Modeling

In a few weeks, I'm going to be a model in a fashion show. That's right -- me!

I started out with all sorts of great reasons to participate:

• The most virtuous reason was to raise money for a worthy cause -- 100% of the proceeds benefit the local YWCA Breast Cancer Resource Center.
• The most frivolous reason was to try out being a model
• Some minor justifications were: 
• because it sounded fun
• because what could be better inducement to get serious about exercising than knowing a room full of people will be lOOking at you?
• because I could write a totally rocking blog post about it

But then, at the first practice, suddenly none of those reasons seemed sufficient.

Here's a play-by-play leading up to my what-am-I-doing-here moment, which then nicely resolves in a cathartic Moment of Realization With Important Life Lesson. That's just blogger modus operandi. Now you know.

The First Practice
The first fashion show practice took place in a high school cafeteria. The only way I found the cafeteria was by joining forces with a middle-aged African American woman who was hanging around the school entrance worrying that her frail elderly mother, a cancer survivor, wouldn't be able to find the right door. When we figured out where we were supposed to go, she exclaimed "Praise the Lord!"

I took a seat beside a tiny Hispanic woman with a hazy fuzz of hair just starting to grow back post-chemo. We chatted about our treatment experiences and about her beautiful, bright-eyed 8-year-old daughter who was thrilled to be in the show and was very well behaved but you could tell she just wanted to get up and dance.

The organizers marked out a "runway" with masking tape, and we models -- about 20 survivors, family members, oncologists, radiology nurses, etc. -- were told to strut down the runway. I took my place in line, and the music started pumping...

Hold off a minute. Did I mention that my 8-year-old daughter is there with me? Full disclosure: Unlike the other little girl whose thrilled to be there, my daughter is there with me because I bribed her. For reasons I couldn't explain (probably one of those misty-eyed mother-daughter special-time-together fantasies with soft-fade edges), I really wanted my daughter there. And (here's the non-misty-eyed part with hard edges) it was costing me $35 in cold, hard cash, paid out in 5 installments: $5 per practice and $15 after the gig.

But back to our story. The music started pumping, and the line of  models started moving. And when I hit the "runway," I also hit a moment of serious questioning:

What was I thinking?? I hate having people stare at me! It's every introvert's nightmare. Egad, I had to take valium to make it down the aisle at my wedding without freaking out about everyone turning around to watch me. In grad school, I did fine as long as I had a PowerPoint presentation and a laser pointer. But without those props, I'd feel naked.

I walked down the masking tape runway to the rhythm of my realizations:
This is not my music. 
This is not my scene. 
And, the most disturbing, this is not what I want for my daughter.

I don't want my funny, studious, imaginative daughter to only feel noticed and appreciated for her clothing or body shape. I don't want to expose her to our culture's unrealistic, unattainable physical ideals and have her end up feeling dissatisfied and self conscious, never well-dressed enough or accessorized enough or thin enough or tall enough or curvy enough or whatever enough. At least, I mean to protect her from all that for as long as possible.

So why did I bribe her to be in a fashion show, of all the counter-productive ideas? A fashion show is like the lion's den for the superficial, materialistic, hedonistic, all-consuming beauty industry.

The Cathartic Moment of Realization
Let's cut to the cathartic part. I beat myself up about this for a few days and then talked it over with my wise friend Genna, and she helped me realize something important:  at my daughter's first-ever fashion show, she will not see a parade of unrealistic, unattainable physical ideals. She will see a tiny Hispanic woman with fuzzy baby hair and a frail, elderly African-American mother with the wire glasses. She will share the runway with my super-smart, Korean-American (male) oncologist who laughingly told me it's hard to cut back on desserts when your wife is a great cook. She'll meet the sweet, studious African American school teacher who lost her mother to cancer, and the brave, chemo-bald Indian-American woman with the teenaged daughter.

At my daughter's first fashion show, she will see real beauty that comes in all skin colors and ages, all body shapes and sizes, none of them perfect but all of them beautiful. She she will also see that fashion modeling isn't the only kind of modeling at this event. The doctors and nurses and caregivers are modeling lives of compassion and service. The survivors and their families are modeling the gratitude and joy that comes with celebrating life -- life not taken for granted, life where the only ideal is health.

And I think to myself: Yes! This is exactly what I want for my daughter. I am proud to be a part of this.

Want to celebrate life with us? You can still get tickets. For details, go to this link.

Wise Words

I think this is one of wisest, most beautiful pieces I have read about faith in hard times, particularly as related to breast cancer. The author, Peter Chin, is a pastor whose wife was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer in the middle of a difficult period in their lives: financial struggles, professional struggles, even victimization by constant crime in their neighborhood.

The underlying topic of Chin's article in the August 2013 issue Christianity Today is that age-old question, resurrected every time the newspaper headlines blaze with school shootings, genocide, and other horrifying illustrations of the evil tearing around this world on a violent rampage: How can a good, all-powerful God allow bad things to happen?

If anyone seems qualified to question God's goodness and power, it's Chin. He gave up a career in medicine to become a pastor and, even then took the difficult path of starting a new church in a rough intercity neighborhood. He's like a Platinum Card-carrying member of the Christian church.

And yet. And yet there don't seem to be any decent perks with these credentials. His young wife is diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer (very difficult to treat) and his church is tanking and his house robbed several over and then his insurance decides the cancer is a pre-existing condition that it won't cover. Chin writes of this suffering and his resulting despair and bitterness toward God: how could God do this to me after all I've done for Him?

The question brings Chin to his knees and back to his Bible for answers. His eyes are opened to verses he had so often preached. He writes,

"Suffering shakes you with such force that it separates your true thoughts and beliefs from anything to which you simply pay lip service. This process is painful, no doubt. But without it, it is impossible to know where our beliefs fall short of what Scripture truly teaches."

He sees that God never promises we won't suffer or that nothing bad will happen to us. It's a Great American Heresy: hard work + faith = pain-free, successful living. Rather, God's promise is that He will never leave our side during suffering or desert us to our troubles.

And that is what Chin's family experienced: the comfort and encouragement of an ever-present God -- often through the kind words and deeds of His people -- plus some miraculous evidence of this loving presence: two healthy children born DURING and after chemotherapy. For God "delights in those who fear Him, who put their hope in His unfailing love" (Psalm 147:11) and "is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine" (Ephesians 3:20).

As Chin writes,

"I had asked God for a healthy church, and he gave us two healthy children instead. I had asked for success, and he gave us salvation. I had prayed that I might witness good things in my life, and he showed me miraculous ones instead. To be honest, he did not answer a single prayer request in the way that I had asked, but instead gave me things so much deeper and richer."

 Wise words learned in the Valley of the Shadow of Death -- that dark place we sometimes must pass through to be enLightened.

"Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
    I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
    your rod and your staff,
    they comfort me." (Psalm 23:4)