I will (choose to) see the goodness of God

Family Photo shoot, Sept 2017, T+20

We're now on day 3 of inpatient chemo. We've known about this tumor for 25 days, and our worlds have been completely turned upside down. Our kids are melting and missing Daddy, and I am running between home and hospital, and torn between their grief and my own. Our "normal" right now feels ill-fitting and uncomfortable - but it will be our normal for the next 5-6 months, so we have to get used to it.

It's easy, sometimes, when your life turns upside down, and crisis hits, to feel like the world stops moving. To feel like you're drowning under the weight of grief. You walk past sunshine and people smiling, and it just seems rude. Like, how can your life be so normal, you be so happy, when mine is so wrong right now. How can you not know? How is my tsunami/earthquake/grief not rocking your world too? Other times, everything else seems like a blur outside of my tunnel vision centered on what's going on in our lives - passing by, irrelevant to our world, which has shrunk down dramatically in this post-tumor life.

I had a moment the other day, walking to get the boys from school, on a bright sunny day - way too many people smiling, me in tunnel vision mode - and I was stopped by two random people asking for money or signatures, for themselves, or for their cause. I was polite, but frustrated - angry even. In my mind, the dialogue was "How can you ask me to care for someone else's children/family? I'm overwhelmed with caring for my own right now and I don't know how we'll make it through this."

Not a wrong thought. Not an inaccurate thought, certainly an understandable thought.

But, as I kept walking, I had the very clear thought, like the voice of God gently whispering - "You have to make a choice now, whether you will be consumed by this, or whether you will lift up your head and see others, without judgment, wherever they are."

You have to make a choice.

Lift up your head.

You have to make a choice.

Here's the reality - my world right now is very small and it has to be. I care deeply and passionately about issues of justice and compassion in the world - I love being able to care for others - but I simply don't have the bandwidth or emotional energy to invest heavily there right now. My world is centered on caring for my husband and my kids, and occasionally myself. And that's the way it needs to be right now, simply to make it through. I am so thankful for the literally hundreds of people who are supporting us, praying for us, and caring for us, to enable me to do just that. That is a debt of gratitude that I cannot ever repay.

BUT.

I have a choice on whether I am consumed by it, or whether I lift up my head to others.

Sometimes lifting up my head simply means raising tear-stained eyes to look into the face of another and receive grace and care from them, rather than drowning under the weight that we/I carry, alone.

Other times, lifting up my head means seeing others where they are and rejoicing with them when they rejoice, and grieving with them when they grieve, without comparing sorrows or begrudging joys.

Sorrow and joy, they are not incompatible. In life, they both exist in the same places and spaces. One moment, you're laughing at an 11 month olds drunken stagger walk - the next, you're awoken by the alarms from your husband's chemo drip and the panic that something is wrong. One moment you're snickering at something your 4 year old rhymed with kitchen, the next you're wailing when he tells you out of the blue that "it will be okay if Daddy dies because you'll still be here with us, Mommy." One moment you're laughing about how chemo is the most expensive haircut/vasectomy/couples getaway ever. The next you're holding your 3 year old as he sobs because he misses you so much and you're undone by not being able to be everything to everyone.

It's not either or. It never has been. And when we are consumed by one, unable to see anyone else - our lives are simpler, but far less complexly beautiful. And we miss so many opportunities to see the goodness of God and others.

Your joy - if you are in a season of joy - is worth celebrating, even if we are in a hard season. Your babies are beautiful, and celebrating them, it adds to our joy. Your accomplishments and triumphs and delights - when I look up at you - they add to my joy.

Your sorrow - no matter if it's large or small - is worth grieving, even if we are in a easier/harder season. With tear-stained eyes, we can grieve them together. In God's economy, grief is not weighted heavier or lighter - it is simply grief. I might not have the bandwidth to carry you in your grief, but I can pray for you as you share, and I can weep with you as you weep.

And on days when I can bear no more weight, I always have a choice to lift up my eyes to you and make the choice to share it with you, rather than be consumed by it. I might not share in depth - many times that's not the right decision or the right relationship to do so - but I can smile, or cry, and not simply walk by alone.

"Ok God," I said. "I will lift up my head. I will make the choice not to let this consume me. And I will trust you, that you see me in my grief and overwhelmed state."

I tell you this now as well, friend. This cancer, chemo, and care - it will determine much of my life for the next 5-6 months. But I will make the choice (daily, hourly, minute-ly?) not to let it suck me into a solitary pit. I will look up, look to you, look at you, and embrace the complexity of joy and sorrow. I will not do this alone, isolated with only what's happening to me/us in my view.

I got home that day to find three completely random checks in the mail, and a home-cooked meal from a friend who wanted to love us in our grief - more than covering all of our needs for that week. And a message about delivering groceries for the week.

God laughed a little bit at me, and I wept with those tears of joy, knowing that my Father in Heaven sees me, and knows me - and our friends care for us, and carry us - and invites me into the complexity.

Lift up your head. And you will see goodness [[and]] grief, and understand love.