Tuesday, October 30, 2012

The Road Of Transformation

You know the nurse I mentioned earlier? She had been a classmate of Dearest One's twenty years ago. What I remember about her is her hard as a rock countenance. The kind that says she'd seen a lot of life and it hadn't been kind to her.

When she was helping to transfer me to my bed back in my hospital room, a ladder of arms in my line of vision, I picked out hers and reached up with my good arm to grasp it. When I had her attention I thanked her for her kindness. I wanted her to know what a difference she had made in my journey.  I couldn't help but think as she left my room of her being a recovery room nurse and how she must have faced her own recovery from a hard life to have such a changed countenance that I hadn't recognized her until she and Dearest One talked. And even then I had to peer to see a faint recognition around her eyes. It made me want to sit and visit with her and ask her what had happened in the intervening twenty years.

Looking at my scar, and the place where my breast used to be, is not for the faint of heart I wrote to some friends the other day. People want me to see it through eyes that are not my own. With the beauty, the hope, and all the potential it could hold but doesn't at this point. It starts as a hollow and then rises up gently like a bunny hill at a ski slope until it curves downward again so abruptly that you'd get some air, if you truly were on skis, across a winding train track until you landed on the other side and came to a stop on my belly. It's especially brutal where the tumour was, scraped down to the bone.

[On a funny note I gasped in horror at my belly in the hospital asking Dearest One when did my belly get so big? How could it? I'd had no appetite since surgery. How unfair. I haven't thought of my journey as unfair at all except when I thought I lost a breast and it's dimensions had slid southward. It took me days to realize that all that had changed was I now had an unobstructed view of my belly. I was just seeing it from a different viewpoint now. We laughed and laughed about that one.]

There is profound sadness when I look in the mirror at my train track like wound. I named it the Road of Transformation the other day. Needing to attach some kind of significance to it, something to be hopeful about. I know it has the power to transform me if I let it. But first I must look long and hard at the reality of it. Not unlike I imagine the recovery room nurse had to do in order to change from rock hard countenance to Christ like kindness.

A few days after I posted about Jesus being a boob man, I got up the courage to sit in stillness and face him, to see what he did after cupping my breast in his hand. And startlingly, or not, he leaned down and kissed my breast and then stood back up and blessed it. And in every conversation since, when a visual has come to mind, he is making the sign of the cross in front of me. Blessing me on my journey. On the road of transformation.


9 comments:

Peter said...

{0}

Daisy said...

The sign of the cross...you've sent me off to ponder...

((((Hope)))))

Unknown said...

I giggled with you and your belly story.

And I marveled at your words and ability to find words....

Beth Stoddard said...

Ah, so deeply beautiful that I am choking with tears.

That most vulnerable place in all of us, and Jesus holding us, cupping that part of us, kissing us...what a beautiful vision.

One that I needed.

Thank you for letting me borrow your sacred ground as you share this. I cannot walk your path, but we share something in this journey and I am so grateful for your generous offering.

Praying for you tonight.

Jim said...

I haven't always commented, but I have been here with you, reading your words and finding you in my prayers as He wills....

Erin said...

I remain amazed and humbled at your ability to forge you own way through this, to face what you need to face in your own way.

Much love to you, and praying for more visit from your Boob Man.

xoxo

Heidi Renee said...

thank you, i am so sorry that i didn't/couldn't read along with your calendar, but it was so poinant to read it all in one sitting, like a book, turning each page and not wanting the story to end.

i love you so deeply my friend and i am so thankful to have you and your words in my life and to be a witness on your road of transformation.

Thirsty Girl said...

Haven't been here in too long. Just catching up. You are beautiful. Prayers, hugs and gratitude for you.

patricia said...

Hard to read this stuff! I went through it about a year ago.