The Beauty of Christmas, 2017

The World Upended

The ethereal hails the dust of earth

The One who lit the stars shivers in darkness beneath them

A dirty peasant girl’s bastard child is

God with us.

~S.B.S. (December, 2016)

My friends, the beauty of Christmas isn't family togetherness, twinkling lights, or the story of a cute baby among barnyard animals. 

The beauty of Christmas is that the most powerful being in the universe shocked the hell out of heaven and hell, not by a show of might but by becoming the most vulnerable of humans: the baby of an impoverished, teenaged refugee. 

Why? It was a crucial step in the ultimate, ongoing, undeserved rescue plan for you and me, who--even in our moments of best intentions--make an ugly mess of everything we touch: every opportunity, every relationship, every governing system, every inch of this planet. 

When will the final rescue occur? How will it happen? I don't know, but I suspect it will be an even more audacious, amazing, beautiful show of love.

  

A Christmas Story

http://www.princetoninfo.com/index.php/component/us1more/?Itemid=6&key=7-22-15steen

When A Photo Is More Than A Photo

This photo on my Facebook newsfeed today reminds me that pictures can carry meaning far beyond what they show.



Bob snapped this while setting up the camera timer for a family photo on the beach in Mexico 6.5 years ago. We're in a hurry, because it's dinnertime (in other words, the kids' good moods are about to expire), and the bright sunshine we enjoyed all day has blown away with an approaching storm. But it's our last chance for a family photo, because we leave in the morning for home and winter. Sally is shown mid-sneeze; squinting Huckle is clutching the well-traveled stuffed cat he brought on all our travels back then. But this photo represents far more to me. It was taken in February 2011, several weeks after I learned I had breast cancer. This vacation was a blessed respite between the emotional hardship of cancer diagnosis and the looming physical hardship of cancer treatment. It was a bittersweet time of facing the vulnerability of being mortal but also of awakening to the everyday joys of being alive--not simply the photogenic sunny days we all love to post, but every sneezy, overcast, hungry-and-tired-kids second that makes up life. These moments, these now-teenaged children, my re-grown hair and middle-aged survivor body, today's cool fall weather, the dog whining beside me for another walk, the stack of homework I need to grade, the cold cup of tea by my elbow--they are gifts, not entitlements. I praise God for every one of them.

Deep Inside the MRI Scanner

One reality of my post-cancer life is the annual MRI. On one hand, it's reassuring to be closely monitored; on the other, it's a reminder of that unspoken risk of recurrence. When I think about it, I feel as if I'm living on borrowed time. Though aren't we all?

MRIs are intrusive and coldly clinical. When I arrive, I'm triple-checked for metal: jewelry? pants zipper? pace-maker? Then my arm is hooked up to an intravenous drip delivering the contrasting agent. Despite all the needles of cancer treatment, this part is still difficult. I have a history of vasovagal syncope, which sounds much more medically valid than saying I faint (smirk!) in response to needles and blood draws.

With that arm over my head, I lie facing down on a platform that moves me deep into the cavern of the scanner. "Don't move," the technicians remind me before the machine sucks me in. "Try to keep your heartbeat regular. Take shallow breaths." With that, the very act of breathing goes from unconscious to an unnatural undertaking that I'm probably doing wrong.

And then, after the flurried preparations and attentive technicians, I'm suddenly alone with my racing heartbeat and disobedient lungs, lost in the bowels of a coldly clinical machine. Even the coldly clinical room is empty, since the technicians must leave for their safety. Another discomforting thought.

That's when the scanner begins its horrible noises: throbbing clanks, guttural whirs, chainsaw buzzes, sometimes with a ghastly rhythm, like some new form of punk rock or mental torture. The technicians provide headphones with the radio piped in -- a kind but useless attempt to humanize the experience. No headphones could cancel that noise, and no song could be heard over that racket.

But I've found peace in the scanner, oddly enough.

 "Could you please turn the radio off?" I ask the technicians as they prepare.

They frown. "Are you sure? You'll be in there a long time."

I'm sure. Deep in the scanner, I'm deep in thought.

As the chaos begins, Psalm 139 floats into my mind, a life raft for the soul. I grab on and find every comfort I need:

1. Being engulfed by an unthinking, unfeeling machine reminds me that I am also engulfed by a protective, loving God. 

You hem me in behind and before,
    and you lay your hand upon me. 
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
    too lofty for me to attain.

I've often thought that the human relationship to God is like that of an unborn child -- the baby is so reliant on mother, so engulfed by mother, that he/she can have no knowledge of mother. Mother is everything to that baby, the whole world. Life without mother would be unimaginable and impossible.

Thinking about God hemming me in makes me feel safe, even cozy in that MRI.

2. Despite the empty room and the loneliness of the MRI experience, I am not alone. I am never alone.

Where can I go from your Spirit?
    Where can I flee from your presence? 
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
    if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. 
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
    if I settle on the far side of the sea, 
even there your hand will guide me,
    your right hand will hold me fast.

I remember the comfort of this thought early in my cancer experience. As wonderful and necessary as friends and family were, no one was there when I woke in the middle of the night in desperate need of comfort. No one but God. And He isn't only present in the extremes of human experience -- He also holds me fast in the palm of His hand.

3. The MRI scanner gives a snapshot of my insides, but God knows the whole history of my insides and outsides and He knows every outcome.

For you created my inmost being;
    you knit me together in my mother’s womb. 
 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
    your works are wonderful,
    I know that full well. 
 My frame was not hidden from you
    when I was made in the secret place,
    when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. 
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
    all the days ordained for me were written in your book
    before one of them came to be.

No cancer can escape God's notice. No cancer can rob me of my pre-ordained days. Sometimes it seems we waste our human lives trying to wrestle control from God or being resentful that He controls what we can't. I am reminded that His control is the ultimate comfort. I let go and relax.

These verses also remind me that the human body is fearfully and wonderfully made. Graduate studies in molecular biology only increased my amazement for life -- its complexity and its continuity. When I consider all that could go wrong in the estimated 37.2 trillion living cells going about their business inside me, I remember that cancer is rare, and life is incredible.

4.  The scanner searches my physical body, but God knows my very heart.

Search me, God, and know my heart;
    test me and know my anxious thoughts.

If God were an angry, exacting God, His knowledge of my every thought would be terrifying. But He's a loving God who cares about my anxiety. What a joy that He cares about this frivolously shallow-breathing heart of mine! Over and over again, the Old Testament tells us that God is "gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love." Such knowledge IS too wonderful for me.


My arm goes cold as the iv starts dripping contrast into my veins. From experience, I know we've reached the final scan. I think about God's presence bathing every cell of my body as my blood distributes the contrast agent. I think about the world as a contrasting agent: the place where the soul sees good versus evil and has a chance to choose between them. Help me chose good, I pray. And help me reflect Your light in this dark world so others see the contrast and chose You too.

The bone-jarring noise comes to a sudden halt and I meditate on the difference between the world's clanking chaos and God's promised peace. As the platform moves back toward the light, I realize that's what I've been experiencing: peace. My breathing is relaxed. My heartbeat is relaxed. My soul is relaxed. I am aware of something better than cancer-free living. I recall another beautiful line of Psalm 139:

How precious to me are your thoughts, God!
    How vast is the sum of them! 
Were I to count them,
    they would outnumber the grains of sand—
    when I awake, I am still with you.





I emerge from the scanner smiling, but not from relief as the technicians might assume. I "awake" and God is still with me. I climb off the platform more aware of His precious thoughts.

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)

 

Headscarf to Hanky: A Repurposing

Three days ago, my family and I hiked the Grand Canyon, from bottom to top. Five days ago, we hiked it from top to bottom. That's a mile up and a mile down in altitude and more than 16.5 miles of strenuous hiking.

Yes, I'm proud of us. And not just of my 10-year-old Boy-Scout-in-training who insisted on shouldering a heavy pack, or my 8-year-old with her skinny matchstick legs and antelope grace, or my fearless husband who makes all the detailed arrangements on our behalf so our travels go smoothly. Oh yes, I'm very, very proud of them, but I'm also proud of me.

Let me explain why by telling you about my repurposed headscarf.

Here's me two years ago (telling Husband to please stop taking pictures of me and be the kids' paparazzi instead):


That brightly-colored cotton headscarf is protecting the fragile skin of my chemo-bald head. I'm on a short, easy hike with friends. And, even though the hike is short and easy, I slipped on a wet rock and split my chin open (after this picture). First stitches I've ever needed and further proof to me that  my post-cancer body is fragile and no longer able to do what everyone else's does. A few months later, I fall off my bike (wheel stuck in a rut while cycling slowly) and bloodied up my left arm. A few months later yet, I trip on my shoelace (foot stuck through the loop while jogging slowly) and bloody up my right arm (seriously!!). Conclusion: I -- a former athlete -- need to take it easy and accept that I'm a damaged and frail version of my former self.

You see, having cancer changed my outlook. Before my diagnosis, I vaguely expected I could do anything if I just put my mind to it. My inner dialog probably sounded like something from a Disney princess movie ("Follow your dreams and you can go anywhere!" "Believe in yourself and you can do anything!"). I took for granted that I was only limited by my interests and intentions, not by any lack of physical ability. No, that's not an accurate perception of life but at least it's optimistic.

After cancer, I found myself focusing on what I can't physically do. My mind and soul came through intact -- stronger even and more focused -- but my body felt damaged, weak, and fragile; sometimes I feel like a ticking cancer bomb ("where will it reappear first -- colon? bones? brain?"). I no longer assumed I could do something just by trying hard or by setting my mind on it. I no longer assumed I'd outlive the rest of my family and spend my 90s scrutinizing the obituaries, changing my mind about which hymns should be sung at my funeral, and giving sour commentaries on how my grandchildren's generation is ruining America.

Now here's me at the bottom of the canyon a few days ago, about to hike back up:

Recognize that hanky on my head? Same one! But this time it's holding back my hair (HAIR!) and sometimes that day it got dipped in the cold creek and wrapped around my neck to keep me cool in the brutal heat of the canyon.

 My headscarf, a symbol of my weakness, became a hanky -- repurposed as a symbol of physical strength and endurance on this trip.


Our Grand Canyon hike was as much a mental exercise as a physical one. I did NOT go into this trip with excitement and anticipation. I went into it thinking, "I'm just humoring Husband, who's trying to get this trip in before I'm shriveled and cancer-ridden." [No, he wasn't really thinking that.] I dreaded The Hike and worried over it and wondered several times if we were being foolish to expect this of me or my sometimes-whiny 8-year-old.

But we did it -- WE DID IT! -- and I'm glad. (Thanks, Husband!) We enjoyed the beauty of the Grand Canyon and made great family memories. And, as we hiked, I thought about recovery and restoration and how I am not just a damaged version of my former self. Yes, I am more aware of my mortality and, yes, I have physical limitations -- I always did, and it's realistic to be aware of this. But -- through God's grace -- I am also strong enough to DO and BE. My outer body is not just a decorative floral headscarf, covering up the ravages of cancer; rather, it is has real utility. It is strong enough and useful enough to get sweaty and dusty and go places and be challenged and pushed and used to new purposes. I can thrive. I can ROAR!