Help me.

I have spent a lot of time today on the phone with our insurance company and the endocrinologist's office. We are getting ready to start the dreaded low iodine diet the Monday after Thanksgiving in preparation for a scan in December. I'm trying to be optimistic, but seriously, what a way to kick off the holidays.

Stan will spend two weeks on the diet in preparation for the scan. That week will be one of daily trips to the doctor's office and hospital for injections, bloodwork, and finally, the scan. I am trying to look at this as an isolated event as opposed to a continuation of appointments and hospital visits we have experienced for over a year now. Our goal is for this scan to be clear. For this to be the end of the thyroid disease/cancer trail for us.

I think back to last Thanksgiving and Christmas and can't help but be amazed by how relatively normal our life feels as opposed to last year. I've decided no one should have to go through Christmas waiting for a biopsy. But sometimes it happens. You survive, and then you find yourself headed into the holidays once again waiting for something else. This time, results that give you permission to stop waiting. You discover you have been holding your breath, waiting for this marker that will tell you you can stop worrying. Even when you didn't know you were. Waiting takes a lot of effort. Especially when you are trying to pretend you aren't doing it.

This morning as I spent time in prayer, my prayer was this: Help me let it go. Help me let go of the waiting and worry. Any of the fear that is left. The what-ifs. Just help me let go. Just help me. Help me. Help.

 

The Gift of Gilbert

I finally did something today I have wanted to do, planned to do, often thought about doing, but for whatever reason, just never did. I signed up to sponsor a child through Compassion. I have sponsored a child before as part of a group, but this is the first time my husband and I have a sponsored child to call our own.

We needed this. We try very hard to make sure that we are making our world a better place, but too often that world is no bigger than the small town in which we live. Gilbert will remind us the world is bigger. And hope is something to be shared. And oddly, I take hope in sharing hope.

My prayers tonight and every night from now on will be different. There is already the precious smiling face of a little boy named Gilbert imprinted on my heart. I smile when I picture him, and one day, I hope that when he thinks of me, he will smile too.

I laughed today because I was thinking that all I really wanted for Christmas this year was a new composter. It is true, I just really don't want for a lot. But apparently, I needed a lot more. I needed the gift of Gilbert.

Be Still...

from Sue Monk Kidd's When the Heart Waits:

"…I sat beside her, unable to resist the feeling that we shared something, the two of us. The wounds and brokenness of life. Crumpled wings. A collision with something harsh and real. I felt like crying for her. For myself. For every broken thing in the world.

That moment taught me that while the postures of stillness within the cocoon are frequently an individual experience, we also need to share out stillness. The bird taught me anew that we're all in this together, that we need to sit in one another's stillness and take up corporate postures of prayer. How wonderful it is when we can be honest and free enough to say to one another, 'I need you to wait with me,' or 'Would you like me to wait with you?'

I studied the bird, deeply impressed that she seemed to know instinctively that in stillness is healing. I had been learning that too, learning that stillness can be the prayer that transforms us. How much more concentrated our stillness becomes, though, when its shared…."

Today.

Today marks the third week of my return to running. It was a hard run for several reasons, but today I was reminded that some days it is a holy act. It is prayer. It is penance. It is wholly difficult and altogether necessary. It brings to the surface more than sweat as a physical act of confession. Today, I remembered that for me, running is faith in motion when forward motion seems impossible.