Good morning…
In our PAWkids therapeutic community group last Tuesday, we used “Blob Ridge” to describe our feelings. We colored in the blobs with which we resonated most. I felt like the orange person on the far right, being hugged and supported throughout my best birthday week ever. At the same time I felt like the yellow person sitting beside the bridge on the left, witnessing and processing the diversity of our shared human experience.
Looking at the image above, which blobs might best depict your own experience in this moment?
In this moment, up in the middle of a stormy night, I read yesterday’s message written by 37-year-old Elizabeth, who is enduring treatment for her advanced colon cancer. Her practical perspective on the challenges of daily life sheds light on the pathway ahead, as we each inch our way through the diversity of our shared human experience.
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Excerpt from Elizabeth’s PostHope Blog from March 26th – One Foot in Front of the Other
I’ve been loving Kate Bowler’s Everything Happens Podcast. My neighbor recommended a particular episode with Frank Bruni: Adapting to Loss. In the podcast, they address the idea of taking a situation that seems overwhelming and insurmountable and just taking it bit by bit. They talk about the idea of limited agency. On a sliding scale of what’s possible, there is one end where “anything is possible” and on the other end is the idea that nothing is possible. Fear, despair, gloom rest here. The place where a durable hope can be found is found in the middle. We can look at our limitations and ask now what is possible today? Don’t look too far ahead or too far behind. I need this reminder so very much. When you are driving a car at night the headlights won’t show you all the road ahead of you, but they will show you as much as you need to see, and then the next segment. You don’t have to confront and solve the enormity of it all right away. Just get to the next stretch of road. I know this is how I need to approach my treatment. I don’t have a roadmap of what is to come the next 6 months. I do know that treatment number ten is next, and that is the next stretch of road that I need to navigate. I want a crystal ball. I want more control. God is teaching me what it looks like to trust his goodness, his timing, and his sovereignty.
…I continue to struggle at times with what Kate Bowler calls her impossible thought. For her, it was the thought of not being able to be a mother to her precious son after her stage 4 colon cancer diagnosis. My impossible thought crosses my mind more often than I’d like, when I’m watching my precious little people run around, when I listen to the sound of one of them crunching on an apple, when they skip down the steps of that big yellow school bus, when Graham and I chuckle at something hysterical that one of the kids said, when I hear the laughter floating from another room, when they look me in the eyes and kiss my cheek and say I love you. It’s the same impossible thought for me, the thought of not being wife to Graham and mom to my Margaret, Joseph, and Caleb. Here is another space where I can rest in the headlight analogy of only navigating the part of the road that I can see with the headlights. I pray that I would find and experience joy in the present moments with my little family, rather than letting the fear drive my thoughts toward thinking about my family having to grieve the loss of me. Oh friends, it’s just such a heavy thing to process.
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Sometimes the diversity of our shared human experience is just such a heavy thing to process.
We are praying for a friend in our Monday group who has a 16-year-old grandson also enduring harsh cancer treatment. This week my thoughts have been with a special friend in Florida who laid to rest her father. I feel deeply connected to a dear friend whose husband went to heaven on Saturday after a long, grueling journey with Alzheimer’s. A longtime church friend received a difficult report from his most recent scans, sparking the formation of healing service at church on Wednesday at 6:30 pm, which is open to all. Finishing our book study of Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy, I ponder more deeply the immensity of the pain and the poverty, the injustice and the brokenness baked into our common humanity. Still, in the midst of all these serious struggles, I savor the joyful memories made this 60th birthday season as I step forward into a fresh new decade.
Elizabeth’s blog post serves as a great reminder. Durable hope can be found in the middle of life’s uncertainties, not looking too far ahead or too far behind. We navigate only the part of the road we can see with our own headlights, seeking to find joy in each present moment. Processing life through the diversity of our human experience, God teaches us what it looks like to trust his goodness, his timing, and his sovereignty.
Place your trust in the Eternal; rely on Him completely; never depend upon your own ideas and inventions. Give Him the credit for everything you accomplish, and He will smooth out and straighten the road that lies ahead (Proverbs 3:5-6, VOICE).
…Sue…
