Thursday 30 March 2017

Return to Innocence

Beneath the twisted limbs of a tree heavily laden with pears, an old man sits.  His gnarled hand reaches out and he plucks a plump fruit, contemplates it and then slowly slumps to the ground.  We are left to correctly assume that he has died and the camera pans back to take in his laid-out body under the pear tree.  But then fallen pears float back up to the tree to reattach themselves and a white unicorn trots backwards across the scene.  Thus begins the video that accompanies the song "Return to Innocence" released by the band, Enigma, back in 1994.  The rest of the video is a story-line that moves backwards through the life of the man in the opening scene.  He grows younger and younger; we observe him laughing with friends, kissing his bride on their wedding day and sitting tearfully while getting his hair cut when he is a child.  At the end of the video, he is a squalling infant who has just been baptized.
A return to innocence.

Have you ever had a time when you wished for just that: a return to innocence?  A return to a simpler, easier time?  Perhaps a return to the ways and days of your youth? Perhaps a return to a time before troubles, trials, disease or destruction snuck into and muddled up your life?    
I know that I have.

Let me explain.  Last May, I finished up treatments for stage 3 breast cancer.  They followed a typical treatment regiment with chemotherapy followed by a single mastectomy and then radiation.   Then, my oncologist recommended that a hysterectomy happen sooner rather than later and, last September, I underwent another surgery.  Since then I have healed up beautifully.  I am able to work out and hike again.  I am back and busy with the children's ministries at our church and our homeschool is up and running at top speed.  I feel a whole lot more like me again....the woman, the wife, the mom, the daughter and the friend.   But what I don't feel is a return to innocence.

I can't go back there no matter how hard I try or want to return.  Being told I had cancer changed things and changed me.

Way back at the beginning of this journey with cancer, a friend gifted me a notebook with an inscription inside.  She quoted Paul Billheimer and wrote "Don't waste your sorrows"; she quoted Tim Keller and wrote "Don't squander your suffering."  When I first read these words, I wasn't sure what to think.  I mean, I had just found out I had cancer and felt like life, as I knew it, was unravelling all around me.  I didn't know what the future would hold.  I didn't know if I would be around to be in that future.  I felt fragile and intensely aware of the limits of life.  For a whole week, I could not scold my children or get annoyed at my husband because I was worried that our time together was coming to an end.  And I wanted to cherish every moment.
But then those words "Don't waste.....don't squander your suffering" kept niggling away at me because I DID want to get rid of these new-found sorrows.  I wanted to take them, throw them in a box, duct-tape and chain up that box and mail it to Vanuatu.  With no return address included.

I spent a lot of time crying.
I drank a lot of wine so that I could fall into dreamless sleeps that were cancer-free.
Paul and I spent a lot of time holding each other and worrying.
Finally, we took our tears, our sleeplessness, and our worry to God.  We cried out from the depths of our troubles and laid them before our God.

"We are worried and we are scared, God," we prayed, "We don't know what is going to happen or how sick I am going to get.  We don't know what this is going to mean for our family.   We cannot do this on our own.  Please please help us."

We cried out in our trouble and felt God lift us out of our distress.
The cancer was there.
The chemo, surgery and radiation was there.
But the distress was gone......or mostly gone.  Alleviated, certainly!
And we could feel the load lifted, the trouble transferred, the struggles sustained.
It wasn't something that happened in the blink of an eye but, rather, something that happened as we spent more time with God.
Reading about Him:  We were freaked out about what stage cancer I had but worrying only made us fidgety and irritable.  We felt hopeless and helpless, so we opened up our Bibles and read, "It is the LORD who goes before you.  He will be with you; he will not leave you or forsake you.  Do not fear or be dismayed"  (Deut. 31: 8).   Okay....that's cool, right?  We certainly felt less alone in all this!

Reflecting on God's promises:  There's a lot of waiting around in sickness.  Waiting for blood-work, waiting for appointments, waiting for doctors to clarify tests.....waiting waiting waiting.  Time and space for worry to creep in.  Time and space for reflection....  "fear not, for I am with you;" we read in Isaiah, "be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand" (Isaiah 41: 10).  We could use some strength and help, we ruminated.

Praying to Him:  Being constant in prayer became a thing.  I was praying every day over everything.  I even found myself beginning my prayers with a "Hey, God...it's me...AGAIN...." ; prayer began to feel like such a natural conversation with God.  I even found myself sneaking off to my room through-out the day to converse with God alone.  Prayer helped me feel sorted me out.  

I wonder if you've had moments like this:
If troubles have dropped you to your knees and all that's left is crying out; ragged ripped raw crying out.  Gut-wrenching grief crying out.

Maybe the point is that we have to come to the end of ourselves so that we finally turn and see God.
There.  Always right there.  Waiting.
Waiting for our cries so that He can lift up, lift out, love, and lead.

Maybe the whole point is not a return to innocence and the way things used to be but, rather, a leaning into the sufferings - as painful as they have been - and learning.









Thursday 2 March 2017

Holey Jeans, Batman!

I just got home from jeans shopping.
My two oldest boys convinced me to go.

Their convincing arguments included, "All my jeans have holes and are falling apart" and "Your jeans are getting old and full of holes too" and "You said we would go and that was weeks ago."

I considered various retaliations like "Jeans with holes are cool now" and "A few holes won't kill ya" and "Why don't we go another day?"

One son arched an eyebrow.
I attempted humour, "Holey jeans, Batman!"
No go.
Distraction:  "Hey, is that a new hockey card I see before me?"
Nope.
If even hockey cards were not distracting these boys,  it was time.
Time to give in.
To relent.
To see the holes that were standing before me and recognize them for what they were.
Holes.
Space where clothing was meant to be.

It was time to hit the store.
Not literally, of course; I don't condone that sort of violence.
Figurative hitting.  More commonly referred to as shopping.

We pulled into the Talize parking lot.  I love this place, I tell ya.  It's a one-stop-shopping place just jam-packed with jazz-a-ma-razz and all at a discount price!  Can you say "SWEET!?"
Think "Value Village".
Then stop thinking about Value Village and think about Talize instead.
Good job!

We enter the store.  We grab shopping carts.  We scope out the store and strategize our shopping experience.  We part ways and begin.

Within 7.2 seconds, Liam has three pairs of jeans, two hockey t-shirts and a Garfield comic book loaded up in his cart.  Donovan has added two pairs of jeans, one weird-looking pair of sweatpants and a cap.
I have lifted my foot to take a first step.
This is already an excruciating excursion and I am not sure it has even begun!

After a painful painstaking hour, I have loaded fifteen pairs of jeans into my cart.  I am feeling good about this shopping thing and I head to the change-room.

Liam and Donovan have already tried on everything and are restlessly pacing the store.
I glance at them nervously and pray that they don't begin racing the carts, ramming each other with said carts or wrestling in the aisles.  These are common-place shopping experiences in my family.
I'm sure your shopping trips are much more placid, organized, and calm.
Good for you!
I am happy for you.
Also a tinge jealous and feeling that maybe you could come over and coach me on all things shopping-efficiently-with-children.

Back to the change room.  I peel off the seventeen layers of clothing intended to ward off the winter weather that crept back in after several days of sly spring.  Then I begin the arduous task of trying on clothes.
Do you feel my pain here, people?
Okay, let me rephrase that.
Do you feel my pain here, ladies?
You know what I'm talking about.
Change-room challenges.
Wardrobe wars.
The moment where one attempts to stuff one's body - repositioned from birthing human beings, rearranged with age and the gravitational pull that increases exponentially with age,  reorganized with surgeries - into the constricting confines of clothing.

Here goes:

First pair of jeans: skin-tight through thighs and calves.  Oddly loose around waist.  Too short.
Second pair of jeans:  Cannot pull up past knees.
Third pair of jeans:  Low-riders.  Oh goody.  Nothing like clothing that accentuates the bubbly parts that I was trying to tuck in.
Fourth pair of jeans:  Too big and slouchy.
Fifth pair:  Flare jeans.  A little too bell-bottomy for my liking.
Sixth pair:  I.can.just.button.these.jeans. but.can.not.breathe.

Sigh.  I peel off the jeans that fit like a layer of blue skin.
I'm hot and sweaty.

I'm annoyed.
Flushed and flustered.
Glaring at myself in the mirror and making all sorts of false promises to my reflection.
Taking down the seventh pair of jeans and telling myself to lower my standards.
"If these fit," I growl to myself, "you're getting them."
They don't fit.
I crumple them and throw them into a dusty corner of the change room.  Take that you, jeans, you!
I grit my teeth.  I feel an eye tic coming on.
I reach for another pair.

Eighth pair:  Too long.
Ninth pair: Too acid-washed.
Tenth pair:  Too jegging.

This goes on for pairs eleven through fifteen.  Nope.  Nope and nope.
I conclude that my body is obviously too unique for all these common-place pants.
I slide back into my comfortable, holey jeans and walk right on outta that change-room.

I buy boots instead.