesterday on the radio and my mind flashes back in a rare moment of clarity:

“The Word of the Lord endures forever.”

I have nothing. He is everything.

My moments will pass like breath. (why did I think they’d do anything else?) He is forever.

I don’t have to fight for strength because in my weakness, He is strong.

So, as I stand in the middle of a day hardly begun and already shattered, I find hope and strength – not in the picking up of the stressful pieces, but rather in the act of LAYING THEM DOWN.

Choosing a hopeful surrender…

Moment by moment.

The grass withers and the flowers fall,
but the word of our God endures forever.
Isaiah 40:8, NIV
Stock photo from Pexels: courtesy of unsplash . com

When The Evening Comes

Today, Matt Redman releases his new book, “10,000 Reasons: Stories of Faith, Hope, and Thankfulness Inspired By The Worship Anthem”.

When David C. Cook sent me a copy of the book a few weeks ago, I was delighted to read this book not only because Chase’s story is featured (for real!!), but also because we have met and come to love Matt and his heart for worship and I couldn’t wait to dive into that same joy on a page. So, I mentally prepared myself to feel blessed and inspired by the stories of this light, 164-page read.

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What I wasn’t prepared for was the complete challenge and theological depth that pervaded every single page. I expected this to be a learning experience through others stories – and it is that. But it is also full of gentle soul-preaching: the act of spinning these stories out into a greater understanding of the heart of God found in the Word. Each story thread from Matt’s own life and the lives of others is tied back into the bond of who we are in Christ and who Christ is to us — making these pages anything but “light reading”, and oh, so rich!

You guys, for lack of a better metaphor in this moment (I can’t think of brilliant things when I’m super excited – which I am – about this book!), this work is like a protein shake for your soul. It will replenish you in ways you didn’t even know you were hungry.

Too often, when I hear words like what Matt and Jonas wrote into the “10,000 Reasons” song, there’s a part of me that wants to say: “Well, that’s all very well and good to want to be singing when the evening comes..but I wonder how you’d feel if your life were ever really difficult. What would you write then?”

Gauntlet = thrown. Christ = proved again and again.

For, as this book will show you both in the life of Matt and in others around him, God is found to be enough and singing is possible in the evening not because hardship has never been experienced but rather because they’re in the middle of it! The worship is often sweeter in the suffering because our heart cry is not just wished upon the “some day” of Revelations 21, but is proved again and again in the now. He is our God and He is with us always.

I would highly encourage you to grab a copy of this book and make it a priority even in these last of the summer days. You will be refreshed and encouraged to press on –

Moment by moment.

Our scars are signs of God’s grace in our lives – signs that we’ve been through something and that we have made it to the other side. They remind us that we are not where we once were and that God has brought about a victory in our lives. Our wounds may have been dark, but the promise of God’s love has been tested and proved in our lives. When we look back, yes we see pain, but more than anything we see provision and protection, and the ways God has made us ‘fruitful in the land of our suffering’. -Redman, page 128-129

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[You guys, I need you to know that Matt’s publisher sent me a copy of the book as a gift because Chase appears in one of the chapters. There was no official expectation or request for a review. This is just me being me. 🙂 ]

Keep Running…

He contemplates a word he will never understand

Sunday, 31 July, 2016

Just before the sun rose on this day four long and quick years ago, the last unknown action of a growing brain tumor was finally known as my boy seized in the wooden crib of his baby years under the waning moon.

We should not have had even six months, and yet somehow, we’ve had four years.

They have been long and full of shadows and anger, but also precious with more joys than we deserve.

And as the shadows lengthen into longer life than we’d ever have dreamed, and we persist in this atypical life and it’s challenges, the words of Matt Papa have been close to my heart.

Lord I’m tired…
So tired from traveling
This straight and narrow is so much harder than I thought.
And on this path I’ve met both doubt and pain and I’ve heard their voices say ‘Yeah, you’ve given all you got.’
But there’s a cloud of witnesses – the ones who’ve run this race – and even louder than my fears, they’re crying: ‘Warrior, lift your face!
And keep running, keep running, don’t lose heart, and don’t you give up now.
Don’t turn around.
You’ve got to find a way somehow to keep reaching; keep fighting.
The pain cannot compare to the reward that will be yours; that waits in store for those who just keep running.’
Don’t turn aside…
No compromise…
Just lift your eyes to the glory that’s coming.
If you’re like me, you feel like you can’t go on, you’ll never see the dawn and you’re just about to break.
But don’t stop now.
Know that every sacrifice will all be worth the price when you finally see His face…
Just keep running…

Moment by moment.

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