Beach Body Talk

Elly and I sat at the shallow end of the ocean where the waves break for the last time.  She had dug a hole when the tide was higher that had filled with water we sat in.

“Would you like to come to my spa?  Ellyanna’s Spa of Rest and Relaxation?"

 “Why of course, of COURSE.”

 “We will start with a sand and mud treatment..."

She spread soppy, goopy sand all over my bare legs.

“You have thighs like Nonnie’s,” contemplates aloud my sweet, soft bodied, 7-year old niece. 

Yes.  I do have thighs like Nonnie’s; squishy, shapely, noticeable.

“I do.  I do have thighs like, Nonnie’s!  Isn’t that great?” 

Isn’t that great? ... It is.  It is great. 

(I have thighs like my mother’s.  And my grandmother’s.  And my great-grandmothers.  Isn’t that great?  My thighs have a story and a legacy and speak to the strength of genes, God-intention, connection and the comfort of the knowledge of where they come from).  

She leans in, belly on the sand, probing my eyes, taking my emotional temperature.

Slow seconds pass with her so near me.

She smiles, unlocking the search.

"Yep.  It is.  Would you like this sand and mud treatment on your arms?  You will have to sit up..."   

And we are back.  Thighs and souls in tact.

Blog Birth

I started this blog October 2010: at my kitchen island, with a (second?) glass of wine, whilst my husband sautéed mushrooms in a cream sauce to go with our filet mignon, on a Saturday night; bluesy music playing.

After a soul-crushing-ultrasound Wednesday, a black-hole Thursday, a hallowing-surgery on Friday. 

…questions, projections, recollections…swirling.  When life is a blur, we eat steak.

When hell threatens my core again, apparently I start a blog…and eat an expensive steak.

I had thought about blogging for years, but there was something about this loss, at this point in my story, with this movement of grief that made me say, Oh hell no.  Hell no.  This time, this fear, this loss, will not shut me down, or shut me up.  I’m writing. 

Thanks be to God.

And so I started this blog, yet held this blog birth close.  Close and protected.  Until now.  Because part of my writer’s block is blogger’s confusion: not so much what to write, but when.  So, now I weave in to this a fabric of motherhood.  Even though today we have no children in our home.

There is a very real space in life that needs more and more hopeful, loving words.  That holy, inward space; womb-like.  Lets put out there and celebrate it, no matter how the story unfolds.

Your Soul Has Nerve Endings

My friend Angie throws out wise truths all the time; she breaths them.  And so when we were talking about our friends adopted children revisiting their birthland for the first time, she says, "If you imagine our souls have nerve endings, just imagine what will be awakened in them as they go into that place: the sights, the smells, the feel"

"Just  imagine how confusing that can be.  That your soul and body are saying something loud and clear that your mind does not understand.  And might not have any way of understanding fully at that time."

And then we talked about the ambivalence that naturally comes from that.  And the nurturing and love that is needed to walk through that without stomping out the soul. 

Naturally my mind also went back to the place of realizing, "Yes - nerves that are healing and hurting can have the same feel." When nerves/souls feel pain, as confusing as it can be, it can be the sensation of healing as much as it hurts.

No Place Safer

"...in God's world... there are no places that are safer than other places..."
As I read Betsie Ten Boom's wise words as quoted by her sister, Corrie, I am struck once again.
This in midst of Nazi-invaded Holland.  (The Hiding Place).

Oh the ways we try to create safety: money, health, image, relationships, location.  

"The center of His will is our only safety.  Oh Corrie, let us pray that we may always know His will."
Amen.

7 Years Later: Waiting Room

The family and friend's journey parallels that of the patient, but rarely do their experiences intersect.  It is a strange and careful distance, a precious and dear closeness. 

I am told this is what happened in the waiting room while I was in surgery.  I am told that my family took up most of the waiting room.  I am told that my parents, grandparents, aunt etc..., and church friends huddled around; my cousin learned to knit at some point in there.

I am told that when the doctor came in to tell of the surgery, of the thyroid cancer, that the whole waiting room went silent.  That my mom and dad heard the news first only due to the laws of physics; you know, sound waves and all; but really, they all heard at the same time.

I am told my mom cried, my dad was shocked, and my grandfather said, "Not her.  It can be me, but not her."

This is a sacred story to me.  One that is passed on by oral tradition.  The details maybe sketchy, but the heart of it is huge: I am loved.  While I was oblivious, hearing German, and emotionally dulled with pain meds, these others bore my story.

Too Much and Not Enough

It is Thanksgiving.  What am I thankful for?  Too much and not enough.

I am thankful for too much food, too much choice, too much love.
Too much food, that I can worry about calories if I chose.  Chose the food I like if I want.  And want a meal a few days out if I desire.   I am never hungry.  I am thankful.
Too much choice, that I can organize my days.  Makes plans in my planner.  And consider things like "what is my calling?" and "how do I want to get there?"  I am free to decide today.  I am thankful.
Too much love, that I can focus on the quality of my relationships, rather than the quantity.  That I can get angry, laugh ridiculously loud, make mistakes, act as if I am alone in this world, yet Love always finds me.  I am thankful.

And, (although I write this with trembling), I am thankful for not enough.
Not enough health so that I am nearly always reminded of life's fragility.
Not enough certainty, that I am regularly reminded, and sometimes flattened, by my finiteness.
Not enough in and of myself, that I am compelled and wooed by Grace.

7 Years Later: Permission to Go Inside

My injury and illness gifted me permission.  Permission to go inside and find healing.  The messages around me and in me all my life had been the opposite, despite some of my various attempts to challenge them.  But my body was such a wreck anyhow, what choice did I have?

Interesting, because I'm a professional counselor.  My career values people going inside, to the "hidden things" to find healing.  I entered this profession before this critical permission entered in; I believe that many of us in the ministry, helping, and healing professions are trying to find a way to heal without having to go inside for ourselves.  I get that, on so many levels.  I also believe we need to.

Thankfully and gratefully, I did not have a choice.   I don't think I would have willfully took such a journey: I was so young and embroiled in my own patterns and afraid.  Yes, yes: I was involved in a small group, and therapy group, and etc, etc.  Yes - I desired to.  But my circumstances found my need all the more better; God did.

I was so undone, that suddenly I had some boldness that I had not had before.  Boldness to be brutally honest with my family, my friends, myself, and my God.  And it was there and within that I began to find some healing that I did not imagine was available to people like me.  Especially with a body that was going through the wringer.

7 Years Later: Carried to Light

I haven't written since July.  And how fitting that my last reflection reads with such heaviness and stuckness.  The Day of Darkness were long.  Waiting, miserably; therapizing, endlessly; suffering.  I would grieve one thing to lose another.  The biggest black holes were the losses left nameless.  Physically, spiritually, emotionally I felt as a vapor.  I spoke to people through an invisible triple pane window.  Even now I realize just how sick and traumatized I was.

During this time, I wrote a devotional entry for the seminary student handbook at the request of a colleague and friend.  It is the story of a paraplegic man whose friends carry him on a mat to Jesus.  (Does a hole in a roof ring a bell?).  Because of their, (as in the friends'), belief, the man was healed.

And, during the Days of Darkness, it was my friends, (including my family who are the dearest of friends), bold belief that, I think quite literally, kept me alive.  I was carried to Light.

If I started to name the ways, I would be typing until morning.  How appropriate.

"...and you will know them by their love..." 
 

7 Years Later: The Days of Darkness

I am not sure when I labeled this season of my life that I am writing about "The Days of Darkness," but the word picture stuck for its succinctness and fullness.  Thank goodness for Mexico, that Pocket of Hope in the black hole of the coming days and months.

Shall we bullet point through September into October?  That will make it a little more bearable:
- Return from Mexico and begin injectable medication.  Mistake liver failure for the "flu-like" symptoms that said injectable medications have as normal side-effects.  Stop injecting myself to let my liver heal.  Catastrophic liver failure averted.
- Right foot drops.  Meaning, my right lower leg stops working; Lizzy limping around.  Motor functioning lost.  (Let us rejoice when we tell our bodies to do something and it does it).  Crazy dizziness sets in; crazy.  "This is not right.  This would be a crazy fast progression of MS..."  Crazy: with great speed and recklessness.
- Lots of tests: peripheral nerve test (featuring electricity shots directly in the nerve), spinal tap (starring a needle the size of a pencil being stuck into the bodies nerve center), MRI, MRI, draw blood x20, brain wave test, shiney-lights-in-eye test (when you are upside down, left, right, and inside out).  You name the test, I had it.
- Lots of therapy: physical therapy (to learn to walk with a brace), vestibular therapy (to learn to walk a straight line), pruden-myo therapy (what the?), cranial sacral therapy, massage therapy, psychotherapy (for the creeping and crushing complication: depression).  There was more, but you get the picture.

The picture: The Days of Darkness.  The absence or deficiency of light during the interval of (what should be) light between two successive nights.

7 Years Later: Esperanza

My parents had one more idea for my six weeks of FMLA.  They were going to Puerto Escondido, Mexico for a week..."why not come along?"

She said in her head, "Well, lets see...ummm...I am half numb!, I need medical care, I can barely handle the thought of being by myself for two seconds, (ie- I am experiencing some serious trauma symptoms, Mom and Dad!), and you want me to fly to Mexico City and waaaaaaaay south from there by myself?...!!!...!!!"

"We think you can do it."  Three weeks after my life sentence had been issued: Hope.

You see, the night I came home from the hospital I instantaneously grieved the loss of my plan for my life: my story was supposed to climax with me living in some remote corner of the world, in love, spiritually full, offering health to the masses (including glorious rays of sunshine and a constant cool breeze).  I think I heaved out through loud sobs, "I will never live in Africa;" it was symbolic yet real and raw.  How can you refrigerate injectable meds with no electricity?  I sobbed, and sobbed.  Grieved and grieved.

And Kindness stepped in through my parents Faith.  "We will get you there; you just need to say yes." And with fear that I let eek out in a constant state of teariness, (I quickly learned this was a way for me to prevent unpredictable, explosive bursts of anxiety), I boarded a plane with a kiss from my grandparents in Denver, navigated Dallas with God holding my hand, hugged and clung on to (for dear life) Gustavo in Mexico City, and fell into the embrace of my parents in Puerto Escondido.

"I was soooooo worried about you," weeped my Mom.

"I made it," my tears said as they bid good bye.  Puerto Escondido is hot!, with a constant cool breeze.