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Imperfect Birds. A Team Danica-Monica Update

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Imperfect Birds
“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.

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Just Show Up. Part Two. The Ask. How You Can Help. A Team Danica-Monica Update

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Galveston angel2

“I’d like to say we had to learn the art of receiving, and we did, no doubt. But the longer we’ve walked through this season of suffering, we’ve seen that those two words, giving and receiving, get blurred in Jesus. We have received so much from others, but I believe if you were to ask them, they’d say they’ve been on the receiving end. It’s funny, isn’t it? When weakness and vulnerability are the foundation, It seems like everyone wins…It IS somuch easier to give than receive. It’s just plain hard to receive, and even harder to ask.”–Kara Tippetts

I’ve slowly learned that vague requests for help and well meaning broad offers of help are often lost on one another. “Call me if you need something” becomes a very hard way for a person in need to reach out. What if I ask for something you can’t provide, don’t have time or energy to provide or in the swirling ache of so many needy relationships aren’t compelled to provide because God is calling you to serve someone else in another way?

“Offering specifics not only gives the opportunity to serve in an area we’re gifted in but also allows people to begin to ask for help more easily.”

My dear friend, Janet Morris, has offered to be our care coordinator over the next few months. If at anytime you have questions or personal ways you want to reach out to us she can be reached at MonicaDanicaHelp@gmail.com. I will be using this blog as a place to clearly communicate with you, our tribe, on how you can serve us as we walk through the next few months. This is an overview here, but it may change because so many things are truly unknown. If you are interested in following along please subscribe for updates.

Pre-surgery
From now until we leave for Baltimore, Saturday, November 26

Our primary need is financial.
Donations can be made at the Team Danica-Monica GoFundMe now and throughout our trip. They can be mailed to 3195 Rockingham St. NW Uniontown, OH 44685. Know if you are mailing a check our mail will be stopped Wednesday, November 23rd, and we will not receive anything until we return several weeks later.

Dan has three paid days left and the rest of his time off will be unpaid FMLA. Insurance premiums will still need to be deducted. He is covered for 12 months and will need to take other unpaid time for post-op trips until his PTO time reloads at the end of March. Danica has out of network deductible and out of pocket costs that must be met prior to surgery. January 1 all our deductibles start again and care is cash pay until they are met. Danica’s first post-op will require expensive scans and be early January. We have a hotel reserved for several weeks but are praying for an opening at the Believe in Tomorrow house across the street from the children’s hospital. Please pray about this! Additional trip costs include gas, tolls, food, parking, post-op meds and wound care supplies and airfare for Danica and I home.

Requests: Beginning this coming Sunday, November 20th, we ask that no one just DROPS BY to visit. We will be having our family Thanksgiving on Sunday since Dan is working Thanksgiving Day and the Friday after. We need the last week to love on one another, pack and prepare. We are also trying to protect from any illness. If you have a gift or something to drop please leave it on the porch and let me know by text if you have my number or email Janet at MonicaDanicaHelp@gmail.com, and she will let us know.

I have a distinct need of having someone help me pack next week. It is a physically hard task with much to consider not knowing how long we will be gone. I cannot be bending or reaching or folding at all. As uncomfortable as I am with just sitting there giving direction I know this is one way I must humble myself.

There are several home items that I have been trying to take care of. We have a broken windowpane in the back of the house where the mower threw a rock. It is double pane so the house is secure, but I’m concerned weather between the panes will ruin the window frame. I have a vague appointment scheduled on Monday for someone to come give me an estimate. They have already not showed once. I’m hoping to schedule a repair and would need someone to meet them here if this happens while we are gone.

I have resisted offers for meals since returning from surgery. My girls eat when they get home from school and Dan much later when he gets home from work. I haven’t been eating much at all. It is also difficult for me to engage at drop off. Corralling our little Twix, opening the door and even chatting for a minute is stressful. My compulsion to have a washed face and clean pajamas on makes it worse. Clearly, my masochistic casserole behavior today is not a great alternative. I don’t want to set up a meal schedule for the remainder of our time, but if you would like to feed us please let me know.

During Surgery and Hospitalization
From Saturday, November 26th-mid December

Our primary need is PRAYER! Please set a reminder to pray and ask others to pray.
Danica has two days of pre-surgical tests and appointments beginning Monday, November 28th. Her surgery is scheduled for Wednesday, November 30th at Johns Hopkins Medical Center in the Bloomberg Children’s Center. It is a long and big surgery that will last 4-6 hours at least. They will be taking part of her rib to use for fusion material. One neurosurgeon will be going into the brain to try to remove a drain that was left there in her last surgery. A spinal neurosurgeon will try to remove the broken hardware he can to make her safe without disturbing the fusion with embedded hardware in her skull base and lower cervical area. Then they will refuse what is needed with the bone slurry made with her rib graft and new hardware. Danica’s head is full of foreign stuff like a cerebellar sling holding her brain stem up, a wire mesh between her brain work and bone work, the drain in her fourth ventricle that poses a danger and the rare broken hardware. After surgery she will spend several days in the PICU and then be moved to a neuro floor for up to a week if all goes well. We will then be discharged to a hotel until she can have an additional post-op appointment and wound check.

Requests: While we are in Baltimore: PLEASE do not send flowers or balloons to the hospital. They are not allowed in the PICU. They make me very ill. Children are often moved to multiple rooms during their hospital stay. Moving all that stuff can be cumbersome. Those of us present will make sure Danica receives cheer. If you would like to give something to Danica you can gift itunes or amazon cards by sending ecards to mkayesnyder@gmail.com. Danica and I will be listening to audible books and when she is able she has a tablet to watch movies or play games or music on.

I will be updating my personal Facebook, the GoFundMe and blog daily if possible. There is always someone coming in and out of a hospital room day and night. This is grueling especially as the main advocate. I will not be taking personal phone calls or answering text and emails everyday. Please leave your love and prayers, and I will share with Danica and Dan and respond when I can. My silence means I am focused on Danica’s care and support.

Return Home
Sometime the second week of December or later
I will post our homecoming information when we know.

I am still not able to drive, and Danica will be homebound as well. Dan will return to work immediately. Delaney has rides to and from school scheduled. I have a list of people willing to help if something falls through.

Needs

Meals. There will be a “Take Them A Meal” site established and shared once we know our return date. We are eating very simple and healthy. Look for likes/dislikes and special requests on the site when you sign up. We will only need meals a few times a week.

Groceries. I am trying to use the Giant Eagle Market Place service of ordering groceries online and they will be ready for pick up for Dan. If I have a specific need for shopping I will share.

Non grocery items.
This is the single most exhausting part of our shopping. Dan works all week and then cleans the house, does laundry, yard work and shopping on the weekends. We buy all our paper, cleaning and beauty products at Target. I try to go along with Dan on these trips. There will be a “Sign Up Genius” site established and shared once we know our return date. It will list specific needs in this area. This is true gift to Dan especially.

These sites are helpful because you and I can see when a need is met.
I’m sure there will be other things that come up we need help with. I will share here.

Christmas

We may return just a week or so before Christmas. Many of you have already asked for a list of things the girls might need or want. We are grateful. I will not be able to do much shopping. My one greatest joy and their favorite part of our Christmas tradition is stockings. I will have someone take me out to do these myself or order things online. In the interest of no duplicates for their wishes I have created an account at “Gifster”. It is an open account named “Snyder Christmas.” I will add in the notes who the gift is for, actual web links and any sizes or colors, etc. Amazon cards are always wonderful, because we can buy for the girls there and find almost anything. PLEASE do not have these gifts shipped to our home until we return from Baltimore. If it’s something that has a longer shipping time or you just want to get it done and off your to do list please email Janet, and she can share an address where it can be shipped and later delivered to us.

Closer to Christmas I will need help wrapping gifts. This is very hard on the neck and back.

Requests: Please do not buy a lot of things for us. Our greatest wish this season is to be back together in our home. Advent is a special tradition we celebrate daily as a family. We will miss the first few weeks of this treasured time where we nightly light candles, read and sing together and focus on the real meaning of Christmas. It is wonderful for the girls to have a few gifts to open, but a greater gift is financial assistance to pay bills, continue access to care and the resources to perhaps create special memories once healing has occurred. Delaney has a band trip to Disney in February and a Chicago trip in March for school. She is doing her own fundraisers locally with the other students, but she is asking for money to put towards the trips. This brings lasting joy and something for her to look forward to. She is often the “forgotten one” in all this hard.

Danica and I are looking forward to hearing Christa Wells along with Jess Ray and Taylor Leonhardt sing and play during their “Three Little Birds” concert tomorrow night at a intimate church in Akron. It’s a push for us, but I know it will fill some empty places in our hearts.

For every one of you who have given…are giving, have served…are serving, this Christa Wells song is for you. We need one another. We are sisters and brothers. You make us more than we are alone. Thank you.

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The Quiet Time. The Waiting Time. A Team Danica Update

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Waiting
YOU keep us waiting.
You, the God of all time,
Want us to wait
For the right time in which to discover
Who we are, where we are to go,
Who will be with us, and what we must do.
So thank you … for the waiting time. –John Bell, quoted in The Westminster Collection of Christian Prayers

Friday marked 37 days since I pulled my car over and talked in detail with the Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon about Danica’s broken hardware and cervical instability. We picked a “tentative” surgery date of October 12th. I broke up with Cincinnati Children’s. And then it was quiet. We know all too well how difficult it is to get the OR for such a long period of time with all the right people scheduled, especially two head neurosurgeons who have different clinic and surgery days. Because the doctor is brand new to Hopkins he had to order special equipment, something in particular for Danica’s difficult operation, as well as the instrumentation for her new fusion. I guess it makes sense you don’t take a position at one of the best hospitals in the world and then waltz in and use whatever stuff they have. I keep saying something breezy like, “God’s got it on His calendar!” But we’ve been getting antsy, and I’m wanting to orchestrate the hundred things that can only be planned after we have a firm date. You can imagine my “beautiful mind” notebook, right?

My dear friend Kris Camealy has written a new Advent devotional titled Come Lord Jesus: The Weight of Waiting. I began reading an advanced copy the same week we made the decision about the surgeon and hospital for Danica’s surgery. Oh how I needed the disciplined walk through holy anticipation of God’s good plan of salvation through the birth of Jesus Christ. Every day of the Advent journey is deeply rooted in Scripture. I’ve gone back to read the passages again and again. I began to realize. God is not asking me to do nothing in the wait. He is asking me to prepare my heart and mind. He is asking me to humble myself and sit in hopeful and trusting expectation. He is asking me to believe He will work His purpose perfectly in the fullness of time…His time and not mine. If a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years is like a day then a month can definitely feel like two thousand years! He is asking me to believe He is there in the silence. (I will be posting about Come Lord Jesus again when it officially releases on October 16th and doing a giveaway!)

During another difficult waiting season in my life my friend Violet send me these words written by Oswald Chambers:

“God’s silences are His answers…Can God trust you…or are you still asking for a visible answer?…His silence is the sign that He is bringing you into a marvelous understanding of Himself…You will find that God has trusted you in the most intimate way possible, with an absolute silence, not of despair, but of pleasure…If God has given you a silence, praise Him, He is bringing you into the great run of His purposes.”

I already see the beautiful things He’s providing in this quiet time of waiting. With no firm surgery date I have been able to just be with Dan and my girls. I was able to celebrate Delaney’s fourteenth birthday doing “normal” mom things like taking her and her friends to try on formal dresses and out to eat. The first month of her freshman year of high school I was not just physically here but fully present. It has made all the difference. Just the simple stability of picking Delaney and Danica up from school every day has created calm in all of us. I was able to schedule new family pictures and actually follow through. I’ve mostly stayed off my computer and phone and snuggled, read books and had long talks with my Dani J. We celebrated Danica’s ninth birthday with her friends this weekend and will have cake and presents as a family tonight. There are barely traces of frantic Monica, because there was nothing I could do but WAIT and live real life in the quiet instead of holding my breath. This is Grace.

I canceled my Friday, October 7th scan and appointment in Charlottesville, Virginia with the vascular neurosurgeon who placed my VP shunt in April. The logistics of flying there are much more expensive and trying to navigate the several hours from there to DC without being able to rent a car and drive myself are just too difficult. My shunt is working beautifully, and I have continued to have complete relief from pressure headaches and symptoms. It rained buckets last week. I’ve been overwhelmed realizing what a true gift my surgery was. I never could have continued to fight for this relief without all of you praying and encouraging and donating. You didn’t give up. Thank you. We suffer gratitude. I will keep on thanking you because there is nothing else I know to do.

I am keeping a long standing appointment in Maryland with my neurosurgeon on Monday, October 10th. I am suffering increasing neck pain and symptoms. There is definitely spinal cord compression. If Danica’s surgery had remained on the 12th I would have needed to cancel my own scan and consult. I’ve wondered if I could even make it through being Danica’s advocate and caregiver during surgery, hospitalization and long recovery in the pain I’m in. Much like my emergency hysterectomy before her last big surgery I see God making a way for me to put on my own oxygen mask first. The plan is for me fly to DC this coming Sunday, the 9th. I will have my upright flexion and extension MRI and see my neurosurgeon on Monday and fly home that evening. I’m secretly praying if I need a one or two level fusion he would keep me and just do it even though I have no idea how my family would function here if that happened or how we would financially do it. I would be a much better mom to Danica in post op mode with more stability and less pain. Will you please pray specifically for this trip? I also have all day chemotherapy tomorrow. The new treatment plan is for me to have a full bag of Rituxin every six weeks indefinitely. Over the past week or so I have begun getting the blisters back on my hands and feet and my eye and legs have been twitching. These are always the first signs infection is ramping back up. Will you please pray this chemo will suppress the fires and be a long term answer, so I can completely avoid plasmapheresis? It is always healing, never being healed.

Before Danica’s big surgery six years ago Dan and I both read Tony Woodlief’s book Somewhere More Holy. (I can’t recommend this book enough.) I pulled it off the shelf to read again, and these words settled in my aching places:

“We have forgotten the God of small things, which is mostly what He has been with us because we ourselves are small, fragile things. We wait impatiently, sometimes hopelessly, for the burning-bush God, or the booming thunderclap God, forgetting that even a righteous man like Job covered before the whirlwind of God’s voice, that holy Moses could bear only a glimpse of God’s backside. We assume that we would hold up well against a visitation by the whirlwind God, and in our narcissistic longing we forget the God of the still, small voice, the suffering-servant God, the God who said of children that His kingdom consists of such as these. ‘Part of the inner world of everyone,’ writes Frederick Buechner, ‘is this sense of emptiness, unease, incompleteness, and I believe that this in itself is a word from God, that this is the sound that God’s voice makes in a world that has explained Him away. In such a world, I suspect that God maybe speaks to us most clearly through His silence, His absence, so that we know Him best through our missing Him.’”

I did finally get THE call from the Hopkins neurosurgeon late Friday afternoon. I met a friend for coffee yesterday, and I broke down for the first time. I realized I’ve been holding everything really close in the silence and the waiting. As sure as it was time to be quiet and still, I now need safe places to lament the hard that’s coming.

When I make the call to Baltimore today to officially reschedule everything will change. My body will leave my skin. My brain will leave my head. My heart will leave my chest. I will stop eating and sleeping well. Everything will become fast forward. Nothing will change about my God.

This morning my family left for school and work, and I sat remembering one of my favorite passages about waiting: “‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘Therefore I have hope in Him.’ The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the person who seeks Him. It is good that he waits silently for the salvation of the Lord.”–Lamentations 3:24-26 I prayed for strength to do each next thing and for complete surrender and dependence on my good God.

His Hope will not disappoint.
Our Hope remains.

This song from All Sons and Daughters album Poets and Saints is on repeat.

You’ll notice a few changes here on my site. I’ve added a specific place for Team Danica posts. If you subscribe at the top you will receive updates in your email. So many of you are asking about next steps and what we need. I don’t have specific answers for you. I plan to mail prayer cards to those of you who’ve faithfully prayed and supported us once we have the true surgery date.

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Pen to Paper. A Challenge. A Giveaway

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pentopaperwords
“One comfort that I relish is a letter from a close friend. The surprise of the letter in the day’s mail, the recognition of her handwriting on the envelope, the ritual of getting settled into my chair and reading and rereading her carefully chosen words.”–Deborah Chappell

pentopapergiveaway

I painted our ugly black metal mailbox white and used blue paint to stencil a flower and the numbers 309 on it. 309 Hoover Street in Staunton, Virginia was the first place I began to send and receive #pentopaper cards and letters. We left Ohio when I was five years old. My first grade teacher, Mrs Cobb, who would later be Delaney’s third grade teacher and is now Danica’s third grade teacher, became a pen pal when we moved away. I’d sit on the front porch swing waiting. The mail truck would stop at our house, and I would leap barefoot over the sprawling roots of the maple tree to check and see if there was a letter for me. Soon after I began collecting stamps. Every year for Christmas I would ask for the USPS Philatelic book containing every stamp released that year. A life long obsession with cards and stationary took hold as well, and I began collecting all kinds of paper. Most of all I began a love of slow, thoughtful back and forth conversations written by hand.

If you know me personally you have most likely received a #pentopaper from me. It’s been a priority most of my life, but when I became very sick I struggled with losing the ability to minister in any active way. I began setting aside a day a week to look through my address book, my facebook friends and church directory and mail cards and letters to touch base, encourage or celebrate people. I took the opportunity to pray specifically for each person I wrote. In a world where we primarily follow and respond to one another’s lives in seconds on social media or text messages if someone is very close to us, there is something incredibly intimate about receiving a letter touched by someone’s own hands, written in their unique style and penmanship, envelope licked by their tongue and carried to their own mailbox. They push the flag up as if to say, “Stop here! I have a piece of love to send today.” I’m fascinated with the logistics of the postal service. People complain about the price of stamps, but I still marvel for under fifty cents I can write you a letter, mail it from Ohio today, and you will receive it in California Thursday or Friday this week. I like to think of the journey it takes from here to there.

I have also been the recipient of hundreds of #pentopaper acts of kindness over the years. There are days a letter in my mailbox is the only contact I have with the world outside my home. The thoughts and prayers expressed in my own love language have literally rescued me. I don’t take one for granted. I cherish them all, and I hoard them. I don’t save much of anything I haven’t used in the past thirty days. My life is simple and lean, but when I die there will be my books and hat boxes, shoe boxes and Rubbermaid containers stuffed full of personal mail. The postmarks form the framework for my life’s timeline. Friends come and go. A few have stayed forever. Some people I don’t know at all, but they are praying for my family and I and supporting us. These cards and letters tell a story I love to read over and over again.

As part of my year of listening I have pulled back almost completely from responding on social media. I rarely text. When I feel myself wanting to type a few characters to express my sorrow or joy over something you’ve shared or just wanting to tell you I love you, and you are on my mind and heart, I STOP. I sit down next to my rolling cart full of paper, pens, stamps and stickers and my old fashioned address book, and I write something real and lasting and walk it down to my mailbox with a prayer. On every piece of mail I’ve sent I’ve written somewhere on the envelope the hashtag #pentopaper.

As a thank you to everyone who has taken the time to love me this way and as a challenge to those of you who aren’t really wired or disciplined to send #pentopaper much at all I am hosting a fun giveaway.

It includes the sweetest little set of jewelry with a tiny letter necklace and tiny letter earrings. I can hardly stand it they are so precious. There is also a set of “You’ve Got Mail” notecards with twenty USPS stamps and the book The Art of the Handwritten Note: A Guide to Reclaiming Civilized Communication by Margaret Shepherd.

To enter please comment here on the blog or on a social media post about a time you received #pentopaper that made all the difference. I will randomly choose a winner Monday morning, October 3rd. In the meantime think of someone who could use a note of encouragement, thanks or love and find time to write them and stick it in the mail. Don’t forget to use the hashtag #pentopaper. Let’s fill up one another’s mailboxes with kindness.

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Cliché Cringe. Celebrating Soul Bare. And a Giveaway

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#SoulBare
“Inauthenticity, hiding and pretending to be someone we are not, leads to shame. Refusing to be vulnerable for the sake of preserving pride and self-image destroys the possibility of living in Jesus’ freedom and joy and hope.”—Jennifer J. Camp

I hate bandwagons. I can love something like crazy, but if too many people start to love it too I become suspect. The road less traveled, the narrow gate, the eye of a needle…these are the things I want to be part of. I’m a fan of precise words, and I hate the cliché, especially Christian ones. Here are a few I’ve tried to weed out of my vocabulary in the past few years,

Authentic
Transparent
Vulnerable

I used to appreciate them, but then everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, started saying they were suddenly telling the whole truth about everything. And I cringed. They became fingernails on a chalkboard. I would hear them or read them, and I’d get a mini barf in the back of my throat.

I wrote Gauntlet with a Gift out of context…without the memoir that came before. And then the doubts came. Why would you believe all this suffering was a gift of scandalous love and Grace if you didn’t know what I was rescued and redeemed from? I didn’t tell you about the child who found Jesus and then lost Him. I didn’t tell you about the ugly, abusive church that keeps me from going to this day. I didn’t tell you about how being a victim of violence triggered the sudden onset of a prodigal life or how I became a self made orphan, a drunk, a slut and then a prostitute, a thief, a murderer, and an adulteress. All of you reading my old blog day after day and following our hard on social media saw me stumbling in faith but always finding my way back to Dayenu. Even this was enough. It was more than enough. It was more than I deserved. I was daring to call it good as long as He was getting the glory. None of this makes any sense unless you know the before. So I saved Gauntlet away. I took the Scrivener short cut off my desktop, and I claimed “Listen” for this year. I’ve written almost nothing. I’m less true. I’m more covered. I’m more guarded. I fear the cliché. I’m terrified of the overshare.

Part of the listening has become a Spirit led passion to read well and support other writers who are brave truth tellers. Mostly offline. Slowly God has allowed me to form authentic relationship with these transparent and vulnerable Jesus people. I am realizing their stories are layers of sin and suffering saved by Grace and faith just like mine. Sometimes their middles need told before the beginnings. Sometimes they stand alone. There are no hard, fast rules to this messy business. I’m also understanding as much as our narratives have similar chords they are also uniquely ours and, yes, each and every one has the power to help and heal, sometimes others and most of all ourselves.

A beautiful anthology of short authentic, transparent, vulnerable stories from friends I know and friends I’d like to know were born through a midwife, Cara Sexton. The book is Soul Bare. Some of the writers I’ve had the great privilege of meeting face to face. I’ve shared meals and worship and sacrament with them in sacred space. Some of the stories are from writers I’ve never heard of. They don’t have book deals or speaking obligations. They have small online places where they shed pretense and practice real. As blogging fades into podcasts and live video streaming, there are still plenty of us who wish we could stay in 2007 with our one hundred faithful readers (was “following” even a thing then?) and just lay it down day after day in words. If you miss that kind of intimacy, you will love this book.

Cara ends with this beautiful description of “what it means to be soul bare…”

…This is what it means to seek God with all our heart and mind and soul. It does not mean, as anyone who has ever lingered in Christian subculture may suspect, that we have reached a pinnacle of faith–that we have simply believed hard enough.

It is to be lost and found, over and over again. It is to recognize the upside-down nature of the things of this world. It is to know that even when we are lost, we have a finding place. It is to know the word ‘help.’

Even when we have no words, even when we have only blindness and cannot take ourselves to the Word made flesh, He comes anyhow, somehow…He comes, and against all odds, we see.

Cara isn’t one of the writers I knew. Just before this book was published one of the other writers included in the book, a mutual friend, connected us for an entirely different reason than words. Cara has been a chronic illness warrior for years with muddied diagnoses. They just found her Chiari malformation. Oh how I wish I had a printed copy of Gauntlet to mail her. Maybe, just maybe, Danica and I’s story matters just as it is.

I’m celebrating Soul Bare with a giveaway!
Here’s how to enter:

1. Share this post on social media to give your friends a chance to win this amazing book.
2. Please leave a comment here about what being authentic, vulnerable and transparent means to you.
3. Please say a prayer for my new friend Cara.

A winner will be randomly chosen from all the entries on Monday night, August 15th, and announced Tuesday morning from my chemo chair.

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Holding It All Together. A Team Danica Update

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Gauntletphoto

My Danica girl woke this morning and shuffled her way to my lap. She knows she will always find me sitting in my corner chair wrapped in a cozy throw with a cup of coffee in my hands. I put my steaming comfort aside, and make room for her. Her lanky legs stretch almost as long as mine now. She’s so tall it’s hard to kiss her head, especially with my fused neck, but I always try. Our fingers entwine, and I squeeze her hand as if to say, “Good morning, my dear. No matter what today brings I am here for you. I love you. Jesus loves you more.” Some of my favorite talks happen as she shakes off her sleep and begins to think out loud. Today her words took me off guard, “Mom, If God is in control of everything why did He even let sin and sickness happen?” I stumbled as I backtracked to Eden. Things were perfect, but there was this one tree. All God asked was for them to remember He was God and they were not. I see her reaching to make it more personal. Life is pushing her outside her mother’s faith and asking her to claim her own. Her next question knocked the breath from my lungs. “Mom, why did He take my miracle away?”

“It feels like an ocean of sorrow is under my skin…”

I haven’t been able to find words to tell about our trip to Cincinnati on July 26th. We left with incomplete information that has been filtering in since. Today we have more questions than answers. Danica’s rare and messy case has been escalated to new surgeons. We have been asked to return to Cincinnati quickly, on Thursday, August 18th, to discuss a joint effort with neurosurgery and orthopedic surgery.

“Even the ocean eventually meets with the sand…”

Since our March trip, when the scans showed the shocking views of broken hardware and broken fusion from Danica’s skull base to C1, we knew this was coming, but we thought we had months to watch.

“Sorrow on sorrow I’m waiting. Heavy I’m anticipating…”

My mama gut, made much more wise from years of reading X-Rays, CTs, MRIs and radiology reports in addition to dozens of neurosurgical and fusion surgeries of my own, told me the hardware was not the most concerning problem. Yes, it’s broken. It’s broken unevenly and moving on flexion and extension, but Danica’s own words told me instability was the greater issue. “Sometimes when I wake up my neck is stuck, and I have to reach up my hands and put in back in place. I hear a click.”

“Trusting the current will carry me.”

I finished my plasmapheresis before our trip and began my first of four chemo treatments on Tuesday. I’m worn so thin I’d swear you could see right through me. My dear friend came to sit with me at the cancer center. I told her how I was feeling. I cried. It’s as if those closest to me…closest to Dan, Delaney and Danica, don’t seem to understand this could be the thing that breaks us. It’s been almost a full decade of hard that can never be quantified. Dan is numb. Delaney is sad. Danica is scared. I’m completely and utterly broken. She told me I don’t wear it that way. I put on a clean shirt and some makeup. I smile and deflect the conversation to you. I say words about God as if the speaking makes them true.

“You are my strength. You are my song. You are my salvation. You hold it all together. You hold it all together.”

He is God. We are not.

“We come with great expectations and fears in our hearts.”

I didn’t know how to answer Danica this morning, so I reached for my Bible and turned to her life passage. My life passage. I read Psalm 139 aloud.

You have searched me, Lord,
and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue
you, Lord, know it completely.
You hem me in behind and before,
and you lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.
Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,”
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.

“Send us Your light as we’re making our way through the dark.”

For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
How precious to me are your thoughts, God!
How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand—
when I awake, I am still with you.

“All of the earlier troubles, chaos and pain they unravel”

He is God. We are not.

This afternoon we snuggled in the big bed and watched the movie Miracles From Heaven. There were so many similarities to our story. The mama bear fighting. The faithful daddy staying behind doing what needs to be done. The older sister who gets a little lost in the shuffle and sacrifices more than most know. The crushing cost of travel for care and out of network doctors. The lonely divide the physical distance creates between a community of support and hospital halls walked alone. The hurtful words from well meaning people about why this is happening or how just a little more faith might change the outcome. Once again my girl’s little hand found mine. She squeezed it at certain parts. Parts I knew she understood fully because she’s been there. She jerked it away to wipe the tears running down her cheeks. I asked her several times, “Is this too hard for you? Do you want me to turn it off?” She wanted to see it through. We hugged as the credits rolled. I didn’t need to tell her I was skeptical about visiting heaven and living to tell about it. I didn’t need to explain to her how against all odds God can decide to heal someone completely. She felt the power of the narrative, because she knows it to be true.

He is God. We are not.

Danica is sleeping next to me now as I peck away in the dark. She asked for the heating pad for her legs and the cold pack for her neck. Dan is gone working overtime all day and night. Delaney is at a bonfire with her girlfriends. I wandered back to the old Team Danica blog and read the posts from August, 2010. It’s unsettling how easily they could have been written this month, six years later. There is one glaring difference. We know for sure…

He is God. We are not.

We’ve seen His faithfulness in the land of the living. We’ve seen Him provide. We’ve seen Him make a way when there was no way. We’ve seen Him bind up our wounds and heal our broken hearts. We’ve seen Him preserve our marriage and our family. We’ve seen Him rescue us from the root of bitterness. We’ve seen Him shine through the darkest night. We’ve seen Him perform a real in the flesh miracle.

“Looking ahead we rejoice in You.”

He gives and He takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

Danica, I believe this, my brave girl. I do. I want to mirror this to you. A thousand things are happening in this one thing.

He is God. We are not.

September 20th, 2009 we found out Danica had a Chiari malformation. Not knowing all that would mean, I wrote this:

Do I believe God makes no mistakes? Do I believe He lovingly formed this child’s skull and brain how we find it today to fulfill His purpose in her life and in ours? Do I believe we lack nothing God’s grace can’t give us including strength for today and the days ahead? My verse for this week has been Mark 9:24 “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief.”

I’m afraid. I’m so very tired. I know that trusting God with my child is perhaps the hardest thing He will ask me to do. As He grows my faith and asks me to rest in His promises. I will fall. I will have moments of anger and confusion. I will want to quit and walk away.

Oswald Chambers wrote, “Living a life of faith means never knowing where you are being led. But it does mean loving and knowing the One who is leading. It is literally a life of faith, not of understanding and reason — a life of knowing him who calls us to go.” Knowing a God who is unchanging and will do everything He says He will do is the only way I will navigate through the next weeks and months. I believe.

“You are my strength. You are my song. You are my salvation. You hold it all together. You hold it all together.”

Tonight. This song from All Sons and Daughters upcoming album Poets and Saints is on repeat. My heart melody. Part lament. Part praise. Yes.

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Happiness. Even Here? Taking the Dare. And a Giveaway

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TheHDare
“There’s happiness right where we are. God is daring us to stalk it. Sometimes it shows up small. But it’s important that we look, because some days the looking will save us.”—Jennifer Dukes Lee, The Happiness Dare

It’s early morning. I’m sitting at the cancer center receiving three bags of IV medicine that prepare my body for the chemotherapy to follow. Steroids, Phenergan and Benadryl along with a hefty dose of oral Tylenol pave the way for a long infusion of Rituxin. This is the first of four infusions, one a week for the next four weeks. I’ve just come through another grueling round of five plamapheresis treatments. Every time we say I can’t do it again. The access to my main ventricle is more and more dangerous. We had to go in the left side through my jugular and tuck the catheter under my clavicle and cross my heart under the skin to get it placed this time. It was even more painful than usual. The consensus between all my doctors is the Rituxin worked at suppressing the autoimmune attacks for a longer period than ever before. After this aggressive month long push I will continue to receive chemo infusions every six weeks indefinitely. I feel hopeful about the new plan.

Most cancer center infusion rooms are similar. This one has over thirty recliners lined up in rows. There is a fireplace and a large TV. When you come in early, like I do, you get to pick your spot first. Slowly the room begins to fill with patients in various stages of cancer. This particular oncologist is known as a cowboy. He does research trials on drugs in various stages of approval. Most of these patients have been told there is nothing else available in their fight, and they come here. This huge room is scattered with people, young and old, who are committed to fighting and holding on. Many of them say their lives have been prolonged years because of their chemo and care here. Still, it is not a “happy” place.

My friend Jennifer Dukes Lee gave birth to a new book today. She named it The Happiness Dare. I love Jennifer’s writing, both her last book Love Idol and her blog. Still, I have to admit I’m just not in a place to play the glad game. When her book showed up on my doorstep the week before last, I resisted the cheerful blue cover with the yellow candy font. The last thing I wanted to be challenged about was happiness. Really? How could I find happiness in all this never ending hard?

Over the last ten years of unrelenting trial in our family’s life, I’ve wrestled with God’s asking me to “Count it all joy.” Joy is a fruit of the Spirit. I understand the suffering of this short life cannot be compared to the eternal glory waiting. This is my ultimate hope. I’m not sure I’ve ever fully believed happiness is something God wants for me. The Happiness Dare blows this wide open, and it begins with Jesus.

“Jesus’ most famous sermon happened in the region of Galilee on a mount. Envision the crowds gathering to hear what the Nazarene has to say. Find a patch of grass or a comfortable rock on the hillside and listen as Jesus begins to speak.

The first word out of His mouth is not holy. It is not joyful. It is happy.

“Happy are those who…”

The word for happy in the Scriptures is Greek makarios. Some translations use the English word blessed whenever makarious appears in the New Testament, But other translators—keenly away that makarios comes from the word makar (which means happy or blessed)—translate the word to happiness instead.

It’s on that mount Jesus opens a profoundly important door into the happiness we can have in Him.”

Jennifer goes on to address the rub in the Christian tradition between joy and happiness. Mix in holy, and the waters are even muddier.

“Happiness isn’t the opposite of holy. It’s part of what makes you holy.

Happiness isn’t the opposite of joy. It’s a part of Chris-inspired joy, expressed within you.

Happiness isn’t selfish, or stupid, or wrong or ridiculous.
When we seek it, we are more, not less, like Jesus.

Our happiness is hemmed directly into the heart of joy. How many truly joyful people do you know who are pinched-faced Christians? If you have to dig a mile deep to find a person’s smile, is that really joy? Or has the misery disguised itself as deep Christian joy?”

Does joy in Jesus abide and happiness come and go with our circumstances? I’m ever grateful Jennifer began her book with the theology behind her dare to be happy. I had to read chapter two several times before I could move on. I realized along with her I have never bothered to ask God for happiness. Ever.

“Maybe I had never asked because I didn’t think I deserved happiness. Maybe I’d heard too many sermons telling me that I’d be far better off aiming for the more durable virtue of joy. If I prayed for happiness, I feared I might sound like a woman who believed in a prosperity gospel, which promises happiness through prosperity and success. But I didn’t believe that kind of gospel at all. I didn’t want happiness at the expense of holiness. I wanted happiness as a part of being a human created to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.”

I exhaled. I got down on my knees, and I dared to ask God to make me happy. Happy here in this chair with chemo slowly dripping, even knowing how utterly sick I will feel tonight and tomorrow. Happy understanding this road is one of healing but always fighting and never fully healed here on earth. Happy learning an unimaginable new surgery is needed for my Danica. Happy opening the mailbox to find the crushing medical bills I know I can’t pay. Happy watching my Delaney and my Dan experience all this as if it was happening to them. I’m seeking and asking for enduring happiness. Will you take the dare with me?

“Takers of the Happiness Dare learn that God not only cares about our happiness, He encourages us to go after it. The Happiness Dare is a challenge to enter into a holy pursuit of happiness, to boycott cynicism, to wring delight out of our ordinary days, and to hunt for happiness even when it’s hard to see…Dare to believe that our happiness actually matters to God.”

Friends, this book is good. Jennifer takes you through finding happiness in earthly pleasure through the good gifts of God. She encourages you to taste heavenly joy even now in His kingdom on earth. She lovingly takes your heart and hand to explore your unique happiness wiring or happiness personality style. (Not a big surprise mine is The Giver) She ends her book specifically addressing happiness in times of pain, loss and grief and our ultimate desire for eternal happiness in heaven. Without these chapters punctuating her dare I still might have felt this book didn’t apply to me. But it does. It is for you too!

“Let’s do this. Let’s frighten the critics and baffle the cynics.
Be like Jesus.
Take the dare.”

“I have told you this to make you completely happy as I am.”—John 15:11 CEV

Gifts are a crazy loud love language (and now I know a happiness personality) of mine. I’m so excited to invite you to join me in celebrating the launch of Jennifer’s book with a giveaway! The winner will a copy of The Happiness Dare

Here’s how to enter:
1. Share this post on social media to give your friends a chance to win this amazing book.
2. Please leave a comment here about a big or small way you’ve found happiness by really seeking it out.
3. Totally optional but highly recommended is to head over to Jennifer’s place and subscribe to her blog Jennifer Dukes Lee. SIGN UP TO TAKE THE DARE and read her post today with all kinds of fun giveaways. I had the honor of meeting Jennifer at The High Calling retreat in November, 2014 and have been truly blessed by her writing and her friendship.

A winner will be randomly chosen from all the entries on Sunday night, August 7th, and announced Monday morning!

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When I Simply Cannot Pray. Help

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hospital

Some mornings she simply cannot
bring herself to pray. Even so, a prayer
will at times break through her clenched lips,
announcing the slow drain at her heart.
She will raise her face from its cage of fingers
and gape at the fog that has lain itself down
over the field behind her house like
a dream of erasure. Even the green trees have
lost color. No air breathes. Not a wing of sound
flies back from the highway behind the hill.

And then some midnight, when faith
has quite emptied itself, a familiar loneliness
makes itself at home under her ribs.
A ghost of God? An inkling? She holds
her breath, listens as a small draught
weathers its way through the eaves,
into her ears. The next moment she hears her child
stir in the room down the hall, calling
her name, as if (s)he names her longing and in
that naming, names a kind of answer.–Luci Shaw, The Angles of Light

I texted a friend last night. “I’m losing my religion.” Yes, full blown, Michael Stipe singing in the background, losing it.

“Oh no, I’ve said too much.”

It was day three of a new round of plamapheresis slowly emptying the flaring infections attacking every part of my body and brain. It is always grueling. I arrive early to have labs drawn. It takes a few hours for the numbers to come back. Twice, last Thursday and today, my treatments have been cancelled because my fibrinogen is too low. The hospital where I receive treatments is in a major shift in their dialysis unit. It’s left them with only two nurses who know how to run the machine I need. My usual nurse leaves tomorrow for a long vacation and the other nurse is off all this week. We were trying to cram five treatments that should be given every other day into less than a week, and my body appropriately screamed “No way!”

As Dan was driving me back to the hospital yesterday I was on the phone with Cincinnati Children’s confirming what scans Danica will be having next Tuesday. Realizing my last pheresis will be Monday, the day before we take this oh so hard trip, I was already unhinged. The head ortho nurse looked back in the spine conference notes and said it indicated a CT angiogram that had not been ordered. Trying to get this scheduled at the last minute is nearly impossible even at the main campus much less at the Liberty location where our other scans and appointment is. She said she would work on it and call me Thursday. Yes, this is how things happen in health care. There is clinic and surgeries and other people’s children in the balance. I learned long ago how to walk the delicate line of being a strong advocate and also a compassionate patient. When my daughter is in the exam room or on the OR table I want others to respect and care for us too.

When Dan picked me up several hours later I was ashen, freezing cold in 80 degree heat, crazy nauseous and tired and never more aware of how hard all this is. Anne Lamott writes in her treasure of a book, Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers, “If I were going to begin practicing the presence of God for the first time today, it would help to begin admitting the three most terrible truths of our existence: that we are so ruined, and so loved, and in charge of so little.” Yes. This.

I am ruined. My body failing me over and over again in countless ways is the ultimate betrayal. It’s never been about believing God can heal me. It’s surrendering to the fact it will not fully happen in this life. There are some victories. The fight is not in vain, but I have to put out a white flag on this complete healing thing. In eternity, yes. Here, no.

I am loved. So loved. My friend who takes me to treatment and comes to get me whenever she can is love. I don’t call her. She calls me. She knows the asking is my Achilles heel. Her calling her son-in-law to help when she can’t is love. Him coming on his precious day off is love. The same friend’s husband buying our favorite Stouffer’s frozen enchiladas while he’s shopping is love. The expression on his face when he sees me and the wisdom in his words, “There’s nothing I can say,” is love. Another friend showing up with an unplanned meal on a day our family was near implosion is love. Tuna casserole can in fact be manna. A package in the mail with epsom salts, unscented lotion and herbal tea and #pentopaper encouragement is love. A friend showing up with food, pet meds and a check from a lemonade stand her sweet girls had to help with Danica’s trip is love. All your donations on our gofundme site are scandalous love. Your prayers, especially when I just cannot pray for myself, are love.

I am in charge of so little. Really, nothing. I can’t orchestrate the rest of this treatment and plan rides to and from even if I asked for help. I can’t predict exactly how our Cincinnati trip will go. Both outcomes of these scans and appointments are worse case scenarios. I can’t tell Danica it’s all going to be okay and soon she will be able to run and play. I can’t ease her very real fears about the future of this broken metal in her neck that once gave her a miracle. I can’t keep my Laney safe while we are away or heal any of the scars leaving her over and over again all these years have left on her heart and mine. I can’t pay our bills. I can’t stop the constant swirling spreadsheet of debt from cutting off my air supply and sending my body into a stress induced panic every time the phone rings or the mail truck pulls away. I can’t go back to work to try to fix all this. I want to work so badly. I want the prideful, self sufficient feeling of doing anything to make this less of a mess, but I can’t. I can’t give my husband the one thing he wants more than anything in the world–his Moni Kaye back. Worst of all, I simply cannot pray.

After my family was in bed last night I slipped into the pitch black sun room, laid on the cold floor and called the friend I texted earlier. She is always my place to tell the whole truth. I cried. I shook my fists. I told her how mad I am. I told her how I really want to give up. In the same breath I had to talk about the love. I couldn’t not mention the love. Something happened. In Anne’s same book she calls it a “divine limpness.” I was saying all the things to my friend I wanted to get on my knees at my prayer bench and say to my God.

“…In that divine limpness you’ll be able to breathe again. Then you’re halfway home. In many cases breath is all you need. Breath is holy spirit. Breath is Life. It’s oxygen. Breath might get you a little rest. You must be so exhausted…

Through prayer, we take ourselves off the hook and put God on the hook, where God belongs. When you’re on the hook, you’re thrashing, helpless, furious, like a smaller kid lifted by the seat of his pants by a mean big kid. Jesus, on the literal hook of the cross, says to God, ‘Help,’ and God enters into every second of the Passion like a labor nurse.

When you get your hooks out of something, it can roll away, down its own hill, away from you. It can breathe again. It got away from you, and your tight sweaty grip, and your stagnant dog breath, the torture of watching you do somersaults and listening to you whine ‘What if?’ and ‘Wait, wait, I have ONE more idea…’

You can go from monkey island, with endless chatter, umbrage, and poop-throwing, to what is happening in front of me. God, what a concept. It means I stop trying to figure it out, because trying to figure it out is exhausting and crazy-making. Doping it has become the problem.

So when we cry out ‘help’, or whisper it into our chests, we enter the paradox of not going limp and not feeling that we can barely walk, and we release ourselves from the absolute craziness of trying to be our own–or other people’s–higher powers.

Help.

We can be freed from a damaging insistence on forward thrust, from a commitment to running wildly down a convenient path that might actually be taking us deeper into the dark forest. Praying ‘help’ means that we ask that something give us the courage to stop us in our tracks, right where we are, and turn our fixation away from the Gordian knot of our problems. We stop the toxic peering and instead turn our eyes to something else; to our feet on the sidewalk; to the middle distance; to the hills, whence our help comes. Something else. Anything else. Maybe this is a shift of only eight degrees, but it can be a miracle.

It may be one of those miracles when your heart sinks, because you think it means you have lost. But in surrender, you have won. And if it were me, after a moment, I would say, ‘Thanks.'”

I hung up the phone, wiped my eyes and blew my nose. I peeked into my girl’s rooms on my way to bed. I remembered my Danica’s prayer, the one I was almost too jaded to hear, “Dear Jesus, Thank you for this day. HELP mommy to get her treatments and to get better. THANK YOU for my friend’s lemonade stand to raise money so I can see my doctors in Cincinnati. THANK YOU for my stuffed peas in a pod. (A gift from her friend she held tightly as she prayed.) Help grandpa and grandma to get home safely. HELP Anna Mae at her new home. THANK YOU for Jesus who died on the cross for our sins. HELP us be more like Him. Amen.” (This is a variation of her same bedtime prayer every night.) Her childlike faith and Sleep Sound in Jesus lullabies tucked her heart and mind safely in when I could not.

I crawled into my own bed, put my earbuds in and listened to R.E.M.’s old song “Losing My Religion.” I was transported back to the summer I saw them in concert at the Gund Arena. I was so far from God but wanting Him and needing Him so badly it ached. I held up my lighter during “Everybody Hurts” as tears ran down my face. Even then I know He heard my “Help.”

This morning Dan and I left our house at 6:30 am so he could drop me at the hospital for labs before he headed to work. A few miles down the highway I felt utterly sick, and we took an exit so I could run into a McDonalds and empty my stomach of the curdled worry and grief I’d ingested the night before. After the needle and the many tubes of blood I waited for hours to get the results. The director of dialysis found me in the sixth floor waiting room. She felt so badly about their staffing issues pushing me to come on days I clearly was not going to be able to proceed. She told me she called the nurse who was on vacation locally. Her daughter had a baby, and she took the week off to help her. She would come in Thursday to get another treatment in. I cried. More love. More thanks. I called my sister, Alecia, who has managed more nonsense in the past week than any one person should have to. I said, “I’m sorry. I need HELP. Can you come get me?” She rallied her girls, got them dressed and drove the twenty minutes to pick me up. I sat in the light filled atrium waiting. I turned my face towards the bright sun, and the Spirit groaned for me what I could not utter and then I said,

“Thank you.”

Amen.

“In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.”–Romans 8:26

atrium

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Letting the Light Be

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“If I did not like the way the light looked at a given moment, I knew it would change. If I loved the way the light looked at a given moment, I knew it would change. I could not speed it up, and I could not slow it down…the light was my life…Paying attention to it, I lost my will to control it. Watching it, I became patient. Letting it be, I became well.”–Barbara Taylor Brown, An Altar In The World

Light

I’m sitting at the Raleigh-Durham airport. Our flight should have been in the sky in time to see the sun setting from the windows. Instead we are on a several hour delay. I have traveled alone the majority of my life. I’ve flown many times for work, pleasure and health appointments. I have rarely minded settling in to people watch, read and write and listen to a favorite playlist. When I don’t have to manage other people’s emotions I can handle most anything and even find some kind of enjoyment in it. With Dan and the girls along I become acutely aware of their fatigue, their frustrations associated with boredom and waiting and their hunger and thirst. Tonight I sit with a bottle of Purell and a package of wipes. I’m anxious for them and with them. I take a Valium for my neck in spasm from carrying my bag and sitting so long in a strained position, and I pray. “God, don’t let this long day and night become an ugly ending punctuation on such a beautiful trip. Help us be kind. Help us be patient. Take us home safely. Amen.”

We’ve been in North Carolina on the shores of the Atlantic for a week now. It wasn’t a secret. It was a last minute, quiet gift from dear friends who know more than most what we’ve been through and what we are facing. It was perfect timing. The Tuesday to Tuesday slid between two tropical storm systems. We had beautiful sunny days. Every moment was Grace. Grace by definition is “undeserved merit.” People look at our hard and often say when we get a small break, “No one deserves it more than you guys do.” We don’t operate from this place.

This trip still pinches. The “cheap” flights come with baggage fees. The kennel for Twixie, the airport parking and inevitable eating out despite our many peanut butter and jelly sandwiches strain our “impossible” budget. I tried not to speak in terms of “not enough” to Dan and the girls. I live in the truth of DAYENU. Enough. This entire trip is MORE THAN ENOUGH. This is reality for me. I literally don’t take a single breath for granted. I want my family to understand this as fully as I feel it, but I’m not sure anyone can unless they’ve sat in the painful void as long as I have.

Dayenu

A little gnawing voice has whispered we shouldn’t be here at all. People donated so much money so I could go to UVA and have my latest surgery. I constantly run my fingers over the map of the winding skull incision where prickly new hair tries to grow. I feel the raised bump of my shunt and follow the tubing down the side of my head and behind my ear. I remember. This is why you’ve loved us over and over. This is what you prayed for. You’ve wanted a pain free day in the light for my family and I. God answered with a week of them.

There’s an email in my inbox from Danica’s retired orthopedic surgeon’s assistant. We are trying to schedule Danica’s new appointment in Cincinnati so we are able to see him after her scans and consult with the current head of orthopedic’s at Children’s. It’s never easy coordinating. Dan and I cannot wrap our heads around another trip with long drives on roads that hold so much dread. We can’t think about hotels, bad food, waiting and more waiting and most of all our Danica Jean’s eyes trying to be brave but spilling tears of fear about the unknown. I tried to stay in the HERE and NOW all week but sitting here tonight watching Danica hold her little neck in her hands with the pained look I know all too well I am scared of what comes next.

The light is ever changing. I’m always chasing it. I’ve come to know treasures in darkness. I thought I could write and publish a book about the gifts found in ugly packages. The more I read over my own words the more hollow they seemed. I didn’t delete them, but I hid them away. The same friend who gave us this trip asked me to pull “Gauntlet” back out and read it again. She challenged me to reconsider what I poured from my heart there…maybe not as it is written but at the very core. My vision has matured. What was myopic about Danica’s miracle and my own journey has new layers now. I was trying to write an ending that hasn’t happened yet. I was trying to speed up what could only be seen by slowing down.

I am watching.
I am paying attention.
I’m letting things be.
I’m becoming well.

“And I will give you treasures hidden in the darkness–secret riches. I will do this so you may know that I am the LORD, the God of Israel, the one who calls you by name.”–Isaiah 45:3

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Changing Light

by

“If you live in the dark a long time and the sun comes out, you do not cross into it whistling. There’s an initial uprush of relief at first, then-for me, anyway- a profound dislocation. My old assumptions about how the world works are buried, yet my new ones aren’t yet operational. There’s been a death of sorts, but without a few days in hell, no resurrection is possible.” ― Mary Karr, Lit
Changing Light

The last time I wrote here I felt like I was dying. I wanted to die. My intracranial pressure ushered me into one of the darkest times of my entire life. The unrelenting pain felt as close to hell as possible without total separation from God. Without the “inch of daylight underneath my door” I might not be here.

I knew my third lumbar shunt had failed. In addition to the mind blowing headache I had a knife like pain where the shunt was placed under my ribs on the right side. My face carried the expression of someone being stabbed over and over again. I don’t remember smiling for months. I don’t remember laughing. When I passed by a mirror I gasped at my reflection. It’s easy to forget who you are or why you are here when it feels like the demons of pain are inhabiting every part of your mind, body and spirit. You just want release.

Our March trip to Cincinnati for critical and overdue scans and appointments for Danica showed shocking images of her broken cervical fusion and hardware. They jolted me into an even more heartbreaking reality. A close friend visited me the week we returned. She knows in an intimate way how I suffer. I texted and asked her to wait a few hours later than planned before arriving. She told me she was prepared to perhaps find me dead when she arrived. She would be the one I wanted to find me. She wouldn’t blame me. My girls would just know their mommy was very sick, and my body couldn’t survive any more. She found me crumpled in my corner chair but very much alive. Couched in her compassion she reminded me I was the only one who could advocate for my sweet girl. I needed to live, and I needed to do whatever I could to be more well for the fight.

Deciding to live meant humbling myself AGAIN and asking for your help. You can’t know how gut wrenching begging is unless you’ve had to do it. I prayed for two things at the beginning of 2016. I wanted no new surgery, and I pleaded with God I wouldn’t need resources from you. He said “No” to both. He orchestrated the details for me to get an appointment with a very skilled vascular neurosurgeon at the University of Virginia right away. YOU gave us the money I needed to travel, pay for upfront medical costs and for the long hotel stay needed for diagnostic procedures and post op. I left my family and headed to the Blue Ridge. It was fitting I would find real help with dogwoods blooming all around. In a surgery not without complications my lumbar shunt and tubing was removed. I have two large incisions on my back and my upper abdomen from the tricky extraction. The surgeon then cut a flap on the top of the right side of my skull and implanted a VP shunt. The tubing begins in a hole drilled in my skull and snakes through smaller cuts behind my ear and down through my chest all the way into my abdomen where it empties excess cerebral spinal fluid that collects around my brain and causes the pressure. This shunt is different in many ways. Most notably it is adjustable. This means as pressure situations or my body’s reaction to them change we can re-calibrate without a new surgery.

I don’t have a headache. I haven’t had a headache since my surgery a month ago.

My pain was an incarceration. Most days I felt like I’d been thrown in the dark and bitter hole of solitary confinement. I’ve been adjusting to the sudden light and the sights, sounds, tastes and even smells of good. I didn’t know if it would happen. My husband and children didn’t know if it would happen. Every surgery and treatment has been like a parole hearing. The results of this VP shunt placement are a “YOU ARE FREE.” I know I’m out “on bond.” My body will fail in new ways and commit old crimes, but today, in the light, staring at the sun, I know for sure God heals. It is a mending that will come in fits and starts until heaven. I surrender to this, but I also believe He wants my resurrection to start HERE and NOW. He’s working out His kingdom come on earth in my heart and life. This is GRACE. Dear departed Kara Tippetts wrote these words in her book The Hardest Peace: Expecting Grace in the Midst of Life’s Hard as she slowly died from cancer.

“Jesus didn’t have to extend His love. He didn’t have to think of me when He went up on that cross. He didn’t have to rewrite my story from one of beauty to one of brokenness and create a whole new brand of beauty. He simply didn’t have to do it, but He did. He bought me. He bought me that day He died, and He showed His power when He overcame death and rose from the grave. He overcame my death in that moment. He overcame my fear of death in that unbelievable, beautiful moment, and the fruit of that death, that resurrection, and that stunning grace is peace. It is the hardest peace, because it is brutal. Horribly brutal and ugly, and we want to look away, but it is the greatest, greatest story that ever was. And it was, and it is.”

I’m remembering He loves me. He’s always loved me. In the hellish confusion I’d lost sight, but He was there. He’s always been there.

Resurrection is mine in Jesus.

Stunning Grace.

Changing light.

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