Lana Meredith

Hold Your Ground

I sought the Lord, and He answered me, and delivered me from all my fears – Psalm 34:4

My brothers, I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship – but it is not this day. An hour of wolves and shattered shields, when the age of men comes crashing down – but it is.not.this.day. This day we fight! – Aragorn, The Return of the King, J.R.R. Tolkien

We must wait, we must withhold judgment, we must read to the end! For no story, least of all our own, makes sense until we have read all the way to the final page. It is only then, in light of the whole, that we will see the skill, the ability, the genius of the Author. – Tim Challies

This I recall to mind, therefore I have hope…The Lord is good to those who wait for Him – Lamentations 3:21-25

True story: I almost got hit by lightning over Spring Break.

No joke. It happened.

I mean, almost.

We were in Newport, Oregon, our last night camping after a week away.

Oregon State Parks are consistently reliable for the availability of their yurts (read: permanent tents, raised off the ground with indoor heating, electricity and lamps, all things that make Lana cry YAY!), and the relative closeness of their bathrooms to said yurts,

but this last stop at South Beach State Park might have been our favourite yet.

South Beach is stunningly beautiful, reaching out to the north like the left arm of Newport Bay, surrounded by water and epic sunsets. You can hear the roar of the ocean as you fall asleep – that is, when there isn’t also a massive thunder-and-lightning storm raging.

It started out small, and we thought tucking in for a fire under our canopy could be doable, one last night in the elements and away from wifi and responsibility.

But then the raindrops turned to hail, so we put the fire out and went in for the night.

See, the great thing about yurting in March is that it doesn’t really matter what kind of weather you encounter, you’re going to be relatively comfortable. Safe. Protected.

Which is good, because the weather on the Oregon Coast at any time of year can change on a dime, as if subject to the whims of some two -year-old in charge of a weather machine she’s mistaken for a toy.

On this particular night, we’d been at the beach less than an hour before the rain turned to hail; the sun was out, we were letting the dog run on the sand, listening to the roar of the water, the wind cold but not biting,

and then somewhere in the distance thunder sounded

and a flash of light cracked the overcast-hued sunset.

We thought it was a false alarm, and for that first hour all we saw was light rain,

and then toonie-sized raindrops,

and then hail.

By the time we’d packed up camp and shut in for the night, the thunder was sounding only a second or two after the bolt of lightning pierced our view of stars through the skylamp.

Surprisingly, we were both hit with a fit of giggles.

What is this trip coming to?

Seriously, if it was an episode of a sitcom, it would have been The One With all the Fails.

See, I’m not the most experienced camper.

Learning to love the outdoors is one of the things I’ve done because I love my husband.

And I genuinely love it now – in a way that only things you thought you’d hate but someone you love made you love them kind of way. Special.

For me, that goes along with Pinochle – the Meredith family card game that took me eight – yes, EIGHT – years to learn; biking; and Lord of the Rings.

Which, as you are about to see, I genuinely adore.

(Confession: I’m watching it right now as I write, because, come on. That story is epic.)

So its taken me some time to develop the acquired taste of glamping

(because not bringing the tent, or carrying all potentially-required supplies on your back, I am told, is glamour-camping, or glamping).

and it wasn’t until Spring Break 2023, our first kidless trip in a thousand years or more, that I caught the vision for why people purposely plan, pay money for, and work hard to go on a trip that’s

… well, a lot of work.

On that pivotal 2023 venture – I learned how to cook outside.

Virtually all of the credit for that goes to Half-Baked Harvest, for this incredible recipe, made even better when cooked on a dutch oven over open fire.

Seriously, every time I make it for my family, they drool. All I have to do is say the word orzo to Elliana, and she immediately perks up, because they make it seem more like risotto than orzo.

(You guys really should try it).

But before I digress too much about the food, even though our family are thorough fans of gastronomy,

back to the point,

which is –

that my husband is usually at his best in nature

(He’s named after a famous Cascadian botanist, after all)

and I finally learned to love it almost as much as he does.

The combination of cooking, eating, and walking outside, reading, thinking, falling asleep to the sound of the ocean, seeing my husband in his most restful element;

and being reminded once again that if the God of the universe created all these massive forces – in which the roaring ocean tide goes out and yet always comes back,

then maybe He can be trusted with my chaos back home.

And lets face it: there’s always a little chaos back home.

But – then we got a dog. On Valentine’s Day.

(Speaking of chaos).

And while we spent late February and early March learning the day to day of trying to coax an exuberant puppy to pee outside and not spend his every waking moment biting our furniture or his own tail

We weren’t even sure we would bring the dog.

And then last minute, we decided we would.

But I’d not booked any pet-friendly yurts.

So we called the campsites.

No, they’re pretty strict on the no pets in non-pet-friendly yurts,we learned. It’s for people who have allergies, they said.

So David thought he could sleep in the car.

No pets unsupervised in vehicles or not on six-foot leash, they told us.

I guess I could sleep in it with him, he conceded.

But that didn’t sound like much of a vacation, so I went hunting for pet-friendly yurts, and while doing some internet wizardry and complex reorganization, I was able to rebook our six nights in non-pet-friendly yurts to four nights in pet-friendly yurts and two in non-pet-friendly yurts.

That would be enough, right?

On March 22nd, we set out – while our oldest flew from Stockholm to Lyon (to tour the south of France with friends on her spring break from Holsby) and our youngest headed to Sea-Tac (to fly to San Diego to serve in a ministry called Casa de Luz which is incidentally led by some of our dear friends and the Pastor who dedicated our kids),

me sleeping in the car post-night-shift

while David drove us to Astoria, Oregon, for the first night of our adventure.

We were hungry, so we stopped for food.

But we had a dog – and most places were like sorry, no we don’t take pets here

and a few were like sure, but you need to keep them outside

and the only place that had room didn’t have an overhang or covered porch

and I’m not sure if y’all know this, Astoria is the rainiest place alive.

Spitting-rain turned to penny-sized drops in moments, and we decided,

okay, the dog can stay in the crate for a bit while we warm up inside.

After a great dinner and time to recover from the drive,

we headed to our campsite.

But again, Astoria being one of the rainiest places of all time –

and yet its the first campground we’ve found that does not have overhangs the entrances to their yurts.

Um. Yeah.

The canopy we’d bought in anticipation of wet weather did nothing to ward off the increasingly painful hail-sized droplets or the mud-caked-on-to-our-puppy’s-paws as he tried to spend most of his free moments rolling down the muddy hill next to our yurt.

And that’s when I learned my husband gets realllllly stressed when things aren’t clean.

I mean, I’m not a fan. It’s one of the reasons I held out on getting a dog for as long as I did. But I assumed that going camping with a dog would mean a bit of dirt that I didn’t want.

David, it appeared, has assumed something else.

I told him, hey, this is fine, it’s only one night. We’d be much further south the next four days – surely the weather would be better, and of course we’d figure out the canopy thing.

The next day, we got to our next spot and –

in pouring rain –

realized that not only do we have to find a solution for the dog for two of our four nights there

(or face a citation imposing hefty fines and/or possible jail time)

(yeah, they are real serious about their pet-friendly yurts vs non-pet-friendly yurts in Oregon)

but there’s no wifi, even with an eSIM card or RoamLikeHome option

anywhere in sight.

Not at the campsite – ok.

Not at the local grocery store. Wierd.

Not anywhere downtown. Which is more than weird.

And while I’m all for vacation meaning I’m unable to be found, in this case I wanted – even needed – wifi, because, well 1)there was no other way to research solutions to our dog problem,

and, far louder an issue, at least in my mama brain –

2) BOTH MY BABIES WERE IN THE AIR SOMEWHERE THANK YOU VERY MUCH AND I JUST NEED TO SEE THEY’VE LANDED AND ALL IS WELL AND THEN I CAN BREATHE. YUP. THANKS.

But that mama-breath had to wait until the next day, when, after an hour of driving around, I stumbled on some wifi at a sweet little coffee shop , which, incidentally, made a write-home-about-oat-milk-latte, and also allowed me a quiet spot to regroup, journal, and check in with my offspring.

Amid all that, I learned that there was no other pet-friendly yurts available when we needed them across the Oregon Coast.

We had another twenty-four hours to solve that problem, and when I made it back to our site, David informed me that he’d talked to the park host and found a kennel only seven minutes away that got rave reviews, and yes, they’d take Mr. Darcy for two nights, as long as we got his health records emailed to them.

We went back and forth on this, right up until the moment we dropped him off,

because we are new puppy owners and a little protective of our sweet boy,

but as we drove away from the best home-away-from-home a dog could ask for, I realized how essential it was because

I could literally see the weight falling off of my husband.

I really, really needed a break, he admitted, his tone a little guilty-sounding.

We stayed up late that night talking about it – the dog, the underlying hum of stress he regularly feels, what that means and where it came from. All the while we stoked the fire and reconnected with the rhythm of just the two of us, which becomes more and more important as the girls grow and spread their wings,

and also tried to figure out if what I’d made for dinner was even edible.

Yeah, see – we forgot the Dutch oven when we were packing.

and the suitable-for-home Dutch oven David found at Fred Meyer as a semi-replacement couldn’t be used over the open flame, and

Camping pots burn things really, really fast.

Like – I went over to stoke the fire so it didn’t hotbox me under our canopy in the rain, and when I stepped back to the stove, the onions I was trying to saute were black.

David’s a good sport, and he tried to make me feel awesome even with the trashed version of Creamy White Bean Orzo Soup, but I couldn’t stomach it. Every. Single. Thing. Tasted. Like. Burnt. something-I-couldnt-identify.

This trip is clearly the One With All the Fails, I said, and he cackled.

Yup, trust us to have a trip like this.

So when, only a couple of nights later, the yurt at South Beach shook with the force of thunder that had sounded less than a second after the bolt of lightning flashed in our skylight,

We jumped into each other’s arms

-not kidding it was one of those laughably-cliche scenes in a movie-

and resolved not to venture out to the bathroom until the storm had passed.

Is someone trying to kill me? I asked him, which received more cackling.

Truth be told, it’s something that’s trying to kill me and not someone.

Most of you know that, for the past fifteen and a half years, our family has walked the journey of chronic cancer in the form of CML (chronic myelogenous leukemia), first discovered in the first week of January, 2009, when Elliana was a mere eight months of age and I had gone to the walk-in clinic over Christmas holidays for what I thought was a bladder infection.

It was indeed a bladder infection, but when the antibiotics didn’t quite do the job, they looked into other things, and discovered my white blood count was 147, when its supposed to be somewhere between 4 and 9.

The pathologist at MSA Hospital recognized my name, being staff, and being a community hospital where almost everyone knew everyone else, and then there was my age – twenty-eight – and this result is incredibly uncommon for someone who is twenty-eight – and he accelerated the rest of the tests, and the next day I got a phone call from the doctor at the walk-in, knowing my family doctor was away, and knowing I needed treatment yesterday –

and of course the first thing I felt upon hearing the word leukemia was fear.

The second thing, more powerful and overwhelming, though, was relief.

See, I’d been exhausted for months. The daily tasks of raising and tending to two little Merediths at the age of three and eight months, each with such big ideas and so much to say, and so much need,

was knocking me out.

I had thought there something seriously wrong with me – but not physically.

A few months prior, when I’d first felt this off-ness, my mom had suggested joining her study at the church I’d grown up in.

It was a good start, because heaven knows that at the exact moment I was hearing these words chronic cancer and start treatment, I’d need to be immersed in studying the book that shows us what happens next, as in, after this life, and if there’s one thing you need to be studying when you learn you might die and soon, its the book of Revelation, the one that teaches you not to fear death or anything that comes afterwards.

But, before I knew that, I kept thinking, I’m doing all the ‘right’ things and I’m still, oh-so-tired.

Can I just not do this? I’d wondered. I’d wanted to be a mom forever, but the girls showed up sooner than we’d planned, and I wondered if maybe God had made a mistake, and I just wasn’t supposed to be a mom, because everyone around me seemed to have their days, their homes, their lives, their joys all figured out, and the whole time I kept thinking, what am I missing here?

Turns out I was missing a lot, but not what I thought.

And, ironically, it was cancer that God chose to show me exactly what that missing-bit was.

See, before cancer, I was a check-list girl. I planned, I did, I learned, I grew, and faster than everyone else, thank you, and the thing about those first three years of motherhood is that they slowed. me. down. in ways that were frustrating to say the least.

So God decided I needed to slow down even more.

And when I did, I saw these beautiful, sparkling, incandescent eyes.

Four of them, two belonging to my girl with the big ideas, and the other two to my girl with the big feels, together two stunning bursts of creativity, joy, and serenity,

and I realized this was the more I’d been missing before.

And all of that came from a seemingly-unanswered prayer and the thing I really didn’t want, that showed up with a bang and shook my heart with trembling

the way that our yurt shook as the thunder followed .5 seconds after the lightning bolt pierced the sky that torrential night in South Beach.

Have you ever been there?

That place where what you’ve just heard or just learned sends an arrow through your heart, and your insides begin to shake?

That’s been me, plenty of times.

In fact, I’m kind of there right now.

The last fifteen years have been something of a quiet miracle. What should have killed me in mere weeks has been diminished and kept at bay by a revolutionary twenty-first-century drug class known as tyrosine-kinase-inhibitors. These – oral – chemotherapy pills have successfully targeted the cause of philadelphia-chromosone-positive CML and in many cases, cured to the point of remission, some to the point of continued remission while weaning off of the drug altogether.

While I have been granted a major molecular response, in which the cancer gene counts are in the -3 to -3.5 range (according to a negative logarhythmic function for you people who are smart at math), at times being as low as -3.84, I’ve never broken the -4 barrier, or complete molecular response, or achieved remission.

Don’t get me wrong – I’ve been granted an extension of life that is now more than fifty percent of what I’d lived up to the point the cancer was found. Fifteen years is not nothing.

Fifteen years has allowed me to live long enough for both my girls to remember me, for each of them to have been raised by a mom for a significant period, to have lived many adventures, loved and lost many dear people, retained a few gems among them, and had my rough edges continually rubbed off by that irritating and wonderful little white pill that reminds me every day my life is not my own.

And there are times that I wonder if its been worth it.

Times I’ve wondered if the non-cancer-related pains have been just too much and should I really still be here and didn’t I just make everything so much worse

times when everything I’ve prayed for – that I thought I was supposed to pray for

seems to end in a big fat nothing with seemingly no purpose at all.

I was there a bit recently.

On returning from our fated camping trip, I discovered something that left my heart shaking as much as that yurt did that last night when the lightning landed only yards from our campsite.

Like, what, on earth, are you doing here, God?

I saw no explanation for it. It made no sense. And it made me wonder if a part of the last six-to-twelve years of my life was all a big mistake.

And I’m guessing you guys have been there too, at some point.

Maybe even right now.

Maybe not for a reason like mine – you might be physically healthy without any illness in sight,

but as the last four years have taught us,

there’s a lot of other things you can lose unexpectedly.

And if you’re anything like me,

then some of those losses have hit deep and left you wondering,

How did we even get here?!?

Its tempting to think there was no rhyme or reason to any of it, no purpose at all.

Some of these losses I’d spent my days at the beach praying over. Asking to understand the purpose. Begging to know what good He was doing in it. Crying out for Him to lift the burden and confusion in it all.

So when I didn’t get the answer I’d expected, I was angry.

How dare you trick me like this!?!

(Because it really seemed like He had).

The Friday and Saturday of Easter weekend were spent with tears constantly at the ready, unsure if and when they should be spilled, confused as to if any of what I’d poured out had even been heard.

And then Elliana came home

at 4 am

on Easter Sunday

early…while it was still dark…on the first day of the week…

And poured out her heart for two hours of all the incredible work she’d seen the Great Story-Teller do and write in and through her life to those around her

And I thought again of those fervent prayers I’d prayed at the beach.

See, there was one other thing I kept thinking in the midst of them.

I didn’t pray enough for Elliana today.

Her name even comes from that verse I quoted at the beginning: I sought the Lord, and He answered me, (El-Elyon-ah), and delivered me from all my fears.

And as I listened to this fiercely-truthful, no-punches-pulled-kinda-girl whose name means He answers

tell how she shared with her team

how the God of Light delivered her

from the deepest darkness

with the words:

I would have despaired, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living – Psalm 27:13.

I realized that He’d answered.

I’d sought the Lord – about something else, but I’d sought Him, and El-Elyon-ah.

While I’m sure the other things that haven’t been answered yet will become clear in time,

the immediate answer was that

He did a ton of things for the girl I felt like I hadn’t prayed for enough.

And it reminded me that

God will either give us what we ask for in prayer,

or give us what we would have asked for if we knew everything He knows – Tim Keller

It’s a thought I’ve been turning over for the last ten months or so.

Last summer, Shutterfly had a fourth-of-July sale in which you could print as many 4×6 or 4×4 photo prints as you’d like, and only pay for shipping. I realized, that in the fog of the last twelve years, it had been since 2011 when I’d put photos in physical albums, that could be looked through and remembered.

It’s a practice that’s going by the wayside for many of us, and its certainly not required by any means, and most of us moms are living through years in which if we make it through the day with clean clothes or with all of our children alive, fed, and safely asleep in their beds, we’ve accomplished a marathon.

But as I watched our girls take flight in new ways this past year, I realized that making those albums might help me process the chaos of the last decade. And, since I didn’t know how many more years I’d have, it might be nice for the girls to have each of these bonus years I was granted documented and laid out in ways they can remember easily.

So arrived a room’s full worth of orange boxes in David’s old room at his parents house in Oregon last August.

And while piecing these years of our lives together,

what I saw wasn’t just the highlight reel, the Instagram-curated version of our family adventures;

although for anyone who’s ever tempted to chronicle their lives in terms of losses

and yes, I know someone who does that literally, which was part of what sobered me up to tackle this project,

a highlight reel is a beautiful, necessary, poignant antidote.

Because – He’s answered me. So. Many. Times.

Not how I thought.

But better.

Take my girls, for example. The heartaches and misunderstandings they’ve sustained in the last five years have been nothing short of excruciating to watch as their mama. And yet, looking at these pictures, I wouldn’t trade a minute or a single detail of who my girls have become at the hands of immature, not-quite-ready-to-appreciate-them-for-all-the-awesome-they-are-yet peers,

all while walking with those who have at least seen glimpses of their awesome, and know enough to know they want to be around it, a lot,

because these bold, fire-tested, lightning rods of truth

forged in the darkness of would-be despair

are beginning to lift a torch to light the darkness for those around them –

because of walking through all the things

I begged God not to give them.

In fact, those things I implored God to take away are the very things that have made them into women who know how to

stand their ground

when the enemy comes knocking.

Because when the enemy comes knocking, he knows how to make us shake.

Even this latest plot twist in my story has been enough to make me tremble.

(And here’s we get all scientific, for those of you who are reading this just for the status report:)

The drug I’ve been on the last ten years, Dasatanib, has kept the leukemia at bay, but slowly the cancer gene has been creeping up, closer to the -3 mark than the -4 it was a few short years ago. For a couple of years, my oncologist has been talking about a newer-generation drug, Asciminib, developed for those CML patients, who, like me, have tried two different TKI’s (Gleevec, Sprycel, etc) and have not yet received a complete molecular response or remission. Asciminib targets a different part of the cancer gene molecule, and has shown to be significantly effective in doing what the others could not.

Only thing was, it wasn’t available in British Columbia until the last few months.

Oh yeah – and there’s more monitoring involved with this drug, as it tends to cause more side effects.

Heart changes, blood pressure increases, gastrointestinal chaoses, cytopenias, joint pain, fatigue.

So, after much prayer, research, thinking through and talking over,

Tomorrow morning I go off of my current little white pill friend – Dasatanib.

I need to be off of it for five days before starting the new one – Asciminib.

On Monday I get labwork and an ECG.

Tuesday I have a forty-minute appointment with a oncology-pharmacist in Surrey.

Wednesday, I get to pick up the new drug; and

Thursday, begin to take it.

The monitoring will be weekly for awhile – labwork and ECG; then every other week, then monthly, for at least the first six months.

And I’m guessing my body is going to be knocked out a bit.

I know my mind has been … at least shaky at times.

But there’s this thing I teach new labour nurses:

I call it the pivot point.

See, contrary to what many people think, labour and delivery nursing involves a lot of unexpected change. It requires thinking on your feet with mere moments to pivot from casual conversation in early labour to urgent direction of emergencies.

Sometimes we can see the situation coming

and other times it comes out of nowhere.

And managing those quick-moving, heart-pumping moments of that unforeseen emergency

is one of the biggest anxieties of new perinatal nurses.

But the first thing they need to learn how to do is stay in the room. And in order to stay in it, they need to find a spot that’s theirs. A spot where they can slow down their thinking and their heart rate and learn to pay attention to what the team is doing and why, so that someday soon they can mimic those actions and implement the same safety protocols

so that we all stick to our maxim of above all, healthy mom, healthy baby.

In those early learning days, when their somewhat predictable learning environment turns to chaos, I teach them to find

the two-square-foot spot in the room they can safely occupy

as they observe those more experienced than them

in emergencies like these

do what we know to do to get babies out screaming and healthy.

But every time I teach that,

I can’t help thinking that, for me, those two square feet are really a Person

Who gave His life on a cross

that likely occupied about two square feet in the ground

so that He could pay a penalty we could not;

and in so doing,

become that spot that doesn’t move.

And friend –

let me assure you,

there is absolutely no better place

to plant yourself

in chaos

than with the One who, between a Friday and a Sunday, descended to the place of ultimate torment

and ripped the keys to death

away from the one who used them to taunt us;

so that people like me

could confidently tell you

that those keys are oh-so-safe in His hands.

Because – they are.

Not only that, but since He alone knows when and how to use them – for good –

you and I have nothing to fear.

See, one thing I’m learning recently is that

while the enemy’s primary weapon is a lie

and he’ll use whatever combination of those useful to his cause;

whatever it takes,

to convince us to do a bad thing, or discourage us from doing a good thing,

one of his often-used-yet-rarely-detected strategies is

to convince us that something is over before it actually is.

For someone like me, that can be as basic as trying to convince me life is over before it actually is.

For when he can convince us that there’s nothing left to fight for,

he defeats us before the battle has even begun.

And guys – who knows how many of those battles we would have won?!?

One of my favourite fictional characters embodies this wisdom so well.

Near the end of The Return of the King, unsure if the ring-bearer is still alive, or if the quest still has a chance of success, the soon-to-be-crowned king (that we know, at least), Aragorn, calls forth the dark lord Sauron to battle –

his only goal being to give Frodo a chance to destroy the ring

by distracting the enemy’s attention.

And it shouldn’t surprise us, his motivation. If we’d been listening carefully to what he promised Frodo at the Counsel of Elrond, we’d remember he vows, if by his life or his death he may aid the quest, then he will do just that.

Guys.

Aragorn doesn’t go to that last battle thinking he will win.

He goes to battle knowing he has to try.

Or else, fear wins before he’s even begun to fight.

And oh, how his enemy – and ours – wants us to fear.

In Aragorn’s case, the mouth of Sauron, the dark lord, comes forth – hideous, grotesque, and full of absolute lies; some overt, some a smoke-and-mirrors misrepresentation of reality.

He tries to convince the Fellowship that the ring-bearer, on whom all their hopes rest to defeat evil by destroying the ring of power – Frodo – is dead after a hideously long torture.

He makes it look like it too.

So much so that Frodo’s hobbit-friends quiver in fear, and tears come to even wise, I’ve-been-here-before-so-you-don’t-scare-me-Gandalf‘s eyes.

Aragorn merely walks forward, unperturbed.

While this disgusting mouth of lies taunts him, saying that just because he has the king of old’s sword doesn’t mean he has what it takes to be king, Aragorn lifts the very blade being mocked

and cuts off the Liar’s head.

I do not believe it, he says. I will not.

Guys. We all need to do a little bit more of this, don’t we?

Because that very act – the silencing of the Liar who knows he hasn’t won, not yet, but maybe can, if he convinces his opponent it’s already all over –

turns out to be the biggest turn of the tide in that whole battle.

Had he let the mouth continue to speak, the army would have grown in doubt, fear, and insecurity.

But, knowing the master of lies speaks only lies, he refuses to listen or let his people hear it. Instead he rides back to the rest of the army and speaks what is likely the most inspirational sixty seconds of a movie ever –

seriously, you should go watch it.

I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me.

Aragorn knows that the battle is by no means won, or even winnable – not in their own strength, anyways. And he doesn’t tell the men to go out and win.

He tells them to hold their ground.

See there’s one thing we can ensure doesn’t fail.

And that, is courage.

Perhaps you and I even now find ourselives in situations in which the courage of all around us fail.

And we may be tempted to join them.

How can I make a difference, just me, against all this?

If you listen carefully, it was this same despair that drew all traitors to Sauron – Saruman the wizard, who once was Gandalf’s trusted mentor and friend, the men from the South, even Denethor, Steward of the capital of Men, who gave himself up to suicide at the first sign of battle –

because he thought it was hopeless.

But – you and I – do not need to believe the enemy’s fake-outs.

Because that is what they are.

We can say no. not today.

Not today will I lay down my sword.

Not today will I believe your lies. No-

Today, I will fight.

By all that I hold dear on this good earth, I will stand.

And, as Paul tells us, we only stand when we are held together by truth.

Only with truth, will we hold our ground.

So please, friends, be careful who and what you listen to. What you let speak. What you let be heard, dwelt on, thought over.

Friends –

Hold. your. ground.

And, if you’re willing – pray that I can do the same.

For those of you who’ve asked – pray that I’ll be granted strength, health, and peace for this next leg of the journey, and that, Lord willing, that I may be given even more time –

because it seems like there may be more for me to do here still.

Regardless –

it’s not over.

Not yet.

Its Not Supposed to be This Way

The deepest things I’ve learned and the greatest gifts I’ve received have come from the deepest suffering – having what I didn’t want or wanting what I didn’t have. And I imagine that most of you would say exactly the same – Elisabeth Elliot

What a dreadful place the world would be (if) you eliminated suffering. Everything that corrects the tendency of man to feel over-important and over-pleased with himself would disappear. He’s bad enough now, but he would be absolutely intolerable if he never suffered – Malcolm Muggeridge

Forgiveness; can you imagine? – Lin-Manuel Miranda

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

And by it, I mean 2020; and by like this, I mean epic global disaster ratcheting up our intra-and-inter-personal tensions to the point where most of us are thinking, speaking, and behaving in ways we hardly recognize and somehow reacting to the thing one of your closest people did as though it is now indescribably intolerable so you will SHOW THEM by unleashing all your pent-up fury, because, guess what, the disaster has also deprived us all of the thing many of us rely on to get through hard things:

Easy Access to Our People.

Some of you aren’t sure what I’m talking about. You used to know what I meant, but now you find yourself sitting in a space that feels empty, white, bereft.

You thought you had people.

But the people you thought were your people have somehow vanished along with memories of

high-fiving strangers in grocery stores

after your local sports team wins

and hugging,

well… anyone.

Seriously, guys. Remember hugging?

Like, hugging those people not in your household?

Others of you are wondering what all the fuss is about.

Seriously, its not a big deal, you think.

No one in your sphere of influence has been impacted by this seemingly-far-off-or-possibly-made-up virus and you wonder,

either out loud or to yourself,

why should I care?

And in so resolving not to care –

because that’s easier than throwing online landmines at your distant second cousin’s Facebook petition because HOW DARE THEY be pro-mask or anti-mask or whatever they happen to be that seems oh-so-offensive right now

because

Guys.

Its not supposed to be like this.

Remember when we used to communicate with, well, random people?

(Before you peace out, introverts, back up; I’m an introvert too, and we need our people just as much as anyone … in small, measured, controlled doses, and only those we really like, and only when we feel like it, of course.)

(So … shh. This affects you too.)

Remember those normal every day interactions we had at the office or the schoolyard or the grocery store or the waiter at the restaurant?

(Seriously, the last time I’ve seen someone in the service industry SMILE.)

(Right now, it’s the last time I’ve seen someone in the service industry period).

Those tiny little interactions, like waving your fist at the driver who cut you off and then realizing their daughter is in your daughters sports team or high school band,

and then realizing we really can’t hide

and no man is an island

and all of that.

Guys.

We’ve been given the gift

of seeing life

as though each man is an island.

And I don’t know about you, but I think we’re getting worse on our islands.

No, seriously, go with me on this.

Think about the level of reactivity you have to normal, every day frustrations. Your coffee being cold. Your commute being long. A slow-moving train parking itself in front of your road while you’re late getting your kids to school. Your mother-in-law’s latest phone call wondering when you’ll be free to get together (THIS IS NOT ME. MY MOTHER-IN-LAW IS AMAZING AND I LOVE TALKING TO HER.Not kidding even a little bit.)

Then think about the level of reactivity you see in those around you.

Do you ever find yourself wondering,

Woah.

Where did that come from?

Or

Why are we even talking about this?

It makes me wonder if we aren’t reacting to the thing in front of us at all;

If we’re reacting to something more frustrating than any mask mandate or social gathering ban in history:

The understanding that we are more powerless over our lives than we originally thought.

Take my oldest for example.

Last Christmas, after eight and a half years of homeschooling, my Christmas girl announced to me that she was going to go to MEI

and oh, by the way,

she was going to get into their marching band.

My head spun.

I had taken the school tour for her sister, not her; she was ‘just humouring me’ by tagging along, she’d said.

I calmly reminded her that no one had ever gotten into band in grade 10;

that her grade year was already full;

and oh, by the way,

what on earth was she planning to play in that marching band,

because last I’d checked she didnt play a brass instrument.

Or a woodwind.

Or a drum.

Head up, she marched into our school-room-turned-music-room-in-the-process-of-becoming-a-recording-studio, hauled out a case I’d forgotten we had and announced:

Grandpa’s Trumpet.

The grandpa she’d never met.

The same one who learned trumpet to make some friends in high school.

The one who’d I’d never heard play that trumpet.

The same grandpa she kind of looks like a little bit and the same one who’s fiestiness would have made her giggle and giggle till her sides hurt.

The same one who’s sense of humor she’s inherited ten times over.

I asked her why, and she said – well, it’s clear I need to learn a few things about people.

The truth was, her heart had just been broken.

As goes many adolescent – and lets face it, sometimes adult – relationships, a friend had proven to be something other than who she’d thought.

And while the initial discovery of the betrayal she felt was intense,

and something I’d never want to relive with her,

when she looked at me and said

clearly I need to learn that people aren’t always who they seem.

I knew every tear was worth it.

I wasn’t sure she’d get what she wanted.

(In fact, I was pretty sure she wouldn’t.)

But I wanted to fan the flame of her boldness,

so I threw all my efforts into making it happen,

because if there was one thing I resented growing up,

it was all the people who seemed to try to tell me my dreams were ridiculous or it couldn’t be done

and I resented myself even more for believing them,

instead of giving it a try and seeing what would happen.

Thing is, my girl is ahead of me.

She knew she had nothing to lose, and possibly everything to gain.

And… she got into band.

But the place she thought would ease her way into a new environment has instead been found to be the most challenging part.

But hard isn’t necessarily bad.

I got into a bit of a rant about this at work this week.

Fifteen years ago, when my girl was barely sitting up on her own and I started labour and delivery nursing, most women I met wanted to have as little intervention as possible with the hope to deliver as naturally as possible. I occasionally had to convince them that some situations called for some intervention, and that a small intervention could sometimes save them from a bigger one.

But that’s not so much the case anymore.

Now most women I meet want to have as much control as possible over their experience, and while that’s a concept that resonates, and patient choice is important,

there’s something about labour and delivery that defies control.

Our bodies are built to do something

that naturally overwhelms the strength we think we have to that point.

When we submit to that process,

we find that maybe

we could do a harder thing than we once thought.

So while, sure, I’ll get you your epidural, I’m a little concerned about the growing idea among expectant parents that

as soon as this labour thing is over with, everything’s going to be great.

I’m not sure what they’re expecting, but we deliver humans in my line of work, not puppies or house plants or toys or artificial intelligence.

Unique humans, who will challenge every reserve we think we have and push every button we didn’t know we had, and who, as they get older, won’t require less from us so much, but different; and the kind of different where the stakes are increasingly high.

And unless we stick our heads in the sand and scream LALALALALALALA

I don’t know of any epidural for raising teenagers.

But I do know that pain isn’t always the sign of a bad thing.

In my line of work, it signals birth.

And the thing about being an expert bedside nurse

is that you know

sometimes anesthetizing isn’t the way to go.

Think about the way it was designed – birth, that is.

Long before the serpent, apple and curse, a woman’s body was designed with a small form of a future womb; one that would grow and adapt and seal in a growing human. At the right time, the muscles at the top of that womb would start contracting, so that it opened, made room for, and pushed out

new life.

There’s no way that wouldn’t involve a little, erhm,

Discomfort.

And yet we seem to think that birth after the Fall should be more comfortable than it was before.

Some of my patients have mused about what labour would have been like before Genesis 3.

The agony of the contractions they experience

combined with the absorbing cultural mandate to

avoid suffering at all costs

has lulled them into thinking that pain and work are the enemy,

When in the original paradise,

There was always going to be a little of both.

Take the work designed for man in Genesis 2, for example.

It says that man was placed in the garden, put there, to cultivate and keep it.

The word for put in Hebrew is also the word for rest.

The man was rested there, in order to cultivate and keep the garden.

I’m no gardener, but my neighbor is.

Year round, I watch her tend her growing things with detailed, continued, expert, constant supervision, weeding, watching and waiting.

And some of it is just plain work.

Her joy in that work is palpable, though;

Because doing the work we were meant to do often feels like rest.

When we are able to do the thing we are called to do and have the exact resources we need, when its not so challenging to seem impossible and also not so easy that it loses our attention – that’s flow. It feels so natural it hardly involves strain.

I wonder if that’s why the Hebrew word for it was rest.

But rest man did not.

Instead, at an undisclosed-but-seemingly-almost-immediate-time-after-their-creation,

the woman placed as a helper suitable for him

isn’t found helping her husband do what he’s been called to do

– cultivate and keep the garden –

but is standing right in front of the one tree they’ve both been commanded to stay away from.

Oh, its not all her fault. It’s clear from the text that Adam was right there next to her, saying nothing to contradict her.

But complainers tend to produce a culture of complaining,

and envious eyes tend to produce self-pity in their companions;

So this helper was leading him to doubt the goodness of the situation he’d been provided.

Ignoring the from any tree in the garden you may eat, freely, she zeroes in on the

One tree purposely kept out of her reach – for her good.

She couldn’t see that, though.

All she could see was how good the tree looked, and how great it would taste, and how her life and her person would be so much better if she just had this one thing.

Our oldest has had her eyes open to this battle lately – in herself, her friends, and girls in general.

Why do we always focus on the one thing going wrong,

instead of all the things going right?

Last Wednesday she challenged herself to a fourteen-day-no-complaining fast.

Twelve hours in, she texted me:

THIS IS SOOOO HARD!

My immediate response:

Are you complaining about that?

A vehement ARGH greeted me in return.

I wonder if the structure of the challenge is your problem.

It’s never wise to focus on the one tree when there’s an entire garden to enjoy.

The first BC COVID lockdown of 2020,

all I could see was the one tree.

To be fair, it seemed like a lot more than one. It felt like fifteen thousand.

But in reality, the part that really felt like loss to me was not being able to see friends.

I feared I’d lose some of them.

I feared they wouldn’t miss me.

I feared finding out I didn’t belong in anyone’s bubble.

And I let that fear control me.

Word to the wise: fear never accomplishes anything good in us.

But it did force me to confront some layers in my soul that should have been put to death long ago.

Fortunately the lockdown made it impossible NOT to confront those layers.

I mean, what else was I gonna DO?

So I couldn’t help but think as I watched the BC Health Officer update of a few weeks ago informing us that social gatherings of any size were banned and churches no longer permitted to meet,

That I was a lot different now than I was back in March.

Each restriction announced this November could have felt like a punch in the stomach.

The place that my girl found stressful and even damaging at times – school – was staying open; her outlets of joy and confidence – youth, her first opportunity to lead worship – both at church – were being shut down

or severely modified.

And yet I knew, I KNEW, this was going to be

exactly what we – and she – needed.

I just needed to take her – and my – eyes off the one tree.

So I asked for the grace to see the garden.

And it was there – abundant, plentiful, and free.

The opportunity to get some living room updates done without distraction.

Less driving.

More time at home, inside, preparing our homes and hearts for Christmas.

An opportunity for me to focus on each of my family as well as learn a new role at work that seemed to fall in my lap.

And a break from some other things that needed some space too.

Because a break can be an odd form of gift.

There were things she wasn’t going to get a break from – her job, her friends, and the time to sleep and concentrate on the other things shed been given to do

– including catching up to some new music in band,

Because she’d been promoted to second trumpet in one song.

So we took a collective breath.

It was going to be just fine.

The trick was to just do the next right thing.

(In case you’re wondering if you’ve heard that before, you probably have; a woman far wiser and mature than me came up with it. I’ve quoted her at the beginning.)

The funny thing about doing the next right thing, is that wou become so occupied doing the next right thing

you don’t see all the difficult and painful things passing

as those series of right things lead to

exactly what they should –

Contentment, production, meaningful contribution to the world.

Or – exactly where you were always meant to be.

I caught a glimpse of that lately.

A few years ago I had a significant period of shifting, transition, and, well, loss. And a few months ago a friend who knew me well enough to know of the shift but not enough to know all the layers behind it was talking about how she sometimes finds it difficult to understand grace.

Justice makes sense to her; grace, not so much.

If someone takes something from me, they need to give it back or be punished, she said.

Its something I could have heard myself say not so long ago.

And while I still believe it, because justice is an important thing to advocate for,

In the moment I heard her say those words all I could think about was

If I was thinking about this a certain way, I could accuse you of stealing from me this very opportunity to talk about your passion for justice and struggle with grace.

And instead all I could think was

If only you knew the grace you were being shown right now.

I gasped – to myself, of course.

She had no idea.

And it made me wonder,

How many hidden graces am I missing?

Probably a lot.

Take my high school yearbook, for example.

I pulled it out recently to show Noelle some pictures of people I went to school with whose kids were in her class, and I found it littered with messages from people who truly made me smile, in person and on paper.

The messages. They were light hearted and deep and meaningful and fun.

And there were LOTS of them.

I didn’t remember high school like that.

All I remembered was the embarrassing stuff and the awkwardness and the immaturity and cliques.

But turns out, there was a lot of good people I had a lot of fun with while we were all figuring out how to do life as our pre-frontal cortexes were developing.

It could have been so much worse.

And, turns out, it was a lot better than I remembered.

I wonder how many other graces I miss while beating my brains out crying for justice

Or screaming about not being able to get the one tree

While I’m wandering a garden littered with beautiful, healthy trees to enjoy.

The thing is,

I don’t really want the justice I spend so much of my life crying for.

Justice would mean the one tree Eve’s envious heart obsessed over would be the final tree to change my eternal fate.

But its not.  

It’s not supposed to be this way.

But praise God, it is.

It’s because its not supposed to be this way that I have any hope at all.

And maybe that’s the reason for all the things we think aren’t supposed to happen.

Each one wakes us up to the reality that the world we living in is failing us.

I was first awoken to this twelve years ago January 7^th.

At the beginning of 2009, postpartum tiredness-turned-bladder-infection exploded into leukemia-on-the-edge-of-blast-cell-crisis in a matter of four days.

All this came on the heels of asking for deliverance from something else.

But there’s something about cancer that silences all that.

See, every year- every day – you get once you hear the ‘c’ word is no longer something owed you.

Instead its an indescribable gift,

And the gift of cancer is that you can finally SEE that.

Pandemics don’t bother you the same way. Normal irritations don’t bother you the same way. You care less about having a bad day because the thing is, you got to have another day, period.

And each day with it, the more the ‘c’ word is drowned out by the flood of all those other awesome things you didn’t have the eyes to see before now,

Until those other things become so loud the ‘c’ word is barely there.

Instead of thinking I probably won’t see my kids have kids,

I remember that I didn’t think I’d get to see them go to high school.

And it reminds me,

The current labour of sorts that I see my oldest in isn’t a problem to be solved,

but an answer to a long-ago prayer:

Please let me stay a little longer for them.

And so far, He has.

This current pain is an indescribable grace.

Friends –

The hidden graces?

They need to become our louder voices.

I get it –

It seems almost impossible to think like this.

And I’ll be the first to tell you that I’m really bad at what I’m suggesting here.

But every time I take my eyes off the one tree and pull back to see the orchard,

I remember that its

Stunning,

plentiful,

and exactly what I need,

and these hidden graces become not so hidden.

Guys –

We. Can. Do. This.

And if we figure out how,

2021 will be a very different year.

No matter what.

Hidden

God does some of His best work in the unseen – Lysa Terkeurst

There is nothing concealed that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. – Matthew 10:26

You’re the best song I’ll ever write. – Bethany Dillon

 

I’m considering re-naming this blog Christmas Mishaps with the Merediths.

Earlier this month, our youngest performed with her choir

at an classical venue downtown.

We heard about the concert in late September.

We discovered the lengthy practice times in early October.

Since the better part of Elliana’s first weekend in December would be spent in the city, we thought it best tag along and have a fun family weekend downtown.

Everything seemed to be clicking:

I found a great deal at a fancy hotel. Concert tickets were affordable. Our other daughter was into the idea.

It would be a perfect kick-off to the holiday season.

But based on the bodies that jammed around us as we shuffled the streets, everyone else thought it a great idea too.

And by everyone,

I mean literally every single person in the Greater Vancouver area.

You know what else happens the first weekend in December?

The Santa Claus Parade.

Americans, let me give you a brief Canadian Christmas lesson here:

We don’t start decorating for Christmas on Black Friday.

We’re still learning what Black Friday IS, because we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving in November.

I know.

Its the only time, you think.

How else would we know when to start the Christmas season? 

When would you have your Macy’s Day Parade?

Well, there’s the hitch.

Anytime in the first weekend of December is acceptable.

But because we’re not fixed on a particular day, its hard to know when to plan for, or in our case, plan around.

Annnd our hotel was on the parade route.

We had noticed signs the night before, something to the effect that

these two streets will be closed from 11-4.

We were going the opposite direction, so we didn’t give it much thought.

But Vancouver did.

Vancouver gave it so much thought, in fact, that they didn’t just close those two streets.

They didn’t close a line, or a cross-section.

They closed an ever-growing, unwieldy rectangle subject to the crowd’s ever-growing madness.

We drove in a square at least three times before my husband jumped out at the fifteenth intersection we were redirected at

to ask the traffic director how in the name of

my-daughter’s-in-a-performance-in-Kitsilano

that we could cross an ever-loving bridge out of the downtown core to where she would have (already begun) singing.

His answer:

oh yeah, you gotta go waaaaaayy east.

It was ten minutes to showtime. We had left our hotel an hour and ten minutes before, certain it would be enough time to cross the normal twenty minute drive and find parking.

Instead, we arrived a half-hour late.

By this time, there were tears. And by tears, I mean mine.

I know these classical concerts. If you’re late, you get the judgy-mc-judgers look from every one you see. And not even the melodramatic, first-world-sob-story of

it took two hours to get here from downtown

would be enough to quell the scrutiny.

Fast forward to the three of us being shoved in the door in the middle of a break to discover we were facing the entire venue, because the tickets I bought were in literally front and centre.

I wasn’t planning on being late, of course. I was going to stay downtown, for crying out loud.

That meant I would be less stressed.

And yet, it took me longer to get there than the people who came from where we live.

HA.

HA.

HA.

It’s so funny.

Of course, once we saw the incredibly awkward position of our seats, when we asked the people at the end of our row to let us in, they just raised an eyebrow, glanced at the seats, turned to me and shook their heads.

I went back to the usher, tears spilling over.

So, they’re not letting us in, and currently the conductor is directly addressing the audience not two and a half feet in front of those seats. 

Can we sneak into the back?

After a dramatic lesson on the importance of assigned seating and being on time, the clearly uncomfortable but resolute usher march over to our row and direct everyone in our way to get up.

About half of them do.

The other half just turn their knees semi-sideways and give us a very pointed once-over.

Since the rows were extremely tight, we accidentally stepped on several toes, in more ways than one, while the whole venue looked on.

See, it’s not always the best thing to stand out.

Another weekend, another recital – this one very much on time, thank you very much – we watched our youngest muster all her courage to introduce herself with a microphone in front of an audience before she played her new instrument in public.

The older ladies behind us called out complements and corrections in joyful-but-emphatic voices far too loud for the setting.

oh, isnt this lovely!

Too bad the piano’s too loud to hear her.

I leaned over to Noelle: You have full permission to shush me when I get like that. She giggled.

I’ve been terrified of growing older for awhile now. I thought that chronic leukemia bit had beaten it out of me – after all, every birthday is a victory of sorts – but there’s a fear lurking still.

A few years ago I asked some older friends for advice.

They told me the future all depends on what happens right now, that growing older was not so much about changing as it was about shedding our covers.

We don’t become someone different; we just reveal who we always were.

But if that’s true, there’s hope. All it takes is ruthlessly weeding, pruning, plucking, and planting the seeds we want to sow today, tomorrow, and the day after that.

This thought came rushing back to me in the middle of a long drive with a friend several weeks ago. Somewhere in the middle of laughing about the latest escapades of our kids, one of us said out loud,

How do we even do this?

A mother’s job is often indefinable.

I see it every day I go to work. I’m not one who chooses to work because I get some sense of personal satisfaction from it. It’s what my family needs me to do. But every time I come home, I remember that I can’t fully relax just because my shift is over.

The second shift has just started.

Those first few moments in the door are so crucial.

My family knows this. They are often so understanding of where my mind and heart are at post twelve-and-a-half-hours of ER-esque maternity madness. But there are other times I come home to a post-tornado-appearing kitchen and hear nothing but complaints of all the things they’ve stored up to tell me. I see sniffles instead of smiles and discover projects that have yet to be done within the hour of when I’m first home.

Its those moments that the idea of cultivating a home seems insurmountable.

How do I even do this?

But in the weeks that have passed since my friend and I mulled over the question, a light has emerged.

I cultivate my home by cultivating my heart.

And when I don’t know where to begin, I start scanning for weeds.

Take this weekend, for example.

My techie-talented husband discovered an out-of-the-blue problem in our newer laptop. All his usual genius tricks failed to save it, so we took it to the repair shop.

Halfway through the depressing conversation with the less-than-helpful repairman, my newly-antibiotic-charged brain came to life.

I know why its not working.

The techie turned towards me, suspicious.

There was a … root beer incident yesterday, I said, and nodded towards our kids.

Immediately the repairman jumped in with the most depressing news to date.

Yeah, that’s going to be at least (insert astronomical sum here). You’re better off buying a new one.

Imagine a zoom-in on my heart.

Fear that we won’t be able to afford it.

Anger that the money can’t go somewhere more productive.

Bitterness that my children have failed to listen to the millions of warnings about liquids and electronics.

Envy of those for whom this would be no big deal.

Frustration that I was in this place at all.

Old, weedy, unkempt Lana would give into those emotions and let them drive her, all without being aware that they were. She would think the weeds were necessary parts of her sprawling mush of a garden – either simply unavoidable or too difficult to yank out. 

New, sharper-pruned, routinely-gardened Lana paused, recognized those reactions for what they were:

Weed… yep, weed, and my goodness, totally-overgrown and outdated weed.

Pluck, pluck, pluck.

The tweezers’ work stings. My heart recoils from the surprise absence of things I once considered necessary.

But I know now that the prick that accompanies the pluck isn’t my enemy.

And while I know this quiet, diligent hard work over a long period of time is rarely ever seen for what it is while its going on, any well-tended garden reminds me that the current invisibility of my efforts will one day be worth it.

Not for what it looks like.

But for the space it provides others to come, sit, and breathe.

Gardening – physical or otherwise – is not my strength; but I’m ultimately governed by a Master Gardener Who’s not content until each heart that’s His is a masterpiece.

He directs the work; He provides the power; He shows us our part.

On January 1, 2019, it will have been ten years I have had chronic leukemia.

That’s a quarter of my life that, ten years ago, I didn’t think I’d have.

Even my oncologist smiled when he realized it’d been that long.

Usually this guy doesn’t smile, but this past November, as he did his exam and looked at my numbers he (almost) grinned.

It’s amazing what happens when my patients follow directions, he said.

– You told me to take a pill every day. That’s easy.

– Oh, you’d be surprised.

He laughed for a moment, and continued.

We’ll need to arrange different follow-up for you – I’m retiring in January.

I hid the tears that day and chose to grin right back.

It was a genuine smile, for all of the years he’d been provided to watch over a very rare condition, over an unusually young patient, from the time I left my three-year-old and eight-month-old at home,

to this last visit, where my now thirteen and ten year old sit in the office with us and laugh as we realize how far we’ve all come.

While there have been frustrations, tears, fears, and questions, including why have You let me stay within a hair’s breath of remission but not quite in remission for five years?

-for that is where I still am –

I learned that day that my oncologist was the only current practitioner who treated my very rare condition

between New Westminster and Kelowna.

He says he’s found a colleague who will take on my case at RCH, but it will be a definite shift.

And yet, I’m not afraid.

The unforeseen isn’t a weed to be plucked, after all. Just a tool to be wielded.

I wish I could impress this on the hearts of first time mothers.

Each year that passes I witness a growing number of women who, out of fear, plan and analyze and read every book and take every class, or worse, just let Google do it for them,

all with the hope of experiencing childbirth without pain or the unexpected.

While I empathize with them, I wish I could give them a lens into the next five, ten, fifteen, twenty years of their lives.

Labour’s just a trial run to prepare you for what’s coming.

I know its terrifying to think your life might get completely upended by this little creature, and the prospect of your only tool being adapting seems too shaky to step into.

But, if you’ll go with me for a moment:

I attended a funeral recently.

It was standing room only.

With each minute that passed, I became more sure that the number present wasn’t representative of the dramatic way in which the woman whose life we were celebrating passed.

Rather it was the number of lives she touched

and the relationships she nurtured

with all those hidden things.

She was a talented professional, yes, but her resume wouldn’t make the world take notice.

She knew a lot of people well, but she didn’t have a lot of titles.

Unless you count friend.

Co-worker.

Sister.

Daughter.

Aunt.

Wife. 

Mom.

But that room was so packed even the overflow was full.

So I’m starting to think that maybe the things we consider visible here – aren’t really.

I asked my husband about this last week, and he shoved a thin little book in my hands.

Read this, he said.

In the final pages of C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce, the narrator finds himself observing the entrance into heaven of a stunningly beautiful woman with a rather large entourage.

‘Is it?… is it?’ I whispered to my guide.

‘Not at all,’ said he. ‘It’s someone ye’ll never have heard of. Her name on Earth was Sarah Smith and she lived at Golders Green.’

‘She seems to be… well, a person of particular importance?’

‘Aye. She is one of the great ones. Ye have heard that fame in this country and fame on Earth are two quite different things.’

When we pass, friends, all the things that were considered ‘important’ about us here will be confined to about two hundred words. 

And I’m starting to think that maybe we’re spending far too much time on things that will make up two or three of those words,

instead of the things that can’t be expressed in words at all.

My unorthodox advice to you this Christmas:

Pursue the hidden things.

I know.

It sounds backwards.

It seems fruitless.

Many of you may already be in a position where you’re frustratingly forced into having your best efforts held far back from the eyes you hoped would see them,

or where you wish that what was hidden was more public and what was public was more hidden.

I get that.

But what if we lived as though each of those hidden things would one day be made oh-so-public?

Because I think they will.

As a wise friend recently told us,

There’s nothing truly private. At some point, all things become known. In some way, all the moments of our lives are carried out before an audience.

He’s right.

Ultimately, someday,

through a turn of circumstance here,

or a veil-removal there,

all of those things we thought were done in secret

will be shown for what they were –

good,

bad,

or ugly.

It shouldn’t really surprise us this time of year. Each time we run across a nativity scene, it should remind us that the long-awaited Baby in a manger

was first seen by

animals,

outcasts,

the lowly,

and foreigners;

a constant reminder that some of the best Things are at first hidden.

So.

If your next week includes visits with those you dearly love, soak them up.

If it includes moments with those more difficult to love, embrace those too.

And if it includes space to rest and hunker down, don’t let a single moment go wasted.

Live each one as if one day they’ll be shown before millions.

You might never see the results here.

But they will be seen.

Much like the way we were seen when we shuffled in late to Elliana’s concert.

In the end,

the two hours of traffic

and the failed plans to eliminate inconvenience

allowed our daughter to see us the exact moment we arrived.

She said it gave her courage.

At intermission, the people sitting on the other side of us empathized with laughter and compassion about our unfortunate day.

We already had a lot in common with them and just hadn’t figured it out yet.

In light of things like these,

the guilt-ridden looks fade away

to something far more lasting.

I don’t have a word for it yet.

But that’s okay.

All the best things are first hidden.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Longer, Stronger, Closer Together

So here I wait in hope of You, oh my soul’s longing through and through – Christy Nockels, ‘Advent Hymn’

But all these things are merely the beginning of birth pangs. – Jesus, to His disciples, Matthew 24:8

 

It’s 2 am on Christmas Eve and I am writing.

Before you think I’m completely nuts – I think we’re all already on board with the mostly genuinely crazy bit – just hear me out.

I meant to get this out much sooner.

I mean, I really meant to get this out much, much sooner.

So if any of you still actually follow this blog,

first of all, congratulations on being the MOST PATIENT PEOPLE on the planet,

and second,

you might notice that I’ve not blogged in a luxuriant oh, say, three-hundred-and-sixty-nine days,

give or take a day or so,

and you might be wondering why.

For those two or three of you, please know I tried really hard to blog about twenty times this year.

None of those posts made it to publication.

I’d write a few things, and Life would pull me away.

And while I wish I could say that I let it because I’d like my children to remember their mother and not just what she did all the time,

and that would be somewhat true,

the deeper truth is,

I didn’t really have a choice.

Some of these attempted posts were happy. Cheerful. Whimsical, even.

Those ones always got interrupted.

So in case you’re slightly nervous that I’m about to write about pain again, please know that I’m just as nervous and probably more irritated than some of you might be.

But, frankly, this is what I’ve been given. From labour nurse to life experience, pain might be what I know best.

And I’m starting to wonder if that’s not a bad thing.

This week we received several Family Christmas letters in the mail, and they each filled even this distrustful, suspicious, fearful little heart with so much warmth.

These were the best kind of Christmas letters – funny, honest, and to the point. Letters that reminded me that friends in far-away places knew some of the same struggles we walked through ourselves.

So while we didn’t get to family pictures this year, I really wanted this post to be something like the following:

Merry Christmas 2017 from the Merediths!

2017 has been a good year for the Meredith family. Here are some of the highlights:

Noelle

This year, Noelle has split her time between her HGTV show about turning eggshell cartons into valuable word art, and her preparations to enter Harvard in their pre-law and pre-med programs, after skipping grades 8-12. This year, she has also picked up a couple instruments, including the flugelhorn, banjo, theremin, and triangle.

Elliana

What a great year for Elliana! Her synth-pop single, “Chi Chi Ya Ya” became a runaway hit in South Korea, and her YouTube channel now has over 10 million followers! One down side to this, however, is that she hasn’t had time to work on her line of activewear for elderly people, WearSoft. Hopefully, she can pick that back up again in 2018!

Lana

2017 brought significant change for Lana’s life, as it saw her move into the role of Premier of British Columbia. As a homeschool mom, she divides her time between governing the province, teaching her beautiful children, playing piano with the VSO, and writing novels. Her 2017 novel, The Girl Who Went with the Train Tattoo (click on the link to purchase it on Amazon), was on the New York Times bestseller list, and is up for a Nobel prize.

David

2017 was a banner year for David, as he was finally able to fulfill his lifelong dream of creating the AI singularity. Fortunately, he was able to keep the AI contained to an air-gapped supercomputer so that it couldn’t run amok, and he was able to harness it to achieve a few things:

• Curing cancer in all forms
• Generating several thousand Bitcoins, single-handedly raising the price a thousand-fold

Family highlights included a trip to lower earth orbit aboard Richard Branson’s private space plane, and a trip to Antarctica to help hatch baby penguins.

– The Merediths

Okay, first: if any of you took any of that seriously, I refer you to:

1. any news website on the internet,
2. a cursory check of youtube for the not-so-viral presence of “Chi Chi Ya Ya,” or
3. the common sense we know you all have.

(You do have it, right?)

But in case that doesn’t solve your confusion, please know that absolutely NONE of that happened this year. And what did happen, well, you probably don’t want to know.

2017 was yucky.

In fact, a better summary of our year would be Paul’s description of his time apart from his Corinthian friends in 2 Corinthians 7:5: our flesh had no rest… we were afflicted… conflicts without, fears within.

Or, to put it differently, it was twelve months of things I did not see coming. Each one revealed murky waters I didn’t know I still had inside, muck I wish other people didn’t ever have to witness in me, and the overwhelming reality that things are just not as they should be.

There were periods of rest, for sure. Moments, weeks, even a stretch of a few months where all was peaceful and content and at rest.

But the beginning and end and several points in between were punctuated by waves of pain that came, intensified, died down, left,

then came again.

One day a month I get to spend a morning or afternoon with a several couples expecting their first babies.

They all want to know the same thing.

How will I know when I’m in labour?

I tell them it’s hard to say for sure, since every birth is slightly different. That being said, there are some patterns to watch for.

For one thing, they need to know the difference between true and false labour.

False labour is often called Braxton-hicks, but I don’t particularly like that phrase, because we’ve all learned to believe that Braxton-Hicks, tightenings that produce no physical change,

are painless.

Here’s the thing: they’re not.

Sometimes they hurt like the worst thing you can imagine.

So while I can give these couples times and lengths and frequencies of contractions to watch for,

its not really the most helpful way to look at it,

because the biggest difference between true and false labour

is that one produces change

and the other doesn’t.

And while a pregnant woman can come to the hospital in excrutiating pain, there’s no guarantee that the pain she is going through is actually bringing her baby – yet.

What makes the difference is if the pain she’s experiencing is changing her body

and if the pains themselves are changing.

A very common call I get when I work in triage is something along the lines of

I had contractions every five minutes for an hour that lasted fifty seconds each, and then I sat down and they stopped. Should I go for another walk?

My answer is always no, because true labour contractions don’t stop.

One of the biggest tell-tale signs of real, true, you-better-believe-this-kid-is-finally-coming labour is that the waves of pain become longer and stronger and closer together.

Before I helped bring babies into the world, I took care of people who trusted other humans to cut things out of them that didn’t belong. Each time the process was horrendous, but each one of these people were willing to go to a surgeon and let them cut them open because they knew that things were growing inside them

that crowded out life.

Here’s the thing:

You and I are willing to trust other humans with scalpels to fix what is broken in our physical bodies, and yet we’re not so surewe can trust the Head Surgeon to operate properly on our hearts.

I’m not sure if its because we’ve convinced ourselves that

things we can see are more reliable than things we can’t,

or if its just that

we find it easier to believe there is something wrong with our limbs than with our hearts.

Because, let’s be honest:

Most of us think our hearts are in pretty good shape.

For the last nine years,

I’ve gotten reports that say there is something inside me that shouldn’t be there,

but they can’t cut it out of me,

because its in my blood.

So, they give me medicine to take every day and keep it to a small amount.

And the medicine has done something unusual:

it’s caused the cancer gene levels to be low enough to believe it won’t cause damage to the rest of my body, but not low enough to say its completely gone.

I won’t lie to you: This year, more than ever, I was really really ready to be done with this thing. Surely nine years is enough to do the thing it was supposed to do in me. Can’t I move on to something else? Haven’t I “earned” remission?

(I cringe even as I write that)

So almost six weeks ago, as I sat in my oncologist’s office, waiting to hear the results of those tests, I warred between this expectant anger and lurking anxiety.

In my desperation I frantically texted friends to ask them for support, and what I heard back was not only far more gracious than I deserved, but also an echo of my own desire: for good news.

But as I sat in that office and wondered if

today was the day I’d find out it’s all gone or it’d all come back,

my eyes started to blur a little bit as I heard almost audibly the echo of my own thoughts, followed by this answer:

Good News?

Haven’t I already given you that?

Good News

of Great Joy

That shall be

for all people?

And it settled on me that it didn’t really matter what I heard that day.

Either way, it would have been good news: either I get to spend more time here with my kids, or I get to go and be in a place that promises we will all look back and say alll of THIS was light and momentary.

And SERIOUSLY. What kind of glory must it be to cause that?

It’s curious that Paul compares all of us to labouring women. Its even more curious that he says the process of labour should bring hope.

But after these last forty-eight hours, I think I understand a little more.

Let me explain.

Friday morning, I came off one of the most stressful night shifts I’d ever worked and prepared to drive six hours to see family and friends.

As I rallied myself to stay awake on that crazy shift, I stalked the weather app on my phone for updates on what we could expect. Vancouver, Seattle, and Portland all showed varying degrees of snow, accumulated snow, freezing rain, and winter weather advisories.

Only, of course, on the two days we were set to drive anywhere.

Still my optimist husband told me it’d be just fine.

So…. I went, headachey, whinily, and very unhappily. Not because I didn’t want to see these people, but because I was afraid of all that could happen.

All the while I kept thinking

this is not what Christmas should be.

But I’m starting to wonder if that’s just plain wrong.

What if  this angsty stuff is just part of it?

And what if that’s actually the point?

What if its okay that Christmas can be wonderful and awful all at the same time?

I was in Fred Meyer in Tigard today – er, yesterday – and I could hear it all around me.

First off, I’ve never seen that many people in one place, EVER.

Second, they all seemed to be surprised at how busy that – or any – store was.

On the day before Christmas Eve.

Me, I was just grumbling under my breath: yes this is actually the line up for the self-checkout. No you can’t budge in front of me because you just can’t believe how busy it is. No I don’t really need to hear about how you can’t believe how many people are here and how you really don’t have time to wait this long, because, frankly,

I JUST BOUGHT NEW TIRES IN A FOREIGN LAND AND TECHNICALLY DON’T HAVE A CAR RIGHT NOW. YOU ALL HAVE MORE FOOD THAN COULD FEED THE ORC-ARMIES OF SARUMAN IN EACH OF YOUR CARTS AND FOR THE LOVE, HAVE WE REALLY NOT NOTICED HOW INSANE THAT IS?!

Yes. You read that right.

New.

Tires.

But that wasn’t the only misadventure of the last forty-eight hours.

Friday night, just after the sun went down, as I woke from a brief nap to find myself in Olympia and not Lynnwood, David turned to me and said,

See? We are making great time! Such an easy trip so far.

Then, a windshield wiper flew off our car. 

And it started to snow.

Heavily.

I looked at David with the most withering look I could muster

(and I can muster pretty severe withering looks)

and said,

Right.

What I wanted to say was

I knew something like this would happen.

See,

every year its the same.

I eagerly await the music and the lights and the cozy winter atmosphere. I sip tea and imagine how warm and life-giving all the gatherings will be and I think things like

its the most wonderful time of the year,

maybe because a song told me to think that way,

but also because I secretly hope every year it will be more wonderful than its ever been before.

And then I look at all the parts I don’t love so much and try to manage them so they don’t blow up or throw me for a loop in what’s really the busiest time of the year, knowing my defenses are already down.

But every year, two things seem to happen:

1.It’s more work than I remember, and

2. We find ourselves on a treacherous journey in the days leading up to Christmas Eve.

This year was no different.

After a deeply encouraging visit with people we’ve known more than fifteen years (and grown to love more the longer we know them), we got in the car to go to Grandma and Grandpa’s, and just as I was asking if we could stop somewhere for a snack,

David started peppering me with questions I had no answer to.

Can you feel that?

Here, look at the steering wheel. That’s not normal.

I sighed and pulled out Apple maps, which found us a Les Schwab about three minutes away.

The verdict:

Our tires were starting to separate and dangerously close to blowing.

All. four.

Thing is, they said, we’re pretty busy today and you really shouldn’t drive back home with those. We can fit you in on Tuesday or you can sit here for three hours.

Right.

After some gentle pleading and a lot of silent praying, David talked them into calling the store closest to Grandma and Grandpa’s and made an appointment for us there, while I called Grandma to come get us.

The whole drive over I was irritated.

This is exactly what I knew would happen.

We got to our family’s house a bit more weary than we expected to be.

Of course, after they graciously fed and gifted and visited with us, someone made a comment about there being freezing rain tomorrow (today).

I looked back at the forecast.

It was legit.

Freezing rain in Portland.

Snow in Seattle.

Freezing conditions at home.

And I looked at David and said,

I think I’ve had enough car trouble for one trip.

To his credit, he nodded and said yep, let’s go,

pretty much immediately.

So we said goodbye to all our people and left for home at 8:45 pm.

We got here at 1:45 am.

But the ride home was not like I thought it would be.

For the first time, I thought through all the misadventures and saw things I didn’t before.

The windshield wiper blade that blew off was the passenger side.

There was a store in Kelso still open at night that specialized in these kinds of emergencies, which apparently, happen a lot.

(I didn’t even know it could happen until yester-Fri-day).

(FYI: We now travel with a complete spare set of wiper blades in our car).

Not to mention, David noticed the tire problem right as we happened to pass a Les Schwab.

After we got to the Tigard store, with our prearranged appointment, I started to notice the people coming into the store were getting turned away.

We got the last appointment of the day.

In fact, they stayed late just to finish our tires.

And then there’s the fact that the drive back tonight was as smooth and as swift as could be.

We listened to the album with the song I quoted at the beginning of this blog, and I looked at my sleepy-but-fairly-happy husband

(he’s always like that when we have one of these misadventures)

and said

I wonder if this is how it’s supposed to be.

I mean, it’s obviously not.

Be honest: have your hopes and dreams for this season ever panned out, fully, in the way you wanted them? Have you ever had a Christmas without some sort of stress or angst? Without conflict? With only warm and fuzzies?

If you have, you are obviously doing something right that I’m not.

But I’m starting to wonder of all of this – the work and the preparation and the angst and the hopes and the let downs – are all the way He meant it to be.

Because if Christmas here on earth fulfilled all our hopes and dreams

then we might forget why we celebrate it in the first place:

the ages-long anticipation

of the birth of a Saviour

we all desperately need.

I realize I might be talking in ways that surprise or even anger you, and I hope you can believe me that its not at all my intent.

It’s just that I wonder now if this stuff we complain about

stuff we even philosophize against

and try to manage

and wish away

is all part of a grand plan to teach us how to long for what we really need

and freshly remind us

every year

that we’re not going to see it here, just yet.

We might get a shadow of it, but that’s all it is: a shadow.

What’s really crazy:

We got a shadow of that tonight.

Because an hour into our epic journey home in the wee hours before the snow started in Seattle, that same misadventure that multiple times walked the line of certain catastrophe

echoed a tiny shred

of the original Christmas road trip

on a donkey

over treacherous road

with something happening that felt like really shouldn’t be happening yet

all because

earthly kings said they had to go back to their home town

and see the people they came from.

And while some of us might risk the rejection of the people who gave birth to or raised us, or those-who-knew-us-when,

each time we go ‘home’ for Christmas,

these two received certain rejection

at every door they knocked,

and who knows if the inns were really full

or if they just had no room for a couple infamous for their apparently shameful condition?

It might even have been those who knew them best who were turning them away.

And while that didn’t happen to us in the LEAST this weekend – each home hosted with such graciousness that it made the traveling difficulties truly seem light and momentary

and even funny,

I wonder if Mary had any warning that what was about to happen to her was going to change everything.

Was there anyone there telling her

Don’t worry, one day they’ll see you for who you are

or

Don’t worry, the baby’s almost here

or

Don’t worry, the One you’re about to birth will make it all worth it?

Or did she doubt

if it was all so necessary

or

if it should really hurt this much

or even

if He really knew what He was doing?

Friends,

I am not in remission.

Nor has the cancer gene increased dramatically.

In fact, its right where its been for the past five years.

And for some reason I can’t yet fathom,

my Primary Care Provider

has deemed it necessary,

even productive for me,

that it stay with me for now,

at that same irritatingly glorious level its been at for half a decade.

So, while I spent 2017 frustrated that my own pain waves seemed to be getting

longer

and stronger

and closer together,

I look back now and see that the spaces between were seasons of freedom and joy,

each one less encumbered

by the weights that so easily entangle,

which are the things that will truly kill me.

And if I discipline myself to remember,

I can do what I tell all my labouring patients to do: sink in and trust the process.

Because I’m not being operated on by a human, and this Master Surgeon NEVER gets it wrong.

So, friends,

whether this Christmas finds you

in the middle of a contraction

or in the lull between,

know you are not alone,

and that the King is coming.

Rest assured.

The labour He put Himself through was far worse than anything you or I will ever taste.

And if that doesn’t cause us to trust Him,

I’m not sure what will.