“What does the title “Imperfect Birds” mean?

It’s a line from a poem by Rumi. The line is ‘Each must enter the nest made by the other imperfect birds’, and it’s really about how these kind of scraggly, raggedy nests that are our lives are the sanctuary for other people to step into, and that if you want to see the divine, you really step into the absolute ordinary. When you’re at your absolutely most lost and dejected … where do you go? You go to the nests left by other imperfect birds, you find other people who’ve gone through it. You find the few people you can talk to about it.”–Anne Lamott, from Writer’s Digest May/June 2010

We made it. Danica is tucked in bed next to me in a room at The Believe in Tomorrow House in Baltimore Maryland. We can see the Charlotte R. Bloomberg Children’s Center at Johns Hopkins from our second floor window. She and I flew from Akron-Canton into Reagan National yesterday. Dan and Delaney drove the turnpike and timed it perfectly to swing by the airport, pick us up and drive to Baltimore. We had a good family night at a hotel near the inner harbor. We were able to meet up with some of Dan’s Maryland family earlier today, and Laney left to spend a few days with her aunt and uncle and cousins here.

This evening we had a beautiful meal prepared by a mother and her daughters who choose to come once a month and feed the parents and children staying here. (If you are a family with healthy kids who need a little perspective find a local Ronald McDonald House or something similar and volunteer there. You will walk away grateful and inspired.) Danica was so excited for the homemade ziti to come out of the oven. Our room is right off the kitchen. I was already in my pajamas. A woman I’d briefly met earlier in the afternoon was waiting too. She began to ask about why we are here and about Danica’s surgery. My throat was sore, and I was beyond tired. In my head I was thinking, “I just can’t tell our story right now, and I certainly can’t ask you about yours.” But I did. If you know me you understand this is where I believe the “thousand things” are happening. This woman is from Seattle and here alone with her fifteen year old son. He is in the hospital on a ventilator. He got a simple cold virus that spread to his spinal cord…something like polio. It paralyzed him from the neck down. They expect to be here several months at least. She was hungry for someone to listen. I leaned in. As different as our children’s medical conditions are and the reasons we are here we are much the same. Our conversation moved through the issues we face and the emotions behind them. This is the real beauty of respite homes like this. They not only ease the financial burden of hotels with a minimal fee, but they offer close proximity to the hospital, home cooked meals, laundry and places for the kids to relax besides your room. Most of all they offer a community of others who are looking for a nest as imperfect as their own where they can rest awhile. Lying here in the dark I’m worn so thin you could see straight through me. I’ve been following Danica’s lead. Her courage amazes me. I’m being more careful about showing my fear and sadness around her the closer we get to Wednesday. I didn’t realize how badly I needed to rest in this woman’s messy nest too.

Some of my dearest friends are mothers of children who have Ehlers-Danlos and Chiari. They are waging their own health battles and having surgeries while searching for the best care and fighting for the most whole life for their loves. We are spread across the United States. Our lives intersect in person occasionally at the same hospitals or doctor’s offices while traveling to see the few experts who understand these complex diagnoses. Most of the time we support one another online. We have private message boards and email and text. We mail #pentopaper and care packages. We laugh and we cry about the specific brand of hard we’ve been given. We are one another’s life saving pit crew. We are one another’s heroes. Jodi Picoult wrote in Second Glances:

“Heroes don’t leap tall buildings or stop bullets with an outstretched hand; they don’t wear boots and capes. They bled, and they bruised, and their superpowers were as simple as listening, or loving. Heroes were ordinary people who knew that even if their own lives were impossibly knotted, they could untangle someone else’s. And maybe that one act could lead someone to rescue you right back.”

As Danica and I were closing up the house to leave yesterday I walked Twixie one last time and peeked in the mailbox. Our mail was supposed to stop Wednesday, but apparently the postal carrier hadn’t gotten the message yet. I was meant to get the letters waiting there. There was wisdom and encouragement from my ninety-four year old grandmother, a beautiful card from my older sister, a letter from a younger hero I adore and precious words from a kindred friend I met at The High Calling Retreat two years ago. Cindee and her children were just being diagnosed with EDS and Dysautonomia, several of the many comorbid conditions we share. I’d been baptized by the fire for years. God brought us to the Texas hill country to sit in one another’s nests for awhile. Since our meeting she’s co-founded Chronic Joy, non profit ministry whose mission is: “Radical hope. Compassionate change. Equipping those affected by chronic physical and mental illness through community and education rooted in Jesus Christ.” She wrote and published Discovering Hope, a beautiful handbook for those who are suffering from chronic illness and the people who love them. I was humbled to write the foreword to this book. Her letter sits with me now as I hide in the tiny bathroom to find some light.

“I ache for your weariness…for your mama heart that has to be strong for your little that is going through so much and longs to salve, solve, shield, comfort, cheer lead, encourage and love on, yet alternately has to endure, cajole, persuade, swallow down, smile through the pain…I have no easy words, no quick solution, because we both know those fell away long, long ago. So I lift you up on the wings of prayer and hold you close and write these books, design the images, follow the call of this ministry for US, for our precious kids…because it matters, because WE matter. Every heartbeat. Every moment. Every breath…”

Danica will have an invasive test called a CT myelogram tomorrow. She will be under anesthesia and have dye injected into her spinal cord to give the surgeons the best image of the drain stuck in the fourth ventricle of her brain. Dan and I will give her up to strangers and let them take her away while we sit and wait and pray. Please pray with us. The risk of a spinal fluid leak is real. I’ve had a leak after a lumbar puncture producing the worst headache of my life. Please pray she will have peace as we get her settled and come out safely and more confident about Wednesday because of making it through this difficult procedure.

To all the imperfect birds who have invited me into your nest or come to sit in mine, I thank God for you. I pray circles around you and your families. You make me braver.

“Nurturing friendships is hard enough when everyone is healthy. But when you show up and do the work of being a friend to someone who is suffering, it will cost you something. In other words, you’re going to have to sacrifice your comfort, your schedule and maybe even aspects of your faith.”–Kara Tippetts

We are three days in, and it’s already been a week of hard. Monday I had my stitches removed. If you are a facebook friend I’m sure you cringed at my “over sharing” photo. (Please remember that at least half my “friends” are people who are walking through similar surgeries and recoveries. We celebrate healing no matter how gnarly, and our wounds are truly the places where light filters to our souls.) During the same visit Danica had her pre-op labs drawn and other tests for screening. Her last needle experience in Cincinnati was brutal with several failed IV attempts for a CT with contrast. She was anxious. As much as we talked about how this blood draw was a quick stick with no straw and a much smaller needle she lost her courage when it came time. Both of us showed our needle PTSD. It was ugly. It took the doctor, two nurses and myself to hold her down to try to get a stick, but she jerked, and we missed. She was sobbing. I was sobbing. I left the room for a minute to tell God He got this all wrong. “I CAN’T WATCH HER SUFFER AGAIN.” I was really thinking how impossible this was going to be. We are headed for brain and spinal surgery, and we can’t get through a needle stick. I came back in and moved from the completely understanding and comforting ally to get tougher on her. We had to get through this. We switched to the other arm, held her at four corners, and I began to pray over her. “Jesus, Calm Danica’s heart. Help us stick this vein.” We got it. On our way out our dear doctor hugged us both. She knows how fragile I am from my recent surgery. She’s walked the long road with me for over six years. She knows how impossible all this seems, especially right now. Her hug validated all those things and then said, “You can do this!”

Afterward my dad took us to Chic-fil-A and then to Danica’s special hair appointment where she had the underneath of her head shaved and a purple stripe added for Chiari. It was sad and fun all at the same time. Every step makes November 30th more real. We are all feeling the weight of it.

I had my every six week maintenance chemo drip yesterday. It was painful to sit in the chair for over eight hours with my neck in such spasm. By mid bag I begin to feel oh so sick and the deep bone ache began from the inside out. Last night I was exhausted but could not sleep because of the steroids, the hurt and how sick my tummy gets. I was up and down, up and down…finally I gave up trying to rest. Around 4 am I slipped out to the cold, dark living room and picked up the book “Just Show Up: The Dance of Walking Through Suffering Together” by dear Kara Tippetts and her friend Jill Lynn Buteyn. My friend Kristin had given it to me in January of this year. At the time I skimmed and shelved it. I brought it out to read at chemo but didn’t have the energy. I finally read it cover to cover this morning with a pen and a highlighter. I got out old school college ruled notebook paper and wrote Kristin a long letter stained with some tears.

Kristin is my friend from Denver who first loved us when she heard God telling her to “Drain it.” (If you’ve never heard this story before you’ve got to read it!) We worked remotely for the same company based in Northern Virginia. I’d only briefly met her twice face to face when I’d traveled to Virginia for work functions and a third time when she came to visit me after one of my surgeries in Maryland before she moved to Colorado. I often say we are the least likely of friends. We are different in many ways. All my life I’d found friends who were almost mirror images of myself. This was someone I could learn from in a whole new way. We became close. She became the person who made me laugh out loud when no one else could. She allowed just enough whining before kicking my butt with the perfect amount of tough love. Even though we live very far from one another she has consistently found ways to “show up” for my family and I. Last October we took a very special girl’s trip to Galveston, TX to celebrate me turing forty. It was the first time we’d spent quality time together in the flesh. We shared hearts. I learned more about her walks with a former fiance’ and her dad who both fought and lost cancer wars. I understood more about how she knew what so many people simply can’t when it comes to loving someone in chronic suffering. When I found out about my emergency surgery she immediately called and said she was coming. She flew to spend a week with me in the hotel after my hospital discharge. It wasn’t easy for her to find care for her children or for her husband to handle all the details while she was gone. He told her “Go be the hands and feet.” (Seriously, this guy lets her obey God and “drain it” and now this. Corey, you are Jesus in skin.)

Kristin hasn’t been feeling well for some time. It’s strange how long and hard we have to look to find what becomes glaring when it’s finally seen. I hugged her in the parking lot of the Dulles Virginia Residence Inn on October 28th as the sun began to rise. She flew home and went to a doctor’s appointment on Monday to explore a lump. Two days later she had a CT that screamed malignant tumor. A week later she had a biopsy that named it. She has cancer. Big cancer. I checked flights to Denver. I wanted to go so badly, if only to ring her doorbell and hug her again. Neck healing be damned. I should have hugged her harder and longer.

This giving and receiving thing still seems so complicated to me. I’m proud. After all this time, I still really want to become independent again. I want to pay all our debt on our own merit. I want to go back to work and save the day. I want to disappear off this screen and be a person who shows up in flesh and blood for others. I want to bring you dinner, or clean your bathroom or fly across the United States to care for you post-op. But I can barely put my own socks on. I can’t drive now and maybe never will again. I’m disabled in all the ways I think the world needs me…in all the ways you, my friends and family, need me. I’m humbled over and over again. I even fight it with my own parents. I fight it with my husband and my children. They see me wincing through a smile. They see me faking it but hear me saying I’m not. I want to find my worth again in their lives too. Everything in this world screams this is by doing. What if you can’t do? What if you can only be?

Like Kara Tippetts I’d like to be known as a “keeper and grower of friendships, a tender nurturer of those around” me even in my suffering. Stripped of all the trappings of what I do for a living, where I live, what I wear or plans for any future I am left with a worn chair in the corner of a living room where I sit and read and write and pray. I pray circles. I mail words. I pray circles. I’d like to believe this is a kind of showing up too…a kind of giving. I’d like to believe BEING in Jesus really is enough. There’s my word again. Dayenu. More than enough.

Kara was dying as she finished writing “Just Show Up.” The way she lived and died impacted the hearts and lives of thousands and thousands of people because she wasn’t afraid of the one thing that remains when everything else falls away. She wasn’t afraid of community. She wasn’t afraid to give and receive. Some of her last written words were these:

“Friends, Community. It is the only way to know and be known. It’s where we see our own humanity and frailty, our gifts and our weaknesses. When we show up for one another, we invade each other in love and become witnesses to the truth that trials and sickness and pain are not the whole story. There’s more. So much more. We can remind one another that our lives are not a mistake. And, most importantly, that we are loved with an everlasting love.”

I’m four weeks out from surgery today. Two weeks away from my baby girl’s huge operation. I am healing slowly. Anything I do jeopardizes what we just tried to accomplish. This surgery can’t be repeated. It HAS to be the last time inside my cervical spine. I HAVE to find a way to ask for and receive specific help. I spent a lot of time in bed on heat after Dan and the girls left for work and school. Chemo recovery day is hard. I still had many phone calls and follow ups to accomplish. And my lists of things to do in the next week and a half before we leave for Baltimore seemed to grow longer not shorter. Around 1 pm I got up to make my family their favorite chicken casserole. It sounds simple, right? I reached down for the large Corning Ware dish. I reached down for the heavy Calphalon pan to boil the water for the stuffing. I bent over to put the chicken in the big pan in the oven. I reached up to get a mixing bowl for the sour cream and soup mixture. I leaned back down to get the chicken out of the oven and then cut it in little pieces. I lifted the large bowl to dump the ingredients and mix them. I lifted the stuffing pan and my wrist slipped out of joint as I scattered the stuffing on top. What if this one meal…this one personal act of love and assertion of independence ruined something? My neck was screaming. Now there were dirty dishes. The dishwasher was full and clean. This is rare. Usually Dan runs it each night and empties it each morning. I have no business reaching in and out of a dishwasher ever. But I did. Doesn’t a sink full of dirty pots and pans and a full dishwasher negate the encouragement I was trying to give by making the meal? So I emptied it.

My girls came home. Danica had homework to make up from Monday. She had a lovely gift bag from a teacher at school. We went through the things. Of course I needed to find a journal to begin a list of gratitude. The mail came. There was a box from my dear friend in Wisconsin with things for Danica. We went through the things. My body was howling, but I kept a cheerful face and spirit for my girl. We added the gifts to the gratitude journal. I took the cardboard to the recycling bin in the garage and sat down to wail.

I need help. We need help. I’ve pushed your offers away, because I wanted to do these weeks cozied here as a family. I did work on a list of specific ways you can help during and after Danica’s surgery, but I kind’ve wanted to keep you out of this part. It’s ugly. I’m ugly. I’m in full on lament. I realized this afternoon I cannot even pack for this kind of trip. I need help.

I got on my knees and with no head bowing ever again I prayed for God to help me ask and receive. I begged Him to help me be honest and detailed about how others can help and trust Him to fill the slots.

The next post will be this ask. Humbly, I will ask you to “just show up.”