Good morning…
During our final Wordless Prayer Card making session on the third Wednesday in April, one woman made a card for Elizabeth, the 38-year-old wife and mom of three who is facing the spread of her advanced colon cancer. Elizabeth is the daughter-in-law of our dear friend, Joan, who is a loyal member of our Friday morning class.
“This butterfly is emerging from the darkness into a new form of life,” said our friend, explaining the image on the card she had just made. “It reminds me of the transition Elizabeth is experiencing, pushing through the painful darkness into a new form of life. Would you give this card to Joan on Friday, and let her know that she and her family are constantly in my deepest prayers?”
As a class we shared with Joan the loving card, laid our hands on her, and prayerfully empowered her to play a very essential role in the excruciating journey of her son and his incredibly faithful family.
I read Elizabeth’s most recent PostHope blog before heading into a transitional weekend for our own family (my husband Steve leaving his chaplain position after 29 years, our youngest of four graduating from college, and a memorable Mother’s Day weekend). I carried the words below in my heart, processing Elizabeth pain alongside my own mix of emotions.
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Excerpt from Elizabeth’s PostHope post on 5/9/24
The goal is to get me feeling better for the time I have left. We don’t know how long that will be. It’s a lot to process. We are sifting through a lot of disappointment and trauma from the last 6 months. My Graham is just the most incredible care giver and we are going to keep moving forward together. I hate that this disease is going to take me but I have hope in heaven and that all will be made right some day in the new heavens and new earth. This world is such a beautiful and hard place. The brokenness is everywhere, but I’m clinging to a God who turns ashes into beauty.
I love what Katherine Wolfe writes about caregiving. She survived a massive stroke in 2008 and has received much love and care over the years since. I love her words here. If you aren’t familiar with her story, I encourage you to read about she and her husband and how they’ve walked this journey of long suffering. Here’s what she says:
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“I’ve spent a lot of my life feeling like the wrong dose of a person. Sometimes I’m too much, requiring extra care and extra help and extra patience. Other times, I’m not enough, unable to show up as the mom and friend and leader I dream of being.
Heck, I’ve even felt like I’m somehow too much and too little at the same time.
If you’re living with disabilities or a chronic illness or the heavy load of grief, you might feel like too much and too little. Like the wrong dose of yourself. Maybe you consider yourself a burden to the people you love. Maybe you’re believing a quiet, hateful voice that says you are not worthy of care.
Friend, if you are on this earth with breath in your lungs, you are deeply worthy of receiving care. God has called you to this specific intersection of time and space. That means he sees you as worthy of taking up time and space.
No matter where you fall on the spectrum of ability or wellness, every last one of us needs help to do our lives. Independence is an illusion. Very few things of consequence are done alone.
When I start to feel ashamed of my neediness, God is faithful to remind me of some words from Jesus himself. “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13)
Those of us who need care are inviting our friends into the greatest kind of love. The Jesus kind of love that throws itself into the healing and wholeness of someone else. When we humbly open our hands to receive care, we’re inviting our caregivers into the most important and holy work there is. The work of love.
Our caregivers need us as much as we need them.
When we give and receive care with creativity and love, it all seems to add up. Never too much, and never too little. A perfect whole.”
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Aren’t her words beautiful? Thank you to every person who’s cared for our family for the last year and a half and continues to. What holy, beautiful work you’ve done. We love you all.
Continue to pray for gained strength and weight for me. I’m still very weak. It’s very slow progress.
Pray that my pain would subside. It’s hard to exist in a constantly hurting body.
Pray for Graham and me as we navigate all of this. Pray for sweet time for us together.
Pray for our children as they process the fact that the cancer isn’t going away and that I’m not going to get better. It breaks my heart they have to walk through this.
Pray for enough mercy for each morning.
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As our friend’s Wordless Prayer Card comes true and Elizabeth transitions from this painful darkness into a new form of life, might we all join together, lifting in prayer her intimate requests?
In the sacredness of this precious moment, I pray a familiar Scripture over Elizabeth, her family, and her friends. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever (Psalm 23:6, KJV).
Gracious God, would you give every single one of us enough mercy for each morning?
…Sue…
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