Tag: cancer

THANK YOU

See us running and hugging and freaking out a little? …crazy joy smiles on our faces?

Today, that’s what we’re doing because 1) our miracle boy turned 12 years old yesterday, and 2) because you put together the MOST AMAZING action in the last two days.

In less than 48 hours, the Chase Away Cancer community and friends gathered OVER $13,000 for Lurie Children’s Hospital and the Anthony Rizzo Family Foundation in honor of Chase’s 12 years!

You guys!

YOU DID IT!!!!!

I wish you could have heard the gasp Chase let out when I told him the news.

Dear ones… this was a VERY GOOD THING that happened this weekend.

From the bottom of our hearts –

THANK YOU

Moment by moment

[all photos: Margaret Henry Photography]

Waiting Well

Up until 5:30 on November 2nd, I could have told you Chase’s appointments and the general expectations through the end of this 2021 year. Everything was laid out…scheduled… neat, even. (…as much as we ever get with Chase)

But on November 2nd at 5:30, right as I was in the kitchen making dinner, I got a call from the oncology team, the result of which was that Chase needs more blood work and an MRI of his liver and kidneys. 

Dear ones, it’s a long and complicated explanation full of damages and inexplicable issues, and I’m sure everything will unfold at some point, but suffice to say that there is a chance that his liver is struggling through transfusion-related damage. And while they’re looking at his liver in the scan, they want to look at his kidneys too, because there is a noticeable growth there.

It’s more than possible that this is just a precautionary measure, and the growth is benign, but the news definitely surprised us. And honestly, it’s hard to hear that anything is growing in or on Chase – ever. 

Since that phone call, our minds have gone a hundred places and our hearts beat a rhythm of post trauma. And if I’m being honest, I’ll probably continue to vacillate between “don’t be silly, it’s nothing!” and “they said the spot in his thyroid was nothing too” until the tests are done and read. 

And that, oh that… that done-ness is a ways ahead of us yet. For reasons that only God himself knows, the earliest scan date is December 21st. So we will move through the holidays, through Chase’s birthday, through these next weeks in a season of more-than-usual waiting.

How we long to not just survive the wait, but thrive in the wait – to truly wait well.

The Saturday morning before I received the call from his team, I took Chase for early blood work and it was freezing, rainy, and dark. When I voiced worry and weather-complaining words, Chase said this, and it feels timely: 

“Mom, don’t worry. Jesus has lighted our way in the dark. He will do it again. It will be okay.”

And really…there’s no better reminder: He is light in the darkness and peace in the wait. It is well with our souls and our wait.

So we’ll sit with this a while longer…

Moment by moment. 

While my plan is to keep a chipper attitude and show God that I am a good student so he will bring my waiting to a close, God wants something even better for me. Rather than end my waiting, he wants to bless my waiting.”

Betsy Childs Howard, Seasons Of Waiting
[Chase wearing my glasses to make us laugh]

When Easy Is A Lie

Two years and a lifetime ago…

It was in the middle of a vortex of cold air sweeping through the January winter, the days dark and frigid, when we got the news. The results of the biopsy were in.

It was cancer. 

Again. 

In those first minutes, we reeled even though in a strange way, we had been expecting it. And in those first weeks, we heard one sentence stated a dozen ways and we believed it:

“This is the easy cancer”. 

In a way, this is a clinically supportable thought. The sheer number of days spent in the hospital, the number of moments we walked to the edge of life and back when Chase was two and fighting brain cancer – it doesn’t even compare. And yet…

Today is the second anniversary of Chase’s second cancer – a cancer that still sits in his body, making it outlast the actual time his brain cancer sat throughout his body by a good eight months. And these two years have been heartbreaking and complicated in so many unexpected ways.

You see, the problem with the word “easy” is that it is an immeasurable concept. There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to the complicated complexities put before each of us. And the use of those types of words always end up pushing me down and hollowing me out. 

If it was supposed to be easy and it doesn’t feel that way, then there must be something wrong with me, right? 

And then I take those wrong, hard thoughts into the day with me and I walk into the processing, the tears and the pain not only unprepared, but feeling inadequate in all ways – because it wasn’t supposed to be this way. It was supposed to be “easy”.

And perhaps that’s the true cruelty of that word – “easy” – when life isn’t (and it almost never is), then my focus invariably turns to that second phrase:

“it wasn’t supposed to be this way”. 

But very few things from the start of the world were ever supposed to be this way .

“Easy” makes us sit with our doubts.

“Easy” is ripe ground for seeds of discontentment.

“Easy” is sorrow incarnate when it comes to the table of suffering.

There is no easy. 

Dear ones, I believe with my whole heart there is only ordained.

And it’s in relinquishing the “easy” word that I find peace. …not in this life, to be sure, but in hope. 

With hope, the hard melts and reshapes. It never disappears. Life is hard and broken and will be until I see Jesus with my own eyes. But hope is the banquet at the table of suffering.

Hope is rich and beautiful even when the tears are rolling down my face and my heart is crying out “two years of this that was supposed to be easy…?!” 

Hope holds me up when I weaken.

Hope comforts me when I weep. 

Hope means purpose even in cancer … and second cancers.

So throw out the thoughts of “easy” with all its frustration and futility and “What’s wrong with me?” questions.

And hold on to hope with all of it’s “God is good even here” truths. It won’t be easy, but then again, “easy” was never a part of the story. And what a story it is…

Moment by moment.

“Why am I discouraged? Why is my heart so sad? I will put my hope in God…”

“…each day the Lord pours his unfailing love upon me.”

Psalm 43:5a, 42:8a

Weeds and Worry

There is a patch of dirt that lies under the front windows of our little blue and brick house. It borders the sidewalk that runs from the door to the driveway and in this place, beneath the shallow layer of dirt lies very old concrete. And on top of the concrete are small landscaping stones long buried. Very little grows in this small place besides weeds. The weeds come every year no matter what I do, and they drive me a little crazy, because I like things clean and neat and orderly – especially when life feels anything but… 

So each summer, sooner or later, I can be found on my hands and knees on the front walk, shoveling mulch and declaring war against new weeds. 

This summer, not so very long ago, I was in the middle of my little war, hands stiff and crusting with that dried dirt feeling, when Chase came over to me.

He was out of breath from riding his bike and he doubled over next to where I crouched, his hands on his knees, arms stiff. 

“Why are you worrying about this, Mom?”

I was not into this parenting moment, my voice pulling short like the torn roots in my hands. “Because, Chase.” 

I reached for another weed, trying not to think about how tired he sounded from a normal activity, how white his skin looked despite the warm sun that should make it rosy from exertion.

“Mom…” His small hand landed on my shoulder then. His voice too old for his body. “Mom, don’t worry about the weeds.”

I can never resist his heart to reassure, my own melting at his words even as I stubbornly fought to explain. “Chase, this is part of my job…part of how I care for our house and our family.” 

Could he not see how much I needed just one thing to be right, to go right, to line up in that moment?

He shook his head. “But Mom, sometimes there are weeds in life and it’s okay. Don’t worry about them. Just take a deep breath. It’ll be okay. Don’t worry about the weeds, Mom.”

Sometimes things aren’t the way we want them to be. The dirt patches of life feel too small, too clogged, too messy.

We toil and weep and things still crop up over …and over again.

Like weeds…

Like fear… 

Like doubt…

It’s easy to get on our hands and knees over these places; to obsess. 

But as Chase said… it’s okay, dear ones. At the end of the day, these weeds are a futility and not the ultimate focus. So weep, but don’t obsess, because there is a better rest to be had. Get up off your hands and knees and give the uprooted pieces to the One who can handle them better, best and forever …and take a deep breath. 

Do you feel His hand on your shoulder?

Moment by moment. 

“But when I am afraid, I will put my trust in You.”

Psalm 56:3 (NLT)

**On Wednesday, October 14th, Chase will be undergoing a bone marrow biopsy. Thank you for your prayers, dear ones. MbM.**

Eight Years

Ever since 2012, July 31st has been the hardest of lovely days to us because it ripped us apart and then stands to remind us every year that we are all still breathing. Because eight years ago, on July 31st, an emergency room doctor was walking into Chase’s room with tears in his eyes, speaking the words over us that changed everything:

“There’s a large mass.”

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

A few days before this strange anniversary day, Darcy and I were walking, trying to carve out a minute to ourselves, talking through the date, the memories, and how it still – even these eight years later – carves us open. [She, this sister girl child that we -perhaps foolishly in our own fear- told to stay in her bed in the dark, is a fourteen year old high school freshman and the sight of flashing lights outside her bedroom window as she curled powerless and scared still hold a vivid place in her mind.] But as Darcy and I walked, talked and processed again, Margaret pulled alongside us. She literally pulled alongside us in her car as we walked and she drove by and as we talked, friend Margaret, a wonderfully gifted photographer, smiled and said lovingly:

“We should take pictures. Eight years is a big deal and we should make it special this way.”

And so, a day later, we gathered at the local park, just Margaret, the kids, and me, and she walked them through a few minutes of life, with her words giving them grace and her camera catching them as they moved. 
There were no showers, no hair cuts, no scrubbing up and making beautiful. Chase insisted it be “Cubs theme” and we just grabbed (hopefully clean) clothes out of drawers and went with it. 

And suddenly, the shadow of late July lifted for a moment. We put aside the awful memories we experienced those eight years ago, and lived in the joy that is having eight whole years when you didn’t think you’d have any. 
The perspective changed through the lens of a camera and a moment of stolen time.

We see the heartbreak, yes. Always.
But we choose joy. 

And sometimes it takes someone pulling alongside you to catch the light a certain way and hand it to you when you need it most. 

So here’s to eight years.
I will never stop being both horrified and amazed at this life of grace we’ve been given.

“Whatever may pass and whatever lies before me… let me be singing when the evening comes.”

10,000 Reasons (Bless The Lord), Matt Redman

Thank you for walking alongside us, dear ones. 
Moment by moment. 

[Please enjoy these beautiful, candid gifts that Margaret Henry Photography gave us this week ]