that thing with feathers

Last Sunday marked four years since I walked out the doors of Vanderbilt Ingram Cancer Center completely cancer free.  

On Monday, I shaved my son’s head.  

It wasn’t because I wanted to give him a cool haircut.  It was just time.  I cannot be sure if it was the least or most motherly thing I’ve ever done. 

We had watched pieces of auburn hair fall all over the house, his bed, his shirt, and the floor for a week or so.  He would reach up and pull out several at a time.  He shrugged it off at first but I watched him become more frustrated until Friday afternoon, he just broke down and asked me to cut it.  I tried to get him to go to the salon, but he refused saying that it was pointless - such a realist.  His scalp hurt and he was mad.  I pulled a chair into the bathroom and trimmed the back and the top and we both cried.  He asked me why this was happening to him.  I have no answer so I told him that.  We talked about chemo and how it attacks everything - even hair.  He asked why they can’t figure out a chemo that doesn’t kill your organs and I assured him they are working on it.  By the time I was done, he was telling me once again that he’d be fine.  He stuck that Mississippi State baseball cap back on his head and went back to bottle flipping.  By Monday, he was ready so some friends came over and there on my patio, I took the clippers to his scalp and officially accepted the reality of where we are. 

Then I realized something.  I could see his face.  His eyebrows, his freckles, his smile, and those lashes.  As shocking as that bald white head was, his features that had been framed by that mass of hair on his head were now so obvious.  I could see the cowlick that was there when he was born and remembered the time when he was a newborn and I was taking his picture for a birth announcement.  He was sound asleep and that cowlick was shimmering in the sun as I was trying to pretend like I was some kind of professional baby photographer.  It’s still there.  He and I giggled at his bald head the next day and I marveled at it’s perfect egg shape and gave thanks to the Almighty that his permanent teeth have grown in remarkably straight because they are now front and center.  Even the night nurse said he was pretty when she saw him in the daylight.  I agreed.    

I could only think of Samson in the Bible and how his hair was never to be cut or he would lose his strength.  Mean ole Delilah got wind of this and shaved his head, physically weakening Samson.  In then end, though, Samson found his strength, not in his hair, but in the Lord.  And that is where we will find ours.  

Our lives have drastically changed.  It’s like we spent six years chasing a bunch of jumping crickets into a cage, stood back, took a breath, and someone opened the top.  We are four rounds of chemo into this thing.  For forty-nine days, I have sat in waiting rooms, hospital rooms, and exam rooms with paper coated tables.  I hate paper tables.  The sound is like nails on a chalkboard to me and there’s no hiding when you displayed in all your glory on a paper exam table.  And, yet, there is my child, on display in the middle of the room on a crunchy piece of paper.  He confessed to me that he hated paper tables the other day - I had never shared the anxiety they provoked in me.  I don’t share the anxiety that any of this provokes in me until he brings it up.  This is his story and although some things compare, it’s not about me.  However, I can see the me in him and I hate it - it’s like watching myself walk outside of my body.  I watch the fear come over him before the doctors come in, the same one that I’ve experienced and I wish he could be innocent and oblivious but that’s not the kid I have.  I have the kid who has heard discussions of scan days and results, who is now facing his own.  He knows the magnitude.  He starts to lose it and I spend thirty to forty seconds talking him off the ledge and he holds it together while they come in, then breathes when they leave.  And all the doctors wonder why he doesn’t smile when he sees them.  

Bailey controls what he can and I let him.  It’s never been easy to get him to comply and there’s nothing like being told you can’t do something to trigger dogged determination in an already stubborn kid.  He hates hospital beds - they make mechanical noises every time he moves so he avoids the bed all day and pretty much refuses to sleep during the day.  He also hates wheelchairs so even if he vomits first, he will stand up on those crutches and keep walking while I hold my breath that he doesn’t fall or pass out.  As tired as he must get of me, he does not allow me out of his sight, so I never move more than five feet away.  He is the hawk.  He has so very few choices and certainly nothing normal, yet, he rarely ever complains.  He has accepted that this is what he has to do to get on with his life and takes ownership of what he can.  He can flush his own line, helps the nurse draw his blood, and will spout of more facts about St. Jude than most people who work there know.  Most

of his days at home are spent lying around, playing video games or watching YouTube videos, but he has one or two days between chemo where I see the spark come back and he starts picking on his sister, making jokes, and flipping markers.  If he suggests fun, I find fun.  I drove forty minutes last week to submerge him in golden retriever puppies because if there’s one thing that brings him joy, it’s a dog.  Those dogs know it too - even wiggly puppies will sit still for him. 

I have fully accepted my role too.  I am not one to drown myself in pity so I take the lipstick and earrings approach as I always have, plus I don’t own a pair of yoga pants.  I face the day with what comes and when I’ve had enough I just shut it down.  If what I was doing the day before didn’t work then I back up and punt the next day.  I am ever grateful that His mercies are new because I certainly use them all up.  I find ways to entertain myself and my natural tendency toward introversion is a bonus in this situation.  

I’ve become best friends with Joanna Gaines, even though she’s not aware.  I read "The Magnolia Story" and I’m more inspired than ever by her.  Their story is one of faith and trust in desperate times which ultimately led to blessings and success.  I also hope that she shows up at my house to open my kitchen and bring me some of those antique doors and shiplap while I’m sitting at St. Jude.  She’s still got twenty-seven weeks to make it happen.  

I read about Danny Thomas and the history of St. Jude.   I just don’t even believe in coincidence anymore - all of the things that happen in life are by God’s design and provision.  Danny Thomas gave away his last dollars once to a church needing funds for missions.  He prayed to St. Jude Thaddeus - the patron saint of lost causes - to return the money tenfold and the next morning got a job offer for exactly that.  He asked the saint to “show me the way in life and I will build you a shrine.”  I used to watch “Make Room for Daddy” when I was a kid (clearly an old soul), and I was also absolutely enthralled with Marlo Thomas and those little bald children on the telethons each year.  I would sit there glued to it, willing them all to live until my mother made me turn it off.  Little did I know that would be me, holding my own little bald son in the middle of Marlo’s father’s shrine.  

People have asked how we are.  We are waking up each day and putting one foot in front of the other.  Once a week, I load up two suitcases and a storage bin to camp out in a hospital room for four to five days.  I could earn a badge for my packing and survival skills.  Stephen works during the week and we switch off one night of the weekend so that I can be home with just Kate.  I arrange rides, pack lunches, and sign folders before I leave and sometimes, like last week, I prefabricate costumes for Dr. Seuss week so that all of her needs are met.  Some things go better than others like when I used duct tape to transform her into a truffula tree that she could easily put on when I wasn’t there and she got stuck in it so I had to cut her out and start over.  We had a good laugh as she wriggled her way out of that shirt on the kitchen floor.  

My days are spent either at appointments with Bailey or sitting by a hospital bed watching the poison drip into his veins, ready to catch vomit, and keep track of what medicines are working.  Stephen comes by for lunch or brings Kate after work and I can walk out of the room or get something to eat.  There’s not a significant amount of sleep going on - the hospital is a place of hope but certainly not a place of rest.  When we get the green light to leave, I pull that wagon with one hand, push a wheelchair with the other and load up the car.  I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the window doing this the other day and it looked ridiculous.  I had to laugh because at that moment I was winning.  I was winning at hauling all the things and the kid with the brace and the crutches to the pharmacy through the hospital and to the car while taking up forty square feet of hallway space.  At home it’s a constant schedule of medications day and night, managing side effects, and trying to figure out how many calories we can shove into his body.  I do exciting things like make pancakes at four o’clock in the afternoon.  I enjoy the times when I come up for air to walk through Target or take Kate to soccer practice.  

What I am not is alone.  I may look alone sitting in that room but I’m not.  First of all, I serve a mighty big God who has promised to never leave or forsake me.  He gave me the ability to do hard things.  Cancer itself is an island that no one really gets unless you’re living on it.  I’ve lived on it in every capacity - as a daughter, as a wife, as a mother fighting for her own life, and now I’m willing my own son to live through all of this while simultaneously parenting my daughter.  I’ve never expected anyone to understand or imagine what that is like because truthfully it is almost unimaginable.  Yet, daily I’m surrounded by others doing hard things, the same hard things.  There is also always someone who has it worse than I do.  If I have to be honest, I have lived in a world of comparison for the last six years or so.  I would sit at Vanderbilt and think, well at least I can walk now, or at least I put on lipstick, or at least I drove myself here.  At least, I still have my sense of humor.  

I often sit here and thank God for the “at leasts.” There are a lot of them.  Bailey has a terrible disease, for sure.  At least his disease is contained to this one area in his femur, and at least he’s got a fighting chance.  At least I’m alive to care for him.  At least we live close by.  At least he only lost one pound this week.  At least I have coffee.  

But truthfully, these are all really “at mosts.”  At most, God has provided through science, technology, and the hands of physicians.  There is medicine that will kill the cells that have caused this tumor to form and doctors that know how to use it.  There are nurses who watch him closely and take time to talk and listen to mamas.  There are surgeons whose entire careers have been focused on the fixing of limbs.  In a few weeks, that will come to fruition as the broken parts of my little boy are removed and replaced with new shiny metal ones, giving him a scar that will tell a story of hope and love and a chance at a normal life.  

At most there is love.  Love that sparks something inside the hearts of other people to reach out and take care of our needs.  Love that causes people to write checks, send cards, drop off food, or take your little girl for the day.  Love where grown men shave their heads so that twelve year old boy with cancer sees that he’s not alone.  Love that has other twelve year olds writing get well cards, selling donuts, and wearing superman shirts to school.  

At most there is hope.  Hope that comes from what we can’t see but what God has promised.  There is a quote from Emily Dickinson in the hall at St. Jude that says, “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul.”  So maybe that big scar on his leg will be just the thing that makes him fly.  I know my scars have.  

And at the very most, there is prayer that covers all of these things.  A few weeks ago, I wrote some words that no doubt came straight from above typed through my fingers into the keys of a worn out laptop.  It was raw. It was real. I cringed when I hit the publish key.  It was a little more of me than I like to reveal.  I expected maybe two or three hundred people would read it as usual but, to date, over ninety-four thousand people have read my words and heard the cry of my heart because God chose the vessel of a Christian artist to share our story.  I would guess that most of those people uttered a prayer and Bailey’s name because I think it would be hard not to.  Can you imagine the shoulder tap God felt ninety-four thousand times?  There’s a power in that kind of prayer that I can’t even fathom.  If I ever meet Matthew West, I owe him a hug. 

Funny how that works.  As I was sitting there trying to figure out how we were going to manage all of this - the schedule, the chemo, the bills, our lives - God was revealing Himself.  I watched the numbers of hits on that post climb and He was saying that He had that all covered.  Those things are all His anyway.  He will provide, I will be still and let Him.  This is hard and it is ugly.  It is hard to spend eight hours pushing my kid through machines that look at his insides when he is anxious, and tired, and scared. It is hard to watch him carry a backpack of IV fluids instead of a backpack of school books.  It is hard to hear him say he misses his friends, his school, and his teachers.  It is hard to find ways to entertain him without too much walking or too many germs.  It is hard to tell your children there are no spring break trips, or summer trips, or even swimming this year and to reference a chemo schedule to see if you can juggle your daughter’s activities.  

It is hard, but there is beauty here as there is in everything if we look for it.  As my new best friend, Joanna Gaines says, “If you can’t find happiness in the ugliness, then you’re not going to find it in the beauty either.”  Sometimes things have to be stripped away to see it, just like Bailey’s hair.  There is beauty in the fact that I have spent six years memorizing every thought and move my kids make because I didn’t want to miss it, I wasn’t sure how much of it I would see.  I know them so well that I don’t have to guess what they are thinking.  There is beauty in the fact that I get a year to hold my son close to me - the very year where most people’s kids start slipping further away from them.  Although Bailey is sensitive, he is not outwardly emotional.  I’m learning that he’s more selfless than I thought or certainly expected a twelve year old to be.  He will ask if I’m happy as we sit in that hospital room together, his way of making sure I'm ok.  I always tell him yes, that we can’t change the situation but we can change our attitude.  

There is beauty in being the big little sister.  We are so intentional about our time with Kate that she is continuing to thrive and when we are not with her, others get to see her joy.  She asks good questions about chemo and pain and scars and surgery and I answer them honestly as I watch her little mind process it all.  She may have toddled through the first go round but this will leave a lasting impression of compassion and understanding.  What a beautiful thing to walk away with.  

I often wonder how much our kids really get that we are on this planet by the grace of God.  They have heard my story over and over again to the point of eye-rolling.  Bailey asked me one night if God told me that he would be ok and I said, “Yes. Did He tell you?.”  

“Yes.”   

We will deal with the ugly.  We will look for the beauty, and we will find that thing with feathers that perches in the soul. 

Kimberly

Running with a smile and a hair bow 

"All people and things are different"

Checking out similar shiny new metal bones.
Also note the sucker from the bank in his mouth.

Ever loyal Oscar

Spring Break at St. Jude

broken and mended

Sometimes I sit down to write things and the words won’t come.  Or I don’t want them to come.  I started a post about the new year at least three times before Christmas, then January hit with the threat of head lice and the norovirus which ripped through our poor Kate’s body and our carpet like the tasmanian devil.  Four days and a rug shampoo rental later, we resumed our regularly scheduled program.  

I was going to write about what Christmas looked like for us this year, so starkly different than the one six years before when I sat staring hopelessly into space while my baby girl ran her tiny fingers through my hair playing beauty shop with her new fake hair dryer.  I was going to tell about my visit to my fourth cancer clinic in five years back in December and how I sat there waiting on results again.  I was going to tell how I had myself scanned at Vanderbilt the week before, walked down 21st Avenue, grabbed a cup of coffee, had a visit with my hematologist, and stuffed a CD full of six years of MRIs and CTs in my purse to take to Chicago the next week to the doctor I’ve grown to know and love.  And how the results of those scans are still miraculous.  I was going to tell about how I went to church on Christmas Day alone, my gift to myself, to hear the story of Jesus one more time.  How I read the Advent devotionals as I sat in the pew - the ones on hope, love, joy, and peace - and how they intertwine to paint a picture of my life.  How most people talk about them and say them but mine are tangible.  Hope and love are the basis of my existence and peace and joy are the side dishes that come from clinging to them.  I was going to tell how as I sat there I decided that my opinion on politics could be summarized into one line of a single Christmas carol, “He rules the world with truth and grace...”

But, God stopped me.  He stopped me from writing that one and from writing my last post for my baby boy’s birthday on his actual birthday.  Every time I sat down, I couldn’t finish.  Empty.  It is clear to me why.  The words weren’t there yet.  And then they were.  I finished his birthday post in about twenty minutes on Sunday morning before church, two weeks late but full of all the words that people need to adequately know him, to pray for him, and a verse that so adequately and perfectly describes what I want for him.  

And now this.  Now I have the words.  

My original post started like this:

“Bailey has gotten pretty good with a yo-yo.  Really good, actually.  He walks around the house spinning and flipping the thing, usually a few steps behind me or circling the kitchen table while I’m working.  I’m getting used to drowning out the whir of that spinning sphere as it is much better than the thud of flipping water bottles.  But, at least once a day, the yo-yo stops.  The string gets tangled in a knot so tight that he can’t get it out and then he declares that there’s no way I could possibly get it out either, mostly to see if I’ll stop what I’m doing and sit and pick apart string for the next ten minutes.  Of course, I do.”

My life is just like that yo-yo string.  Life is spinning along whirring around busily up and down.  Then there’s a knot.  One that’s tied so tight that you have to stop what you’re doing, sit down and pick it all apart until something can actually spin again.  

It’s been tied once again.  It’s as much physical as it is metaphorical - the kind that punches your gut and doesn’t let up.  

A trip to the orthopedic clinic and a ten minute x-ray turned what we thought was a sports injury into a cancerous tumor in my sweet boy’s leg. I saw the x-ray, heard the words, and shook my head.  It’s like I knew it was coming or maybe nothing surprises me anymore.  The doctor asked me how I knew and I simply said, “I’m his mother.”  There were some words that included St. Jude and resection and another doctor’s name but I only heard sounds.  I went in the room and told Bailey immediately and he did what I’ve wanted to do at least four other times in my life, started yelling, running around the office and then asked if we could go home.  I had a flashback to the time my mom called me and told me she had cancer and I ran out of work, picked him up straight out of a nap at daycare and went home and held him all afternoon.  He was one.  I had a flashback to the Christmas that Kate was playing in my hair and I wanted to turn around and scream and tell her and Bailey I was sorry and hold them all day.  I did it again.

We went home.  

I told the nurse we were leaving and to call me. I called Stephen in Orlando and told him to come home.  Then the guilt.  When he and I were sitting in the waiting room before the appointment he had asked me several times if I was sure it wasn’t a tumor.  What kid asks that?  I told him no, hoping to God that it wasn’t, but I had too much knowledge to fully believe myself.  And why wouldn’t his mind go there, that’s all he knows.  Later that night, I crawled into his bed and apologized to him for being wrong.  He said, “that’s ok.”  I shared Joshua 1:9 with him and told him that I repeat that verse in my head a lot and he was going to need it.  

That first day was awful.  It was just him and me.  I couldn’t run, I couldn’t scream. I had to hold it together and look into his face and be brave.  He looked at me and said, “Well mommy, you had 17 tumors, and I only have one.” He asked me all day if I was scared and told me not to worry because it would make him scared.  I held it together.  I bought a new phone because mine only worked on speaker for the last three months since I dropped it in the toilet and that just wouldn’t cut it now.  On the way to the Apple store he said, “Mama, don’t you think I was born to fight this?”  The knot tightened and I said, “Yes, baby, I guess you were.”   He told me that I was prepared.  Those are the words out of the mouth of a twelve year old boy who asks six times everyday if I’m going to remember to pick him up from school and if ISIS is going to be on our airplane to New York.  Typically an extremist, he was calm, rational, and confident.  This has not changed in the last two weeks.  An hour into walking through the doors of St. Jude, our shy and serious son knew his medical record number and was counting down to have his blood drawn.  He knocked three pictures off of my wall in the first three minutes of being home with the crutches but kept trying.  I watched through his eyes as every bit of normal he knew slowly stripped away and he stood boldly in the face of it.  Crutches. Fine. Brace. Fine. IV. Fine.  

The next fourteen days were like groundhog day and I think maybe every day for a while will be.  We wish we were dreaming but it’s real.  Several times a day the nerve endings in my spine lit up into one hot flash over my body as I sat and watched the life I had slowly pieced back together spiral out of control.  I sat with him in the MRI, the CT, the IV, the ECHO, and the PET scan.   I explained each machine and how it would look and feel each time.  I’ve done them all.  He looked to me and if his eyes couldn’t see me in the room he yelled my name.  After seven hours without food and his third time lying still and strapped to a table, we both started to lose it.  He cried on that PET scan table and I cried with him from across the room.  The man kept opening the door, causing him to be more anxious and then suggested I medicate him next time.  I had other suggestions for him.  

It took a week to get pathology back to confirm osteosarcoma but by that time, he already had surgery to place a port in his chest.  People were still asking me if it was a benign situation, even the nurse wouldn’t give me a timeline until we knew “if it was something.”  I told her we already knew it was something so just go ahead and give me a date so I can prepare a little.  That’s when she looked at me and asked, “Why do you think that? Because you can’t catch a break?”  My actual thought was that I hoped my kid didn’t have two plastic tubes hanging from his chest for no reason.  

Chemo started two days later.  Stephen and I signed consent and we listened to the side effects and the knot tightened.  Bailey listened too although I knew he wanted to bolt and I resisted the urge to grab him off the table and hold him.  His only question was if the chemo would be finished in time to see the therapy dogs the next morning.   

When the chemo actually started it was just Bailey and me because Stephen had to take Kate home.  He was like a hawk and the nurses and I were his prey - no sudden moves and no surprises.  The bright colors, changing lights and the x-box didn’t drown out the reality enough for him and every time the door opened his head popped up like a whack-a-mole.  I sat beside him with my head on his arm.  He looked at me and asked for the fourth time that day, “Are you scared, mama?”  “No, I said.  I’m really not.  And you don’t be either.”  He finally went to sleep and then I watched the poison run into his veins as I counted his freckles, pushed back his auburn hair, and prayed over that bag as I had prayed over the ones that went into my own veins.  It worked the first time.  It will work again.  

Bailey woke up, puked, and asked to see the dogs.  We saw dogs.  For five days, he vomited. His only sleep was when he couldn’t fight whatever medicine they gave him and when I tried to close my eyes, he yelled my name or the door opened.  We sat in the floor of the St. Jude bathroom together and he declared that this chemo had to be working.  I couldn’t do anything but agree.  When we left, he was convinced the medications they gave him were unsafe and that he had been overdosed like Prince.  To date we have checked off every side effect that they said would or could happen.  We are currently sheltered inside the bubble of our house waiting on him to get enough white cells to go out in public, and trying to get him to gain back the weight he lost and a little extra would be nice too.  Fat is our friend.  Then, we will go back and do it all again.  

The best way to describe our radical lifestyle change is like being on an episode of “Naked and Afraid.”  I don’t watch much TV but I ran across that a couple times and it seems similar.  Stripped down and in the wilderness, not knowing if it’s a snake or a bunny around the next tree.  I came home from St. Jude with a very sick boy, an IV bag, three grocery bags of medication, and a what feels like a bootleg nursing degree that I earned in twenty minutes from a fast talking nurse educator that made my heart rate go up.    

So that’s what we have.  

But, here’s what we know.  He has provided and He will do it again.  Our list of provisions is so long that it is hard to be discouraged.  Afraid, yes.  Discouraged, no.  Well, sometimes, but it passes because every morning His mercies are new.  

As soon as I saw the tumor on the x-ray, my purpose was clear.  It was like God said, “Remember all those times, you asked why?”  My life was spared to be here for him.  You can call it what you want but the miracle is all the more clear. There is only one human that this boy will look to and be assured that he is ok.  That human is me.  His mother.  He cannot look at me and say, “You don’t understand because you never did this.”  Because I have.  Some people wait their whole lives and never understand their purpose.  I’m not forty yet.  

Stephen has been offered jobs out of state several times.  More money. More opportunity to advance his career.  It never felt right and felt too risky to be too far from Vanderbilt, so we said no.  We chose to be here, trading it instead for safe and comfortable even if it means less money.  The best children’s cancer hospital in the world is in our backyard.  It’s also free.  He provides.  

We have an army of people who prayed for us and with us over the last six years.  They have felt our defeat and celebrated our victories.  They are our support.  They love our kids like their own.  They felt the knot tie and the gut punch just as we did.  We draw a crowd and that crowd is steady.  And loving.  

We walked into St. Jude and the Child Life Specialist pointed to a picture on the wall of five young men standing together.  They all have osteosarcoma.  Bailey didn’t see the braces and the crutches or the IV lines that I’ll admit to seeing.  He saw them standing and smiling.  Alive and doing what he’s about to do.  He read the article in the magazine before we did and knew the names of those boys by the next day.  We see them in the hallways and he clings to their hope. 

Our church got a new pastor this year and he called us to come and pray.  He came over and told Bailey his story of how he had a type of sarcoma as a child and was treated at St. Jude.  He circled in prayer in our living room just as our other pastor that was also new and we have grown to love did six years ago for me.  He pulled a yellowed picture out of his jacket from 31 years ago.  He was standing in front of the dome at St. Jude when he was eight years old.  Danny Thomas had his arm around him.  We have a heck of a way of meeting the preachers but God gives proof when there is doubt.  

There are more.  So many more.  

Some days it’s like deja vu and some days it feels like you can’t do this another day.  There’s the practical stuff and the questions.  

“What are you doing about work?”  

I’m not.  He will provide.  No, we did not plan for half of our income to be cut, but we can live on less.  It will be a test of faith.  We apparently left out part of our provisions on the last go round so we are going to trust Him with all of them this time.  This is my job now.  My car goes to only one place and my schedule is no longer my own.  I will be his advocate, his nurse, his teacher, and his mother along with Stephen's wife and Kate's mother too.  I selfishly will miss working because I love it but it will be there.    

“What are you doing about his school?”  

Keep him alive. Fix the leg.  Worry about school.  That’s the order of that.  He will have a teacher and I'll probably learn some math skills and then we'll see where we end up.  In a world where most parents are striving for their kids to get ahead in academics, sports, and life, my focus has always been happy and kind.  Bailey is smart and he will have more life skills that most kids his age when it’s all said and done.  He will have empathy and compassion which is hard to teach in school.  

“How is Kate?”  

Kate is resilient and happy.  She was born that way.  She used to toddle around my mother’s hospice room and kiss her before I took her to daycare.  As a toddler, her busy little body would lie still next to me when I was sick and at three, she went to find the cane when I couldn’t walk.  She seemed to love deeply and understand the need to help before she should.  She struggled earlier this year in school and it ate at me that she was so unhappy. I worked diligently and desperately to change things and when they finally did, she immediately went back to happy.  She’s in a learning environment where she is also loved.  Kate will be fine.  She will continue to thrive because the foundation for how much she is loved has already been laid.  She will have empathy like no other and I will split myself completely in half to make sure that she is not left out.  

“How is Bailey?”

He is so many things.  First of all he is twelve.  Smack dab in the middle of the awkward transition between child and young adult - a hard place to be for this.  He has to sit with his mother over 90 percent of the time which is significantly uncool.  Yet, he will not let me leave his side - to go to the bathroom, to get coffee, to walk three feet to the pharmacy window.  It also makes me the pin cushion when he’s upset or mad or impatient.  Twelve year olds can tell time and read a schedule so when people aren’t moving fast enough, I hear about it.  They also research the St. Jude website and inform themselves on their own diagnosis.  Or mine does.  He and I are similar in so many ways.  He gets silent when he’s processing, doesn’t like crowds, and if he’s not feeling well, he likes to be left alone.  He hates being the center in a room full of doctors talking about him.  Me too.  He’s also strong and courageous for someone so small.  And dang stubborn.  He refuses to ride in a wheelchair which leaves me sometimes hoping he doesn’t pass out on those crutches cause he’s so weak.  I would like to put him in wagon with a movie player but that’s out.  He also sees the good and the helpful in the people at St. Jude, and they very much are.  He reminds me that they do their jobs well, and they do.  He looks past the common denominator of the cancer and sees hope.  And he makes jokes. Just when I need him to say something funny, he does.  Like when he called all the people trailing behind his doctor, the servants.  And when he got tickled over the lady addressing her son as “booty face."   

So here we go.  We are one week into a thirty-three week adventure that I wish I wasn’t on.  Bailey will endure the things that a twelve year old should not have to, but it will forever change him, and us.  Our kids will grow up knowing that life is hard and messy and you persevere to the next thing.  You don’t sit around waiting for easy or more time or for less busy.  They will not have the opportunity to be disappointed by the real world because we are already living it.  We have no reason to believe anything other than the fact that God will hold us as He always has.  

We will give up things, like the trip to the Bahamas that Stephen was in Orlando walking the stage to receive when I called him to come home.  Instead, our boy will be receiving a prosthetic femur so he can walk the stage at his graduation someday.  We will cling tighter to the hope and continue to experience the joy.  We will rely on faith and by the grace of God I will say things other than the string of ugly words that I sometimes want to when I think about this hard place in life.  

I was in my car a few days before all of this happened and heard the song, “Mended,” by Matthew West.  Those words have played in my head over and over.  I thought that maybe that’s what God sees in me, probably in all of us.  I have seen a broken me so many times - on a screen full of tumors in my body and then standing there looking at an x-ray of Bailey’s leg.  I am broken every time I look at the trampoline outside and the bike, and the scooter.  Every time I get an email from the baseball league and the cross country team.  That’s not what God sees.  He sees mended.  He sees unfinished.  He sees miracles.  

We will spend this year slowly untying the knot so that the yo-yo of life can spin once again.   When it does, it is sure to soar.  

"So hold on, it's not the end

No, this is where love's work begins

I'm making all things new

And I will make a miracle of you

When you see broken beyond repair

I see healing beyond belief

When you see too far gone

I see one step away from home

When you see nothing but damaged goods

I see something good in the making

I'm not finished yet

When you see wounded, I see mended

I see my child, my beloved

The new creation you're becoming

You see the scars from when you fell

But I see the stories they will tell

You see worthless, I see priceless

You see pain, but I see a purpose

You see unworthy, undeserving

But I see you through eyes of mercy"

twelve

Dear Bailey,

You are twelve!  I am late on writing your birthday post because our January got a little crazy!  You have had a great year with so much new and so much change and you have taught me so much about how you will be when you are grown up.  I imagine this year will be even more telling.  

You moved from elementary school to middle school this year.  It was a big change for me as we walked into that big new school together.  I know we both wanted to run but after the first day, it was pretty cool with all of the freedom and the lockers and being able to see different friends all day.  You even went to your first dance and I think my heart melted just a little at how cute you looked.  I watch you walk out from school when I pick you up and round that corner talking and laughing with your friends all the way to the car.  It’s funny to me how different boys look in middle school - some tall and some small but it’s obvious that even the ones you are looking up at like you and they will soon be looking up to you, no matter how tall they are.  

I have watched you become more responsible and I know that I can depend on you to remember everything I forget.  You know the rules and make sure that your sister follows them, even if she’s not happy about it.  You are good to her, even if you pinch her and yell, “KAAAATE!” at the top of your lungs when she annoys you.  You have a phone now and I like you having it just as much as you do because I can text you and call you anytime.  You make sure that I’m right where I said I would be at all times so that keeps me in check!  

We ventured to New York City this year - a place you really wanted to see.  Your eyes were wide when we walked though Times Square and you even got the pleasure of 6 hours of Mets baseball with good seats thanks to a rainout.  The city was fascinating for all of us and it was so cool to show you the city that daddy and I went to when we got married.  So much has changed but it was clear to us as we explained the story of how the towers fell a few days after we stood in them, that our lives are full of so much purpose and that your daddy and I were meant to be your parents.  We have no pictures from our first trip, so we had you take our honeymoon picture in front of the new memorial.  It’s only fitting that you and Kate would be standing with us on that same ground fifteen years later all together.  

You tried a new sport this year - cross country.  You ran with your middle school team and did really well.  It was not something you wanted to do, and maybe you did it for me, but I’m very proud of how great you did.  It was fifteen minutes of the most exciting thing I’ve ever seen.  Never once did you not look for me when you rounded the first turn and crossed the finish line, so I made sure to stand exactly where you told me so I wouldn’t have to hear it after!  I could always spot your little legs in the distance in those shorty shorts.  The best was when your shoe came off because an eighth grader ran over you and you fell.  You rounded the corner holding your shoe with your hand in the air, looking pretty put out.  Daddy and I laughed but then watched you put your shoe on, keep running, and beat your time.  Persevere is what you do.  

You have gotten pretty good with a yo-yo this year.  I’ve spent many afternoons working as you spin and whir that yo-yo in circles around the dining room table.  You can make that thing fly and spin and then come back to you like it’s some kind of puppet.  You searched you-tube for tricks and taught them all to yourself, practicing until you got it.  You’ve always done this.  Whatever you are interested in, you will practice until you perfect.  Sometimes I wish you would put that effort into those school projects like that book report on Prince, but I don’t really blame you. Even though Prince is a legend, a yo-yo is way cooler.  

You figured out the Rubik’s cube this year.  You picked up the 2x2 and worked it until you solved it then moved to the 3x3.  I can’t even figure out how your brain works but it’s something else.  You memorized those patterns and now you can do it in under minute.  You got 4 different puzzles for Christmas and solved them in two days.  I was hoping they would keep you busy a little longer.  Oh, well.  And there’s the marker flipping and the bottle flipping - I’m not sure the obsession on this but I’m not as jarred as I used to be with the bottle hits the ground with a thud. 

In this age of video games and Netflix, you still prefer to be outside.  Sometimes you just go out there for air even when it’s freezing cold.  Oh, and that dog.  He loves you the best.  I may be the one who feeds him, but we all know where his loyalty lies.  He stands at the window until you get home and when I allow his crazy self to ride in the car, he acts a complete fool until you hold him.   

The thing about you, Bailey is that you never give up.  Your stubbornness came from me but your strength comes from the Lord.  You love your family and you are a good friend.  You are sensitive and kind and caring, never forgetting to say thank you or take your dishes to the sink.  And, oh my goodness, are you funny.  As you get older and more mature, your sense of humor does too and I find myself learning more from you everyday.  If adults had half the sense that you do, the world would be a much more tolerable place.  I love seeing the world through your eyes because it looks more clear and much more real.  Bailey, you have drawn people in with your quiet, serious, and loving self.  Our friends love you like you are their own and only you could have made that happen. We love you more than you could ever know.  

Twelve is destined to prove that you can do anything.  And, if you learn that so early, your life will be better and richer.  It will also prove that my love for you has no boundaries.  You are my Joshua 1:9.  I’m proud of you big boy!  

Love, 

Mom

“Have I not commanded you?  Be strong and courageous.  Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you whereever you go.”  Joshua 1:9

What thirty-nine looks like...

Oh thirty-nine.  You are so fine.  

The more birthdays I have, the more I love them.  I think people have caught on to that because the fanfare seems to grow annually.  It’s a great time for reflection, a great time for a self-check as to who and where you are, and more importantly who you want to be.  I think back to 29, and the tiny house with the one-year old who we were trying desperately to get to sleep at night.  I lived in 1100 square feet of sippy cups and Elmo, oblivious to real problems. And then, a few days after my 29th birthday my mom was diagnosed with cancer.  The jarring and jolting reality would begin a decade of my life that in some ways would become terribly worse before it got much better, and better would sometimes only mean different.  I would question God, be angry at God, try to make deals with Him, and then eventually learn to trust Him in all circumstances, well most, because I’m human.  And He made me anyway so he already knew that part.  

Thirty-nine is certainly not old.  I’m surrounded by those who are both older and younger and in reality I think I’m the same age until they tell me how old they are and I realize that was so 15 years ago.  And when I take a closer look, they had time and cared enough to curl their hair and the wrinkles around my eyes from years of laughter aren’t really there on them.  But, I’m good, because I’ve laughed more.  And, they are sending me pictures of their sonograms and videos of their babies crawling so that’s a bonus.  We are all the same.  We all have struggles and some of those 26 and 29 year olds have it much more together than I do.  And they struggle more than I do, or at least differently.  

Somewhere along this last decade, the little boy that watched Elmo and wouldn’t go to bed is now in middle school.  I’m praying that he walks out everyday and is respectful, loves others, and loves God.  I’m praying that he has good friends and that he makes good choices.  Sometimes I’m praying that God will hold back my hand from his smart mouth or that God will grant me the patience to show him how to “find x” for the tenth time.  This was my exact prayer at about 10 pm on my birthday.  I am so fully invested in his future that I have spent the last decade pushing and encouraging and shoving his introverted little self into the uncomfortable when I just wanted to scoop him up and go home.  But, I know that one day he will find his voice and people will know how funny he is and appreciate how deeply he thinks and how fully he loves.  I know this because I used to be him.  And I do this because in another decade he will be twenty-one and the world will have him.  But, for now, if I need to reassure him at the start line before high-tailing it to the bottom of the hill to see him run, I’ll do it, because he asked me to.  And I can.   

Somewhere else along this decade, I gave birth to what I could best compare to Olaf, the happy snowman from the Frozen movie.  I named her Martha after the other most doggedly determined person I know besides myself and there is no doubt it was perfect.  God’s timing was also perfect as she had no idea how her joy helped to overshadow sorrow as I rocked her to sleep when she was a baby.  She has no idea how her busy little toddler body that would not allow me to stop gave me no choice but to put aside my problems and keep going.  She shares my love for pronto pups, jewelry, magazines, and shoes, but also for people.  She sees only the good and gives her all, but can size up reality faster than you can blink.  For my birthday she wrapped up a bracelet that she had bought with her own money, one that she insisted was for her when we were shopping one day.  She was so proud of herself and I am even more proud of that sparkly little bracelet.  Now, I didn’t make her heart that big, God did, but she teaches me to open mine up just a little more.    

At thirty-nine, what I really am is okay.  Not the kind of complacent okay because you can always improve, but the kind of comfortable-in-my-skin okay.   I am okay with the fact that it’s really hard to change my mind once it’s made up or hurry me up if I’m not ready, the brutal honesty that flies out of my mouth, and the wrinkly skin on the top of my hands that I noticed now puddles like play doh under one of those public restroom hand dryers.  The only thing that really matters is that these hands can hold a little hand when it reaches out and untie a knot it a yo-yo string at a moment’s notice.  I am okay that sometimes I can’t “people” anymore and retreat to Friday nights at home with cheap pizza.  I’m okay that I can’t pretend to like things that I don’t, like camping and Brussels sprouts, unsolicited advice, Metallica, and being cold.  And, I’m totally okay with my decision to abort dorm accommodations for the Hilton if the opportunity should arise.  

I’m okay with getting older because older means living.  Age is just a number but when you work hard for those numbers they mean a lot more.  I looked down once at a stack of medical papers with my name, birthdate, and age printed on them at thirty-three and I was told that was all I would get.  Last week, I ran a race and when I looked up my time, reality hit as I saw a “39” beside my name.  There’s just something about seeing it in print.  When I saw that the other two people that beat me were thirty, I wanted to complain about the 9-year age bracket but I bet their next decade will look nothing like mine.  Let them have that one.  

At thirty-nine, I sure don’t have it all figured out.  In fact, many times my every day life looks a lot like a reality TV show.  But, I’ve learned to hold on to what’s important.  I’ve learned that if something keeps you up at night, then it’s a good idea to do something about it because it very well might be the Holy Spirit.  I’ve learned the true meanings of hope and love and I have very tangible examples of them.  And when the conversation turns to grace, I can usually one-up that too.  I’ve learned to persevere and I see glimpses that my children are learning this too - when your shoe falls off in a race, you keep running; when third grade is hard, you press on.  I’ve learned to look at the perspective of others before I make judgements because most of the time the intent is good, it’s the execution that is poor.  I’ve learned that my kitchen table is the safest ground for discussion, laughs, and solving the world’s problems because the end result is always to turn the lights off and go to bed.  I’ve also learned that a cup of coffee and a decorating magazine can be equal to an attitude adjustment, especially if enjoyed on a patio.  

At thirty-nine I do hard things.  I still don’t want to, but I do them.  I do them and move on to the next thing, sometimes learning from it and sometimes just checking it off the list.  And sometimes buying myself some earrings because hard things deserve earrings.  

Every month, my good friends at CVS send me a little card with my chemo drugs that has funny little sayings like, “may you be happier than a bird with a french fry.”  Maybe they knew it was my birthday, because this month’s quote was from the great Mark Twain and very fittingly said, “Wrinkles merely indicate where smiles have been.”  Bring on the wrinkles.  Bring on the smiles.  Where most people are looking at forty with a side eye, I’m headed for it with a wide-eyed grin. 

One thing’s for sure, I’m going to be one heck of an old lady.  

Thirty-nine and counting....

KJ