Lana Meredith

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.

 

Guarded

I’m afraid one has all the goodness and the other all the appearance of it. – Jane Austen

Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life.  – Proverbs

 

The boy with the bread gets me every single time.

For those of you who’ve read The Hunger Games, my apologies from the start: I’m Team Peeta.

Something about how he bakes when he’s stressed

or the moment he tosses Katniss

the burnt loaf of bread

on the day when she’s starving,

or perhaps the way Suzanne Collins described him from the beginning,

I knew he was the hero of that story.

Or maybe it’s because I have my own boy with the bread.

In the disaster of the last six months,

the series of moments-turned-into-months

in which one catastrophe morphed into another

and one heartbreak multiplied on top of itself,

-all while we were waiting to hear if I was dying or not-

I had thought about,

perhaps even vowed

to give up this blog.

For good.

Truly, for everyone’s good.

See, when you’re thinking this might be the beginning of the end

you realize that all the things you used to expect of your life

like, of course I get to live 80 years or so,

and of course there’s some equity in suffering,

and everyone’s got a story to tell,

you come to conclusions like,

if this really big thing has already hit me

then certainly I wouldn’t get five other really big things

to deal with

all at once,

and if that couldn’t-possibly-happen

actually did happen

then of course some of those I treasure most

wouldn’t turn and strike

while at my lowest

of

lows.

My friends,

unfortunately,

sometimes

those life rules

those surely-not-this truisms

we’ve collected over our whispers of time

here on a swiftly tilting planet,

just.

get.

wiped.

out,

blown bright blue breaths of what once was who we were yesterday

and who we’ll never be again.

And while I’ve grown to love,

embrace,

even welcome

the blows of beautiful comrades

who want better for me,

sometimes the things that pierce our hearts are not

the wise rebukes of wonderful friends

who know we can be better and tell us so.

Sometimes those daggers are just that – blows that

(conscious or not)

were meant to hurt.

And while the first offer hope that our ends could be so much better than our beginnings,

the second merely pushes us back in the box we came from

with such great force

that we think we can’t possibly ever break out of it.

So in these moments-turned-into-months

that I spent stuffed in the corner of my dark little box

infested with all the words and wounds

of yesterday

I had plenty of time to think about why all these

worst things that could be said about me

didn’t feel true

anymore.

It was more than pain.

It was a breaking of sorts.

Somewhere, in the middle of all of this, our breadmaker quit.

And while we debated whether or not to buy a new one

my personal bread baker

(Confession: I have never, I repeat never, made bread or anything resembling it, from scratch, in a machine, or otherwise. If you have received bread from my hands then it was not made by my hands).

took it upon himself

to learn how to make bread

without the machine.

Now, some five months later or so, three or more nights a week are spent in our living room,

a movie on the television

while one of us marks schoolwork

and the other kneads bread.

And I confess again, all talk of a new bread machine has silenced.

Not only is the bread he makes by hand so much better than the machine’s,

he actually likes the process.

Look at this, the boy with the bread marvels, his eyes lit up like a child’s as they open their favorite birthday present.

He offers two balls of dough, one in each hand.

This one, he says, this one has been kneaded thoroughly.

He makes me touch it, feel it. It’s soft – a cushion, really. Every dent I try to put in it dissolves the moment my finger lifts.

See? he exclaims. Watch.

He lifts one edge of the bread and slams it down against the other edge, flips it, and crashes down again.

It looks almost violent.

When water mixes with gluten, it causes the gluten to develop. The sponginess is directly related to how well-worked the gluten is.

He pulls out the ball that has been worked enough and stretches it out.

A well-kneaded ball of dough can be stretched to the point you can see right through it

(at this point he holds the thinnest part of now two feet long stretch of dough by his face and smiles at me through it)

and it doesn’t break.

Show me the other ball, I said.

Ah, that, Mr. Breadmaker-who’s-still-the-star-of-this-blog sighs. It breaks. Feel it.

I put down my marking and press my hands into the dough that hasn’t been worked over,  the ball that’s been saved the rough and tumble of the kneading process so far.

And every press and marking I make in it

stays

there,

like the dough is collecting its wounds.

The boy with the bread picks up this second dough, the one not-so-well-kneaded, and tries to stretch it out as he had the other.

It’s not even two or three inches apart before it snaps in two.

A well-kneaded dough, under pressure, stays together, he says.

One that’s had it easy breaks at the first sign of stretch.

Three years ago,

I was reading The Hunger Games on my break at work.

The blog star called me to say

I’m headed into emerg. The girls are with friends. I think I’m in atrial fibrillation again.

I felt my heart drop to my feet

because

I’d just gotten to the part in Catching Fire

where Peeta touches the forcefield

and his heart stops.

I raced downstairs only to find two sympathetic ambulance drivers looking at me with kind eyes and soft smiles.

His vitals were good, one said. Sats, rate, pressure all perfect. We think its a –

I interrupted them. I get it.

I looked at my boy with the bread. I saw the fear in his eyes. I said,

Hey.

And he knew what had happened.

Because of that,

neither one of us freaks out

whenever he feels that thing,

because we know it might not be real.

So when I got a call three weeks ago

as I was leaving work

that I think I’m in afib again,

I didn’t believe him.

Take some deep breaths, I said. I’m on my way, but it’s probably nothing.

But when I pulled up to the door

and I saw him look out

my heart dropped to two floors below my feet

because his face said it all:

grey.

mottled.

worried.

And as I grabbed his wrist, the uneven, thready beats against my fingertips said even more.

It was real.

The ambulance was there in minutes. An IV in, the electrical paddles out, then:

I think we can make it to emerg. Probably best we do it there.

The eight or so men in the living room all look up at me: You okay?

Yeah, sure, I lied.

They left, with reassurances and promises that I could call for any updates.

I fell to the floor and called for help.

What can I do? was the answer to every text I sent.

For what felt like the first time, I let myself need these people who offered to be needed,

and in moments,

they were on their way:

one to watch our kids,

another to get me to the hospital,

a third to say I’m so sorry and We’ll be right there and what I needed to hear most, which was:

We love you.

The one who got me to emerg – and the other who met me there – stood on either side and held my hands, my arms, anything to hold me up

while my boy with the bread

had his heart restarted.

In order to do this, of course, they had to sedate him.

And conscious sedation is kind of a fun experience for those around the one getting it.

Ahem.

Just a heads up, the ER doc warned me, this is pretty much truth serum. I’ve had men confess to affairs under this stuff before.

Don’t worry, I laughed. That’s not what’s going to happen here.

And it wasn’t.

Oh.

I wish.

I could capture these moments for all of you to see how beautiful it was.

For while the moment the electrical restart went through David’s body was nothing short of exquisitely painful for me –

that long, dark, owwwwwwwwww he cried while sitting up and glaring at the medical staff around him part terrifying, part endearing

because, let’s face it, the first time this happened he had gone through this alone

and I had no idea how much it hurt

– the moments that followed were nothing but pure gold.

He’s in sinus, the ER doc said to me, proudly? reassuringly? In either case, it made me smile.

As he started to reorient himself to the real world, the inner workings of his mind and heart started pouring out:

Is that you, Lana?

Wow, I’m thirsty. (to our friend), I will give you two million dollars if you get me a drink of water right. now.

Her response was perfect: You don’t have two million dollars, buddy.

#(*$&%*&^$ it!!! Came the retort.

Another friend walked in.

Heeeeyyyyyy I know you…. I was on a beach with you…. they kept asking me to think of when I was last on a beach…. hey guys!!! She was there! She was with us on a beach!

Both my friends are now doubled over with laughter.

He looks straight (well, as straight as straight can be under ketamine) at me and asks, in all seriousness,

Did I give away the secrets to the rebel base?

– Oh honey.

They were on Dantooine, he laughs. Princess Leia lied!

The ER doc walks back in, and even he is smiling.

Did you know that ninjas are the best???

The nurse looks at my shaking body and says, hey, stop taping him. It’s not fair.

I look up to see even he is stifling a grin.

See, if truth serum reveals what is actually in our hearts,

then what’s in my husband’s heart is nothing more or less

than the dreams of a five-year-old boy who fully intends to be a hero.

And, my friends, that’s exactly who he is.

It’s beautiful.

Untainted.

Unprotected by the acquired wisdom of age and intelligence

he’s never been more real

or more endearing.

Because, if we’re all really being honest,

deep inside

we’re still just five-year-old little girls and boys

claiming to be so grown up

and over it

and fine on my own, thank you very much

except all of that is a lie.

And we mask it oh. so. well.

Some stunningly beautiful, others stark and ugly,

these masks can serve us a very long time, if we learn to use them.

But sooner or later

they are ripped out by their roots,

leaving spindly tracks that

– if not filled with the right kind of balm –

get infected with trickles and gushes of garbage

passed on by others

who aren’t aware of all the things they are scrambling to do to keep their own five year old hidden.

But, my friends, if I could warn you:

These masks are dangerous.

Acutely aware of how uncertain our circumstances are these past few months, I’ve asked several friends

how we can get ourselves into situations

where nothing looks right-side-up anymore.

It’s scary, one of them said. But unfortunately we see this kind of thing all the time. The right shake up comes along and the most mature among us can be revealed to be as undeveloped and immature as any spiritual infant.

– What happens? I asked.

Filters falter. Masks fall.  The things we’ve spent doing in our thirties and forties are revealed for what they’ve produced in our fifties and sixties.

In other words,

friends,

how we cultivate our hearts

– nay, our souls –

in the young, thriving, oh-so-busy parts of our lives,

in the years when we’re so tempted to just keep doing and never slow down

will produce a garden for the whole world to see as we grow older

and all those props we’ve used until then

– our careers, our families, our homes, our abilities, our talents, our treasures –

will prove themselves no longer as valuable as we once thought them.

And I don’t want them to see a wasteland.

I want to invite them in to a beautiful patch of fresh, bright, goodness.

One of my nearest and dearests is a woman whom I have loved dearly for years but whom I’ve only started to truly know recently. Along the way I’d admired her grace and her oh-so-strong filter, her carefulness to speak only truth and love and wisdom and whatever needed to be said in the moment, and if there’s ever been moments where I’ve known she’s held something back from me,

I’ve also known she was disciplining her soul to be new and different

and setting a standard for all those who wanted to see it:

Show me I can trust you.

There’s such wisdom in that, friends.

See, in the last few months of dark thoughts and murky backwaters, in an effort to commit to growth and let myself be kneaded to the point of transparency without breaking,

I’ve also subjected my heart

– and my husband’s –

to wasteful un-truth

and in so doing,

failed to guard the heart of the one I love the most

whose heart is really part of mine.

And as his heart was restarted in pain,

so was mine.

There is great wisdom in guarding our hearts well, friends.

If we don’t, we might not have a healthy garden to show in twenty or thirty years.

Another of my dearests

asked me this the other day

as we watched so many around us

end part of their lives

at less than their best.

How do we not do that? she asked me.

You’re younger than me, she said. Feel free to smack me back on track if I try and pull that off.

I promised, but of course, there’s no guarantee I’ll be there to see it.

Because we don’t know when we’re finishing, friends.

We just don’t.

I do know this, however: I intend to finish well.

Because if I’m honest,

I’ve never been too interested in things that start well.

Things that start like a house on fire can also blow up in less than five minutes.

I’ve also never been too interested in things that look too good from the outside.

Give me Darcy, not Wickham.

I want the one whose soul is revealed to be nothing but good,

when all the masks are down.

Because while true goodness of character is sometimes masked by poor reputation,

a tree is known by its fruit

and you just don’t get bad fruit from a good tree.

Speaking of trees,

these days I’ve been told a lot that I’m that apple that didn’t fall too far from it.

And though I’ve often heard, You’re just like your father, these past few months that thought has carried around a bit of sting.

Because my dad did not start well.

And if I’m being honest, neither did I.

It took cancer to change both of us. It took the threat of death to bring new life.

Every three months, someone sticks a needle in my arm

to collect a sample

that tells me if I am finishing yet or not.

The results in November seemed to say that perhaps the finish was closer than we’d hoped. The disease was returning, the mutation re-mutating, the numbers of cancer gene rising.

And while my emotional world crashed around me

I learned that

finish line or not

I was going to be okay.

Good, even.

To the point when I walked into the oncologist’s office in February

and had a new doctor

smaller in stature than my nine-year-old

tell me that not only were the numbers better

they were the best they’ve ever been,

I realized that sometimes we all need a painful event

to restart our heart

and set us back to sinus rhythm.

The good news: For now, I’m not finishing yet.

But when I do, I intend to finish well.

Hopefully,

I am just like my father.

Because that man, he. ended. well.

So well, in fact, I barely remember how he started, except to say that I know it was so different than how he ended that I can testify to anyone who asks that

he let himself be mastered

by the One who knows so much better than we do

that our hearts desperately need the violent, cataclysmic effects of an Expert Bread Maker

who won’t let us stay un-kneaded.

It’s those painful, forceful workings of the Bread Maker’s hands that let us be soft enough to not collect every wound that could possibly touch us,

and allow us to,

like the boy with the bread,

plant flowers in the middle of our losses

and remind us

that

even in grief there is the hope of something new.

It is only the well-kneaded that have the strength to say,

even though I’ve endured much pain,

I won’t inflict it on anyone else.

That’s the beautiful overflow of a guarded heart.

That’s a heart that can plant flowers while the one it loves grieves the world they used to know.

That’s the man I live with.

He’s that gentle voice that says, hey, we can do something with this.

Even now.

Even now.

Friends,

be not afraid to share your heart with those who can be trusted with it.

But be also not afraid to keep it safe for those who should see it.

(here’s a hint: that’s not everyone)

Because not only are our hearts precious,

they’re the thing that will carry us through our six, seven, even eight or nine decades.

They’re the thing that’s revealed as the filters fail and wrinkles win.

And I don’t know about you, but I want mine

to be the best thing that anyone ever saw of me.

So, what do you say

we guard them well?

For good.

For everyone’s good.