Protecting The Invisible

"You're favouring your right side like you're protecting it."

He stands in front of me and mimics my stance so I can see for myself. He drops his right shoulder and curves that side of his body inward. As he does this it looks like he's protecting something invisible, something stuck to the right side of his chest. I don't know what's going through his head as he stands there but there is lots going through mine. What the hell - I'm protecting a breast that doesn't exist anymore? And accordingly it's largely responsible for the debilitating back pain I've been experiencing.

Earlier in the week they'd ruled out breast cancer migrating to my bones being the cause of the pain. Huge relief. X rays showed severe narrowing of a disc in my back. I will take that over cancer any darn day of the week even though some mornings it's a challenge to figure out how to get out of bed without being in excruciating pain.

The good news is that this physiotherapist had lots of ideas as to how to correct tiny imbalances in my posture and gain some pain relief.

We tell the world so much without even saying a word.

Countless Layers

We are slowly settling into our new home in the city. It's so odd to look out windows and see houses and people instead of landscapes and endless skies. I've found two views out my windows where I only see trees and sky and finding those views is a relief.

At heart I don't think city living is for me but it doesn't mean I can't enjoy it. The biggest benefit is that I am no longer body weary; no longer waking up tired because of the daily 100 mile roundtrip commute we used to make. I am grateful for that as I didn't know that being rested was ever going to be mine again. Between that and seeing our grandson regularly - those things make city living worthwhile.

It is a stretch to go from living on 80+ acres to a little plot of land in the city. Once the leaves are out on the trees and we have more privacy in our backyard it will seem easier to enjoy the beautiful yard we do have.

I feel full of contradictions. Full of "yes, but". So few people can handle the contradictions - instead they remind me of only the good as if the the hard stuff, the adjustments, can be dismissed - unimportant to acknowledge. I know from past experience that I need to acknowledge all of it before I can gain perspective. Too many years of trying to bypass my honest feelings did not work out well in the end.

The move has shifted inner worlds for both of us in a way that is good in the long run but shitty in the moment. Redefining our relationship in groundbreaking ways. When I came out of treatment I was told that when one person gets emotionally healthy they call the other person in the relationship to emotional health. If that person doesn't heed the call the relationship crumbles. At that time Dearest One heeded the call and I will be forever grateful for that. Now he is growing in ways that are calling me to deeper emotional health. I'm scared of this, of not getting it right, and I welcome it at the same time.

Who knew there are countless layers to the onion we call relationship? Should be no surprise then that with it comes tears, too.

Minutiae

It is bitterly cold out there tonight. Close to -50C with wind chill factored in. Spring is such a hopeful time of year. Let's hope it starts showing signs of arrival soon.

We move to the big city in spring. I spent part of my day packing up my books in my office. I have given away hundreds of books over the years. Now I only keep those that really speak to me, those that I will pick up more than once to read. I have a stack of unread books that I have already pegged for reading next winter.

My grandbaby is wonderful. He has the most beautiful smile that lights up his whole face. Only daughter is expecting a baby later this year. Two grandbabies. Doubly blessed. I never knew I was capable of loving the way I love my grandchildren.

Some people have more than their share of sorrow. A young woman who lost her parents last Spring lost a baby this past week. Holding the tiny baby in my hands (it was that tiny) I just couldn't stop the tears. "this is too much sorrow, Lord. Too much."

The Gift Of Regular Life

Good things happening in my life tend to lend themselves to no blogging. I told my grief counselor the other day that this blog is where I process what's going on in my life, particularly, the tough stuff. At the moment there is no tough stuff. Lots of great stuff, though.

Although I haven't yet completed the blood work for my second 6 month post cancer check up, the appointment itself was uneventful. I've been saying little prayers of gratitude for this uneventful life as opposed to a year ago when I felt like I was drowning in the grieving process of losing my breast to cancer.  I remember so clearly, when I was in both physical and mental pain, that I longed for regular life.

I've become one of those grandparents who just can't help showing off pictures of said grandbaby ad nauseum to whoever will humour me. Lordy, he is the sweetest gift ever and his face lights up with smiles when I talk to him.

We have sold our farm and are moving to the city on Maundy Thursday. I have yet to start packing but have been buying new furniture which is both fun and yucky feeling at times. I am not used to spending money like this. We bought a new dining room table. Our old one we've had for 27 years. See, I am not used to buying furniture. I told my counselor that it is pushing every security button I have and he laughed quite loudly at that. "So you are in a period of growth, are you?" Why, yes I am.

I am a hoarder by nature. Not of stuff but of money. If I was the only one in this relationship I would balance my budget to the penny and hoard everything leftover and get my security from it. I know that about myself. Hoarding money is my tendency. There has been this conflict going on inside me about new furniture not meaning a thing in the end nor is a bank account of any merit, either. It is both unsettling and freeing to know that. My counselor did point out, (after I told him that if I had a recurrence of cancer that the new furniture wouldn't mean anything), that if I had a recurrence I would need a beautiful space to heal in. I had instant tears at that thought. How do other people reconcile this stuff? Jesus had no place to lay his head. I can feel a little haunted by that.

My oncologist called me last week. Just over a year ago I had a particular test that helped us rule out the need for chemotherapy. It is not covered by health care in this province and I was one of the fortunate ones who got the test for free (it comes with a $4000 price tag) while this doctor lobbied the government to start covering the cost. He is ready to start talking to the media about it and was looking for a patient to speak to them as well. He asked if I would like to be a part of that process. Why yes, I would.

So, as you can see, lots of things are going on and none of them are life threatening. I am grateful.

Not Whiny

One day this week I was asked to go for lunch  with a coworker to meet up with a former colleague.  I hemmed and hawed a while before deciding if I would go. I had been sitting at my desk eating my lunch when she approached me. She asked because this woman we would meet up with had recently been diagnosed with cancer. In the end I thought, yes - being a silent support would be good. As if I could ever keep quiet.

We chit chatted about work stuff for quite a while. Then I looked at her, seated directly across from me, and said, "How are you." She replied, "Today is a good day."  and gave a brief smile. Zing. Instant tears formed in my eyes. Whew. It's not all behind me. It being my own cancer journey. I was caught off guard by the tears. I sure didn't want to make it about me in that moment so I swallowed hard and made a mental note to think about those tears later.

She worried aloud that she was being whiny if she phoned the specialists to see when she could see them. She's had the diagnosis for several weeks. Her particular cancer does not have a good outcome. I told her to never apologize for being an advocate for her own health. Certainly the doctors do not have her on their radar screen unless she is directly in front of them. She made some phone calls after lunch and as a result got an appointment slot right away. This is not a time to worry about appearing nice and not whiny. Is it ever?

Today is my second of four scheduled post cancer check ups. They happen every six months. I told my doctor at my last one that I wouldn't see him until this appointment. It's the longest I've gone without seeing a doctor in years. I'm grateful for that. I do get a little twitchy waiting for these check ups to be behind me. A friend in the program, who has had cancer several times, told me that it would take at least a year to not worry that every pain I experienced was an indicator of a recurrence. I have two friends who are dealing with metastatic breast cancer. They are on my mind often. My grief counsellor told me that he bet I thought about having had breast cancer every single day. He was right.

Next month I will have the opportunity to speak to a group of health professionals in training about my breast cancer journey. There is a lot going through my mind as to what to share and what to keep close to my (one sided) chest.

Somewhere Beautiful

I belong to an online writing group that suggest  a new word every week to be the focus of a blog post. The first week went by with the word 'vulnerable' and the second arrived with the word 'waiting'. I've felt completely uninspired. Until this. It's the first time I've spoken about it on the blog. While it was happening I couldn't write about it. Last night I finally did. Dearest One read it this morning and gave his blessing for me to share it here.

"You called her babe!"
"Well you never like it when I call you that."

"You fucking, fucking asshole." The last is said in my head as my husband walks out of our bedroom. I resist the urge to throw things at his retreating backside. Instead I thrust my middle finger in the air, waving it up high as if to add an exclamation point. And then I dissolve in tears.

Earlier in the day I had noticed his work email open on his computer and because I have several friends in his all female work department I was curious as to whether any of them email him. My curiosity had been fun in intent as I loved these women and they loved me.

What jumped out at me from his inbox was not any email from a coworker. Instead it was an email with a subject line that read "Re: Good Morning Babe" from some woman in the UK whose name I didn't recognize. Mercifully, or not, I couldn't remember his email password so I couldn't open it.

All day long I waited for him to get home from work. The subject line answered so much. The reason for his increasing emotional distance. My puzzlement over our daughter mentioning to me that he was thinking of going to Britain this summer and how he hadn't mentioned it to me. I thought of the last time we had sex and how angry he seemed.

We went for a walk after supper and I casually asked him who she was. After the initial deer in the headlights look on his face he tried to back pedal out of the conversation. I kept him focused on the moment with an eerie calmness. This wasn't the first emotional affair he'd had but it was the most devastating. There was something about that word, 'babe' that made me feel like I was going to go bat shit crazy.

What ensued was a summer of pain and growth and grace. He moved out of the house and into our holiday trailer under the guise of not wanting to be in the same house as me. There is something about not being at home within oneself that ripples out towards others in often painful ways. While I wanted to instinctively protect myself and step away from him emotionally I felt a nudge within to step towards him in love. The big gulping sobs that rose when I surrendered to this nudge affirmed my course of action.

When he phoned our adult children to let them know he was thinking of leaving me I followed up with a phone call of my own to remind them that beneath the man whose actions were foreign right now, was a good man and no matter what happened, please don't forget this about their dad.

I reaffirmed to him aloud several times that he was a good man. He recoiled from my words with both anger and tears. What I was really telling him is that while he was being a shit head please don't lose sight of the abundance of goodness inherent within himself.

I'd only recently discovered this about myself. The years of self hatred had dissolved into a self acceptance that made it possible to face the worst demons within myself. The healing that had ensued was humbling. I felt like I had come home to myself at last. It's also what led Dearest One to tell me that he didn't know who I was any more and that's why he didn't think he could remain married to me. The irony of finally learning to love myself while being rejected by him cut deeply.

One day, in the blink of an eye, I still can't explain how it happened, the wall of protective emotional concrete that I had carried like a protective shield since I was a child, fell away and in its place was an openness that was fraught with fragile beauty. For years I had prayed that God would break down that wall whatever it took. I never dreamed my husband would be walking away from me when it happened. I was stunned to find myself capable not only of emotional intimacy, but craving it. I wanted to run after my husband and say, "it's not too late, look it finally happened!"  I thought of all the years he had craved a mutual emotional vulnerability, and how I had thrown it back in his face.

I spent the summer waiting for him to decide whether he was staying or going.

This many years later we refer to that summer as the summer from hell. The good man that he is eventually emerged from underneath a shit pile of anger, confusion and pain.

Last night we were lying in bed, he on his back and me on my stomach so that we were looking at each other. Talking in bed before we go to sleep is about my favourite thing in the world to do with him. It opens up the best conversations and often lots of laughter. Somewhere in the conversation he called me baby. I tell him I've given birth to babies and I am not his baby. I feel a ping in my heart as I think about the last time that word came up in our conversation. I know he doesn't even remember it from the summer  of hell.

It's why he can continue the conversation by telling me that baby or babe is a term of endearment.

I turn the phrase lightly over in my mind and tell him it just isn't me.

"Try it," he says, "Look at me and say, I love you, babe." His eyes, framed by the rainbow arches of his eyebrows, are full of merriment and radiating with love towards me.

I practice saying the phrase in my head and look at him waiting in anticipation. My hands fly up to my face as I realize to say it and  mean it is so full of vulnerability that my eyes well up with tears and I can't talk.

Finally I choke out how I can't get the words to come out of my mouth because I feel too vulnerable, that it really is a term of endearment. I had had no idea. He tells me I would never have discovered that had he not challenged me would I?  No, no I wouldn't I tell him. I ask him to give me some time to get used to the phrase. Saying it will be a gift of the highest kind, one he will treasure in his heart.

The word that drove me bat shit crazy is now an invitation to somewhere beautiful.

Belated Blog Anniversary

Last day of work today until after the New Year. I am looking forward to the break.

My mom is back in the hospital. Hopefully she will be coming home Saturday. I don't think she has ever been in an ambulance before. I hope she never needs one again.

Dear Sweet Boy aka my grandson continues to be such a healing presence in my life. I walked in the other day, bent down to say hello to him and he greeted me with the sweetest smile. Love him to bits.

Advent has been next to non existent for me. Poor weather has kept me home from Mass for weeks. On the radio today they said we've had the same amount of snowfall in the past month that we normally have for a 12 month period. No wonder I have had some cabin fever. The commute has been so stressful that one night we got a hotel room instead of driving home.

I missed my blog anniversary earlier in the month. Nine years ago this month I started tapping away on my keyboard on this site. What a lot of life has happened in that time!

Thanks for reading along - some of you have been with me the whole journey!

A Long Silence

My siblings and I have definitely entered the next stage of having ageing parents. My mom got both quite awful and quite splendid care in the hospital. ICU nurses rock. I shudder to think what happens to patients with no one to advocate for them. She is back in the hospital with complications - ones we're grateful did not kill her. The best thing health care professionals can do is listen. When that doesn't happen - stuff that lawsuits are made of happen. Except in this country one rarely sues health providers. DH is always saying if it happened more often we'd get better care. Lordy, we had to fight to get my mom what she needed.

My sister in law has made an incredible recovery so far. She went from being in organ failure to being able to sit up in a chair in the space of a week. She has a long road ahead of her and is still needing assistance to breathe but the fact that she is here is mind boggling. We are grateful.

The day the photo of me and my mastectomy scar went on social media was quite overwhelming. The response to it was unexpected. I was in tears a few times at some of the replies. It did seem to help someone out there and I ended up feeling less alone in the journey which was a bonus.

My brother is still recovering from his health scare. When I offered him the information that would prevent the complication from happening again he was none too open. A simple fix that prevents me from having that particular complication. When he declined it was a reminder for me not to get wound up about stuff I have no control over. Which is basically everything except my attitude. I need to remember that.

I'm headed back home for an extended stay to care for my parents. See you when I get back.

One Thing After Another After Another

It has been a week of highs and lows and at the moment there is no end in sight although life experience tells me that normal will return in time. It just feels like a lot at the moment. Maybe because it is a lot. I wish I could write all the details but I can't. Good old search engines make me cautious.

One of my siblings had an outpatient procedure this week and ended up going back to the hospital in the ambulance to spend a few days getting sorted out again.

The same day one of DH's siblings was in a serious accident in another country and is still there in a medically induced coma.

My mom is having open heart surgery this coming week. I will fly there to spend a good part of the week at home.

The photo shoot for the breast cancer awareness project was incredible. I have felt lighter inside ever since. The photographer managed to capture exactly what I was feeling. DD said the photo I chose to go on social media challenges the viewer to accept my reality and dares them to look away. If you'd like to see the photo and aren't on my FB page email me at asongnotscoredforbreathingATyahooDOTca and I will send it to you. I don't know if that's grandiose of me to think other people will want to see the photo or not. It was a big deal for me to go through with it.

Last night we put on a supper for friends and family to celebrate DD's recent wedding. I think the new grandbaby stole the show which is just what a baby should do - I think! My goodness people, he is absolutely adorable and I cannot get enough of him. Actually I told someone this week that spending time with him is healing something in me and I am loving every minute of it. It's much harder to find fault with the world with a baby in my arms.

We showed our home this week in the hopes of making a sale. Did you know you can stash piles of clothes in all kinds of places if you're desperate? We will find out in the next few days if our place is sold and we can make plans to move to the city.

Prayers for all of the above appreciated.

When You Want To Be A Cheerleader

A year ago today I was in my surgeon's office for a postoperative visit after having had a lumpectomy a week previously. The last thing he told me when he left my hospital room, in fact he stopped, turned and looked at me sideways and said, "the pathology report won't  be back when I see you next week." The report came back much sooner than he expected. A year ago today he told me I did indeed have cancer.

Thank you for reading along side me while I have muddled through this past year. I so wanted to be a rah-rah happy go lucky cancer survivor. I so wasn't. And still am not. A few months ago I did a silent retreat and the single thing I took away from it happened in the blink of an eye when I thought I heard these words" "Accept who you are, as you are, where you are."

I have been open for several months now for some kind of ritual, some kind of happening, to mark my cancer journey. This week an opportunity presented itself to me in the form of a local professional photographer who fund raises for breast cancer awareness yearly. He does a photo shoot of women with pink ribbons tastefully covering their bare chests and every woman donates money in exchange for the photographs. Some friends of mine had their photos taken last week and they are beautiful.

I contacted him and will be photographed before the first anniversary of my mastectomy which is coming up later this month. I asked him when he photographed a woman who had had a mastectomy if they ever left that side of their body bare of ribbon. You know the photos are nice of women with both breasts intact but it feels a bit like playing dress up. If you want breast cancer awareness let's get to the nitty gritty of its reality. He told me he had been waiting for a woman to be brave enough to let her mastectomy scar be photographed. I guess that would be me.

He plans of having my photos complete so they can be shared on his social media page on the one year anniversary of losing my breast. I have many feelings about doing this but mostly I feel empowered.

Joy Full

In the space of 48 and a few hours we celebrated the birth of our grandson, the wedding of our daughter and had a house deal done and then fall through. We have yet to see our grandson because we were on our way to the wedding (8 hours away from him) when he was born. In a few hours I will get to hold him and I am full to the brim with joy at the thought. I cannot wait to touch my nose to his head and breathe in his new baby smell.

The wedding was wonderful. My daughter, full of grace and beauty, is a testament to the grace of God. All my fuck ups in her growing up years were not the end of the story. We so need that reminder, don't we? She was the most beautiful bride. Wish I could show you photos. If you're friends with me on social media there is an album on my page with a sneak peek at them. When I was leaving the venue after the dance, I stopped to thank one of the servers for her work that night. She said they'd never had such a respectful, responsible family and she found it refreshing. In the space of a few minutes we talked about sobriety and found we had that in common. It's a small and beautiful world.

The house deal. Well, we loved the house. Could picture ourselves there, evenings spent in front of the fireplace in the cosy living room. We were holding the deal with open and light hands though, because it hinged on someone else getting financing to buy our place. They got cold feet last night at the thought of all that debt and backed out. It was a very young person and Dearest One encouraged him to listen to his heart. Despite our disappointment, at the end of the day it is what it is. I'm grateful to be able to feel my feelings without being devastated that what I'd hoped for didn't materialize.

This week will mark a year since my first surgery that ultimately ended in the cancer diagnosis. That I am here to witness all these great things is something I am grateful for.

Wrestling

Yesterday I spent part of my day getting some computer training with a head honcho kind of guy. A guy who told me, when I answered the phone at work last week, "It is so good to hear your voice." I hadn't spoken to him since before my cancer diagnosis. I don't know him well at all but he said it with a warmth and sincerity that touched me.

When we were done work for the day he asked me how my energy was holding up and I knew he was meaning in light of what this past year has held for me. So we talked.

At one point, after sharing about the mistake that saved my life,  he said to me, 'You are blessed. Someone was watching out for you." I looked away from him and nodded feebly. I wasn't ready to have a conversation about my difficulty in hearing things like that.

I feel like I do a disservice to those I know who've died from cancer by saying, "why yes, God was looking out for me." and I feel like I do a disservice to God by not proclaiming it. Blech.

There's that part of me that says if it's Truth [with a capital T] then it has to be true for everyone or else it's just empty words. It's what makes me grimace when people talk flippantly about God stuff and I cannot help but think whether their statement holds true in a third world country or a refugee camp. If it doesn't, then what?

I came home late last night after Dearest One was asleep. He woke as I crawled into bed to tell me that the woman who took me to my first AA meeting over 25 years ago had phoned while I was out. She had told him of the death of a mutual friend of ours. He was diagnosed earlier this year with cancer and was gone in four months. He and his wife are a bit older than us but we met when our kids were babies. I lay in bed last night and thought about how next week Dearest One will walk Only Daughter down the aisle. And between now and then he will most likely hold his first grandbaby in his arms. Outloud I said, "Our friend is never going to walk his daughter down the aisle. The sun rose and set on that girl."

I don't want to wrestle with this stuff anymore.

Bizarre Dreams

I've had a week of bizarre dreams. The kind where you wake up because it's so scary/horrible. Waking up is a relief because then you know the dream is just that, a dream.

One little sane bit of a bizarre dream last night that included hundreds of people parading through my house was a conversation I had with a woman who had been praying to be able to stop blaming other people for her issues. (love  recognize with some dismay how a person can be all the characters in the dream) I told her that an answer to prayer looked more like catching herself when she was doing it or recognizing she had done it again and then apologizing for doing it. Little steps. I told her that we often think the prayer is only answered if the problem goes away 100% but answered prayer can look much different than that. She cried with relief and her mascara ran down her cheeks as I sat there and wondered where the heck those words came that popped out of my mouth.

Flimsy

Yesterday I was getting a stack of papers ready to file when I realized that I no longer find my worth attached to how efficient, organized, or on being on top of it all I am. I asked myself, "What am I here for then?" and then promptly wanted to burst into tears.

I had no idea that I had been building my esteem on such flimsiness. I don't even know if I can explain it. I still take pride in doing a good job but there is no frantic energy attached to the outcome. Does that make sense? My worth is not wrapped up in having done my work in record time so that an invisible they can pat me on the back.

Today I visited with a friend who has also had breast cancer. When I shared with her my new realization she reached across the counter, hugged me and affirmed just why I was in my job. They were all reasons that truly matter.

Pettiness

I returned to work this week after having the summer off. I made a commitment to myself that I would not belly ache to my co workers about our boss. We've gone through quite a tough change due to downsizing in the past few years and the atmosphere took a downward spiral as a result. It's never rebounded and honestly, rightly so in some ways. Our trust was completely shattered in the company by the way they brutally let a long term employee, close to retirement age, go. But I know that after all is said and done I get to choose my attitude and I just don't want to add to a negative atmosphere. There's nothing worse than going to work where no one wants to be there.

Every day this week I have caught myself ready to push back from my desk to go tell someone, anyone about the latest happening that makes my boss the bad guy. In those moments I've prayed this prayer. Embarrassingly, I've prayed it too many times to count. Often the surrender I feel while doing so makes my eyes sting with tears. It is worth it to give up my petty momentary bitchfest designed to make myself look better at someone else's expense.

I must confess though that I have sent Dearest One several text messages that warn him I will need to vent on the way home.  Thankfully he does not encourage me to think bad about people. You know how that can go? You belly ache about someone and then they join you in the cesspool and then it feels like you have guck stuck to your skin and can't get it off. I'm grateful he knows I am venting and then can let it go.

The week has been exhausting. I am in bed at the same time a toddler goes to bed. Well, considering how much whining I've been tempted to do this week, maybe that's not so surprising.

Words To Ponder

"Fairly late in the catastrophic phase of my illness, I began to understand three facts I'd known in theory since early childhood but had barely plumbed the reality of.  They're things familiar to most adults who've bothered to watch the visible world and have sorted their findings with normal intelligence,  but abstract knowledge tend to vanish in a crisis. And from where I've been, the three facts stand at the head of any advice I'd risk conveying to a friend confronted with grave illness or other physical and psychic trauma. 

1. You're in your present calamity alone, fars as this life goes. If you want a way out, then dig it yourself, if there turns out to be any trace of a way. Nobody - least of a doctor - can rescue you now, not from the deeps of your own mind, not once they've stitched your gaping wound. 

2. Generous people - true practical saints, some of them boring as root canals - are waiting to give you everything on Earth but your main want, which is simply the person you used to be. 

3. But you're not that person now. Who'll you be tomorrow? And who do you propose to be from here to the grave, which may be hours or decades down the road?" 

~ Reynolds Price in A Whole New Life

This was such a worthwhile read. This man lived a path that I wouldn't wish on my dearest enemy. Can't wait to read more of his stuff.

 

Jesus Wept

I love me some Brene Brown:

Jesus Wept

Blessed Relief

The Sacred Wound               Meditation 22 of 53

Pain teaches a most counterintuitive thing—that we must go down before we even know what up is. It is first an ordinary wound before it can become a sacred wound. Suffering of some sort seems to be the only thing strong enough to destabilize our arrogance and our ignorance. I would define suffering very simply as “whenever you are not in control.” All healthy religion shows you what to do with your pain. If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it. If your religion is not showing you how to transform your pain, it is junk religion. It is no surprise that a crucified man became the central symbol of Christianity. If we cannot find a way to make our wounds into sacred wounds, we invariably become negative or bitter—because we will be wounded. That is a given. All suffering is potentially redemptive, all wounds are potentially sacred wounds. It depends on what you do with them. Can you find God in them or not? If there isn't some way to find some deeper meaning to our suffering, to find that God is somehow in it, and can even use it for good, we will normally close up and close down, and the second half of our lives will, quite frankly, be small and silly. Adapted from Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality, p. 25

If you go to the link in the title of this meditation it will take you to a page where I receive these daily emails from.The one above, in light of all this past year has held, spoke to me this morning. I believe that my inability to find a way to make my wound into a sacred wound was what was leading me to bitterness. I don't know if I have found any deeper meaning to it all. 

One of the insights I gained last weekend during my silent retreat was that I was holding a grudge against the surgeon for my reaction to the way things went with the mixed up pathology report and everything that happened after that. I am grateful for that insight. 

Tonight at Mass I had a strong feeling of consolation. Blessed relief.

What I've Been Up To

I recently spent three days in silence and solitude. Well, I didn't quite last the full three days. I caved in about three hours before my 72 hours were up. For a first try I was happy with that. Much of the time I was content to be silent and alone. There were times when I just wanted to talk to someone and I felt antsy.

The worst was when I sent Dearest One a text late at night to come make sure the noise I was hearing outside was not a bear. He concluded - after hearing the same noises outside the house later - and because the hair on the back of his neck stood up when he stepped outside - that it was more likely a cougar than a bear. Gives me the shivers to think about it.

My dog stayed with me in the holiday trailer for company - well truthfully I had my dog along so he wouldn't drive Dearest One batty in the house looking for me for three days straight - but I knew if I started talking to the dog I wouldn't shut up, so I didn't.

I found it soothing to sit and look out over our pasture and watch the birds flit between the fence posts and barbed wire. The weather was lovely and warm. A touch of mugginess with plenty of heat. Sitting in my lawn chair reading a book or just sitting and doing nothing. I soaked it up. It felt like a beautifully simple few days.

Three weeks ago today I wrote in my journal, 'the despair has lifted." I am so relieved that it's still true and that I am generally happy these days. Hopeful. Thanks be to God.

Showing Up

"And may you always remember that obstacles in the path are not obstacles, they ARE the path." ~ Jane Catherine Lotter

Yesterday I had coffee with a good friend, the one who suggested I write a lament to God at that gathering we were both at. She said she'd been quite concerned about me after that get together because I seemed so different than I used to be. She gently asked me if anyone had suggested to me the idea of consolations and desolations to me.

Unexpectedly, tears rose within me as I nodded and managed to choke out, "I hope it doesn't last forever." When she commented that I'd been very honest with my feelings throughout this cancer journey I gulped and tried to swallow my tears. I took a few minutes to try and compose myself but was unsuccessful. Through tears I said to her, "It's the most courageous thing I've done."

Crying in a coffee shop is not my idea of a good time. Being with a friend who has no desire to fix me but simply bears witness to my journey is. Those tears were the most painful ones I've experienced in a while.

At my final appointment with a specialist yesterday we talked about amalgamating my experience of this past year into who I am now. He wryly observed that life changing circumstances are just that, life changing. It would be so much easier to accept if my life changing experience seemed to be bearing good fruit. Maybe I need to let go of what good fruit looks like, too.

I returned to the practice of Centering Prayer just over a month ago. It is an internal consent to God's presence and action in my life. This week I started a month long course in Welcoming Prayer. Showing up. That's what I feel like I am doing.

Yesterday showed me that this is where I am at. I trust it is part of a bigger picture. And that desolations do not last forever. This popped into my head as I typed that:

I have always loved this song.

Waning Days Of Summer

I woke in the night and saw stars in the sky. It's been months since it's been dark enough in the night to see stars. It's lovely and bittersweet because it means winter's coming. But not today.

Doing laundry is on my to do list. Earlier I thought of my grandma and how she noted in her diary every Monday how grateful she was for her washing machine. Her wringer washing machine. Mondays and laundry were synonymous in her world. I like the predictability of that.

My priest commented yesterday that he could tell I was feeling better because it showed in my face. It's always nice to have outside confirmation of what is going on inside. I feel better for the most part. No longer feeling depressed. Spiritually I still feel stuck sometimes and I am at a loss as to what to do about that. I am headed to Adoration this week. It is a refuge for me and a laying bare of the soul.

At a meeting the other day I listened to someone just out of treatment, be completely surrendered to their God in incredibly difficult circumstances. I had to ask myself if I was completely surrendered to mine. I feel like being completely surrendered will mean spouting off pat answers that are not based on reality and I have a gagging feeling in my throat at the thought. I will be so glad when I no longer have invisible walls go up in nanoseconds. I just don't know how to get there. I think I am past having walls go up and then someone says something - thanks Jesus for some random happening - and I shut down instantly. It's not how I want to feel.

Open. I want to be open.

Anniversaries

A year ago today I had the fine needle biopsy that led eventually to my cancer diagnosis. There are a bunch of little one year dates coming up. I'm trying not to run ahead of myself but I am looking forward to being on the other side of them.

By the time I am we will have celebrated the wedding of only daughter and the birth of our first grandchild (it's a boy!) I am incredibly grateful to be here to witness these milestones.

A Simple Human Act

This bit from this book caused an acute sob to rise from within me:

"We traveled to Boston to see a specialist, at the time the only person in North America who was doing research on my particular disease, and he terrified us by speculating - irresponsibly, it now seems to me - that my symptoms suggested that he cancer might already have caused amyloidosis in my heart:  a death sentence.

That was the cloud I was walking under early one bright winter morning, maybe a week after the exchange of emails with the preacher, when I heard my name. I turned around to see him half running down the street toward me as he tried to pull a flannel shirt on over his T-shirt, careful not to trip over his untied shoes. I was in no mood to chat, especially not to an enthusiastic preacher, and all my thoughts were hostile. But I stopped, we had a kind of introduction as he tied his shoes, and then he asked if he could walk me to the train station. Those days are a blur to me, but I remember two things from that morning very clearly. I remember Matt straining to find some language that would be true to his own faith and calling and at the same time adequate to the tragedy and faithlessness - the tragedy of faithlessness - that he perceived in me. And I remember when we parted there was an awkward moment when the severity of my situation and our unfamiliarity with each other left us with no words, and in a gesture that I'm sure was completely unconscious, he placed his hand over his heart for just a second as a flicker of empathetic anguish crossed his face. It sliced right through me. It cut through the cloud I was living in and let the plain day pour its balm upon me. It was, I am sure, one of those moments when we enact and reflect a mercy and mystery that are greater than we are, when the void of God and the love of God, incomprehensible pain and the peace that passeth understanding, come together in a simple human act. We stood for a minute in the aftermath, not talking, and then went our suddenly less separate ways."

 

Greater Than You

I have had this quote from this book taped to my wall for several years now:

``What makes for an authentic personal story is that the hero is not you; the heroes are the people who put up with or helped you or accompanied you along the way. The star of the story is not you; the star is something greater than you.``

Ouch.

 

The Ways We Comfort

More from this book:

"Part of the overall plan seems to be that no matter how sad, wounded, neurotic, or needy we are, that may be exactly what some other person needs us to be at that time. We don't know the ways we comfort and save each other, not only in spite of our wounds, but also in some cases, because of them.  No one is likely to be more sympathetic to an alcoholic than another alcoholic. No one is likely to have more compassion than the person, guided by love, who needs compassion him or herself. That is why we must never judge. That is why we must always look for the good in the other."

 

To Give Up Misery

From a recently read deeply compelling book who is quoting another author:

"To give up a misery....is to deprive the ego of one of its main sources of nourishment.....In order to feel meaningful, the old self must always be either dramatically weak and miserable, or dramatically strong and unselfish, busily helping the weak and miserable and deciding what is right for them...the "new self," on the other hand, will, when in misery, ask for help with simple acceptance and willingness to let go no matter how empty he may feel; or....he will give of himself without any sense of being thereby increased in significance." 

 

Grace

This past weekend one of the women from this conversation spied me at a community event and immediately came and sat beside me. The first thing out of her mouth was how she had mulled our last conversation over in her head and wanted to apologize to me. It was a very grace filled moment. We had a good conversation about pat answers and I was able to share honestly with her how difficult that conversation had been for me. She was a model of graciousness and humility to me. Her sincerity and generosity of spirit touched me. She had not one iota of defensiveness about her. It humbled me.

Then I listened as she shared with me how her Catholic raised son-in-law wasn't a Christian when he married into the family but was saved now, praise God. Oh, Lordy. I just listened and stayed quiet, finding the good in this young man's growing faith.

There is always so much to learn.

Give Time A Chance

I had a long talk with an old friend yesterday. Someone who has seen her share of sorrows. She told me sometimes there are no answers. No way to make sense of tragedies, of life's circumstances. Somehow I heard her, believed her and my resistance faded. Tonight I prayed one of Anne Lamott's prayers, "help me, help me, help me."

When I last saw my grief counsellor and was feeling angst about not knowing how this experience of cancer has changed me he said, "you are in the process of integrating that experience into who you are now. It takes time." My friend commented today that time itself was a cross. That to be able to give time a chance to do its work was hard.

I noticed when this long time friend commented that I seemed to be doing good and preceded her words with, 'don't get mad at me' that I still have some resistance to admitting it. It comes from feeling like I am being disloyal to or diminishing the journey to just be happy. But really, she's right, I am doing good.

Possible All-Rightness

Nine months ago, on a Monday like today, I had my mastectomy. I want to write something far more dramatic than that such as  they cut off my breast, the bastards. The cancer was gone already by then, carved out in the lumpectomy. The margins were barely clear so they recommended that more tissue be taken. However, the mastectomy was my choice, on the advice of my geneticist,  in order to avoid radiation.

How hard it is to own my choice.
I want to point fingers other directions.

Visiting with a childhood friend last week, one with whom I later raised my shirt to show her my scar, my hand involuntarily went to my missing breast when I told her, "I miss my breast." I have lost count of how many times my hand has flown to my chest when I speak those words.

I was told that at nine months post mastectomy my scar would be my scar forever. It's taking all the faith I can muster to believe that my invisible scars are not permanent. Yesterday it came to me that I am trying to hurry the process, impatient with what is. Scared that my inability to trust in God's goodness is permanent. Trying not to beat myself up with thoughts of  you could be somewhere else on the journey if you just tried harder.

Reading this book yesterday I came across this sentence:

"And then Father's death pushed me right out of the slippery world of human control, and I had no choice but to try to open myself to the darkness and horror in order to search for a hope of finding a possible all-rightness on the other side."

And so here I am.

PS. I am participating in this challenge so you'll be hearing more from me this week.

Toward A Strange Land

I came home from a week's holiday last night to three new books waiting for me in the mail. You can't get a better homecoming than that! I started reading one of them and turning down corners of pages to remember where I wanted to highlight. Every time I turn down the corner of a page I think of my grade three teacher and how she would be frowning at me.

The first thing I wanted to highlight was this:

"When we get right down to it, none of us wants to remain where we are. We are not awake until there stirs in us the possibility of what we can become. Then, and only then, can we begin a journey and belong to the migrant people of God."
                                     ~ Elizabeth O'Connor in Search For Silence

And more:

It was at length the same to me
Fettered or fetterless to be,
  I learned to love despair.
And thus when they appeared at last,
And all my bonds aside were cast,
These heavy walls to me had grown
A hermitage -- and all my own!
And half I felt as they were come
To tear me from a second home:
               ---------------
My very chains and I grew friends,
So much a long communion tends
To make us what we are: - even I
Regained my freedom with a sigh.
                              ~ George Gordon, Lord Byron
                                  "The Prisoner of Chillon"

"It is a strange and frightening discovery to find that the sacrificial life that Jesus is talking about is the giving up of our chains -- to discover that what binds us is also what gives us comfort and a measure of feeling safe. Change, while it has promise, will take from us something we have found sweet. The image we have of ourselves may keep us from wholeness, but it has some very satisfying compensations. There are dividends in being known as the one for whom nothing ever works out. It is never easy to lose the paradise of one's innocence and to have to struggle with growing up and being held accountable for one's own life.  There are all kinds of anxieties in having to leave the land one knows and be on one's way toward a strange land. No wonder Jesus comments so often on the people who look and look, but see nothing; and hear and hear, but do not understand. If we really saw and really heard, we might turn to him and become involved with a migrant people who may have no place to lay their heads when night comes."
                                                              ~ p. 39 The Search For Silence

Such a biting thing, truth is.

I'm pondering what my chains are and if I'm willing/ready to give them up.

There is a part of me that feels embarrassed for where this journey of the last nine months has taken me and then for writing about it so publicly. That's my ego taking a kicking there. Which is humbling and good. Among other things I was under the illusion that bitterness was beyond me.

I know that where I find myself is not where I want to stay. 

As Anne Lamott writes in Traveling Mercies, "Don't forget, God loves us exactly the way we are, and God loves us too much to let us stay like this."

Thanks be to God.

 

Vulnerability Rises

I recommitted to doing centering prayer and sticking with it through the long haul. Normally I eventually feel too vulnerable and I flee until I try again. Rereading this book helped me see that sticking  it out would be the better option. For the past week or so I've spent twenty minutes daily in silence. Much like writing morning pages I can only have the same thoughts go through my head for so long before I am forced to look them square in the face. For a few days now I've had the uncomfortable feeling that something has been off in my attitude in general for a while. Today I was able to attach a word to it: bitterness. Lord have mercy.

Plenty Of Opinion

"If Angelina Jolie was here right now I'd punch her in the face. Who is she, with all her money, to parade around what she did?"

I'm a bit startled by the aggressiveness of her tone. We're strangers sitting together at a friend's anniversary celebration. The happenstance of place cards set across the table from one another. When the topic of breast cancer came up this is what she said to me. Lord have mercy.

I sat there and thought about Ms. Jolie's mother and aunt who died from cancer. I thought about when my geneticist said I would have had cancer again had my BRCA 1 & 2 test came back positive. I thought about the worry that Angelina might have experienced waiting for her test results and then the stress of trying to decide what to do.

I thought about how we are in situations where we have no life experience but plenty of opinion. That about sums up most of my life so I am guilty of it as well. It wasn't until I realized that my opinion was just that, an opinion, not fact, that I stopped trying to shove what I thought down other people's throats. It`s a vulnerable feeling to hold my beliefs in an open palm instead of clutched tight to my chest.

For many years I walked away from conversations thinking the other person was so stupid for thinking the way they did and patting myself on the back for showing them the error of their thinking. I wrote letters to friends and family telling them exactly what I thought of their behaviour, too. Lord have mercy.

Dearest One had no idea of this side of me until after we were married. Five days afterwards to be exact. Squirreled away in a hotel room with a bunch of other people, trying to empty a Texas mickey I asked a travelling salesman if he cheated on his wife while he was away from home. It wouldn't have mattered what he'd answered, I wouldn't have believed him because I was so sure I was right about everything, even the behaviour of strangers I'd just met.

I'm only thinking about this in retrospect of that conversation about Angelina Jolie. Up until I started typing this post I was still sitting in judgement of her. I still want to sit in judgement of her. But I need to remember I've been just like her -probably worse -  and am still capable of it, too. I want to think I am better because I practice restraint of tongue and pen. Most of the time. That`s the catch though, isn't it. Funny how I want to let myself off the hook for behaviour I see in others and condemn them for harshly. Well, not funny at all. Lord have mercy.

I told her that I thought Angelina brought an awareness to the disease that was good. I didn't apologize for having an opposite opinion nor did I get angry and snippy in voicing it. I just stated how I saw it and left it at that. I had a moment of feeling uncomfortable but it passed. Then she had a moment of feeling uncomfortable when I didn't back down and it passed. When we started talking again it was about other, less volatile, subjects.

The Other Side

My dining room table is full of my computer stuff because I've been painting my office this week. What started out as wanting a new desk soon morphed into new desk, new chair, new paint, new flooring. It will be a first for me to have a room to call my own and decorated to my liking. I painted the walls a soothing blue denim colour with white trim. It looks lovely. It is a very tiny room that is like a cocoon to me.

The weather has been hot for a good while and I have enjoyed the heat. So grateful that it is summer after a very long drawn out winter and cold spring. Dearest One and I have been enjoying sitting around our fire pit in the evenings which is my favourite summer activity.

I had my bone scan earlier this week. After pointed questions from the technician part way through the scan about where all I was in pain I was tempted to start worrying about test results. I reminded myself that all I knew was that I was having a bone scan. Full stop. Worry could wait until there was something concrete to worry about. Which might be never. The doctor is on holidays and by the time he will be back I will be away on holidays so it will be weeks before I know the results. A friend of mine who had cancer eons ago told me it would take at least a year before I stopped fretting every time I had a new pain.

I was going to write that the one thing I do better than before is be present. However the fretting about test results is not exactly being in the present, is it? And yet I am much more present than I was. A few nights ago my father-in-law was speaking to me - yelling really because he is deaf - and I was nudged in my spirit to be present to him. How much better the world would be if we could be present to one another. To do it means to forget about  myself for the moment.

I saw my spiritual director this week. He lives several hours away and the drive was a nice change. It was a good appointment. As I left I thanked him for bearing witness to my journey. Much like you all do, too. Thank you for hanging in there as I work my way through this period of my life. I wonder what it will look like when I'm on the other side of this.

A Work In Progress

I lie in bed looking up at the summer night sky, watching the trees titter back and forth, giving off a breeze much like that from the cheap hand held fans I played with as a child. Here, in the land of the midnight sun, darkness only comes in the deep of the night and lasts a few scant hours. My mind drifts to thoughts of God as I watch the trees sway their hips. 

“I've been fighting against how other people think God works.” 

 “Fighting against how I think God should work.”

Oh.

I don't know how God works. 

My belief shrunk down to just one sentence that is both manageable and unmanageable, too. 

It is a start.

I remember a conversation, over 20 years ago, with this woman, where she’s telling me about the long ago death of her one year old little girl; a much desired sister for her teenage daughter. She seeks my eyes with her own, as only one mother to another would, as she tries to explain what happened. Her sentences are peppered with -  “I didn't know” and “if only” as she tells me of an undetected simple infection that led to her daughter's death.

Is this how she came to believe that God is in control of everything? Did she need to in order to be able to lift her head off the pillow every morning to attend to her other children whose ages, 13, 12, 11 and 10, descended like steps on a staircase? I don't know her well enough to ask. We've only ever talked at each other.

I think of her lying in her bed wrestling with these things. Wondering how long her darkness lasted. I know her daughter died in the winter time, where there are but few hours of daylight.

A little spark of compassion ignites within me for her.

It's a start.

“Like Christ, after his resurrection, we will carry on our bodies and into the rest of our lives the scars of the hurts done to us. Maybe one day they will become signs of our humanity and of our covenant moments with God. We will look at them and remember how we have been rescued. But for the moment, all we know is we are a work in progress, held in the hands of God. Our redemption has not yet been fully realized, but we lean into the love that leads us, and all, to the fullness of life.”                                

~ Monty Williams, SJ, Stepping into Mystery, p. 313

Looking Into The Void

"God is good."

The thought slips into my mind and catches me off guard. As I let the thought settle in me tears prick at the corners of my eyes. It's been so long since I had a thought like that.

I'm heading out of town for work and that thought - the one where I realize some calamity could befall me on the road - pushes me to send Dearest One a text. "I hope you know that I think our life is about perfect." He sends me a text back that lets me know he agrees. There is a contentedness between us - born from all that these past eight months have held - that feels deep and true.

I saw my grief counsellor this past week. I came away from the appointment knowing that I will think up a ritual to help me let go of the old God Of My Understanding and make room for the new. I told my counsellor that even though my belief system seems to be shot to smithereens there is a stillness within me that I've never experienced before.

I cried with recognition when I read the following from this book:

"The present world we live in does not have much use for God as a living reality. It finds a dead God who can be used to justify dead systems more manageable. That is why the path of contemplation is so difficult - because to walk that path we have to come to the edge of those myths which give our lives meaning and look down into the nothingness surrounding them. (emphasis mine) 

Only in contemplation, when we spend time in this nothingness, do we discover that this nothingness is really the mystery we call God.... 

To live in that radical insecurity is painful, because we not only lose a way, we lose even the name of the way. We lose all sense of direction. We are lost in the dark.....
We can only wait in that darkness beyond a particular broken myth until our perspective changes, until our attitudes change, until we come to the lived awareness of how conditional our existence is.... 

We have a hunger for what we do not know. That hunger not only takes away the myths by which we organize reality. It also takes away even the desire for knowledge, for knowledge is now seen to be ineffectual against our need. At this stage, even the wisdom of the wise does not help."

A Speck Of Redemption

"Have you thought of writing a lament to God?"

Another woman, at the same gathering as the first, is asking me this after I share with her that I can hardly stand a single comment from anyone about how God is working in situations. She is a longtime friend and also a spiritual director. She suggested writing a lament after we were both present when someone else shared how the seeming manifestations of God were evident in a situation. My face feels like it's cracking when I try to smile in these kinds of conversations.

Dearest One and I talk on the way home about whether or not we are a blight on God's witness by not being able to cheer with people when they feel God is at work because all we can think of is our two friends who died by suicide within a day of each other and this short time later we still feel like we are walking around in a daze wondering where was God in that situation? If God can find us a parking space why can't God step in and prevent such deaths? Why didn't He?

I know there are no answers to my questions.
I know that.
I also have to trust that there is something to be said for wrestling with the questions. There is a part of me that whispers within, telling me to stuff this all down and put on a happy face and pretend I am in a different space than I find myself in. And it's not that I'm not happy. I am finding little joys daily and I am wrestling with my beliefs daily. My sponsor helped me see the other day that it was my beliefs not my faith that has been rocked off its foundation.

Lament To God

Good Friday - the day You hung from a tree
he hung from a tree, too.

It makes me want to scream.

I remember looking at her face as the pain of losing him had etched itself deep in the space of 24 hours.
Her shoulders shook with emotion and I reached out to hug her
knowing that my hug could do nothing to bring him back.

Later that day she joined him.

Fucking trees.

I hear stories from friends.
The one who put her trusted revolver to her head
and pulled the trigger only to have it not go off.
She had fired it often
it had always come through for her
whether she was scaring someone off
or intending to wound.
This time it didn't.
She lived to tell me.
And gives God the glory.

I so wanted these two to live to tell the story, too.
To find a speck of redemption somewhere.
And You who created the heavens and the earth.
Who can do anything.
It feels like You did nothing.

Except I know that you knelt and cradled them to your bosom,
enveloping them in the love they craved their whole life long.
I pound the steering wheel until my hands are bruised.
Why was it only in death that they found what they craved in life?
For God's sake - why?

"A failure of love"
reverberates in my head
like a needle stuck on a record.
Around and around it goes.

How long will I weep?

God Is?

"God is in control of everything." She's standing just inches from my face and her face radiates joy. I tell her that that is of no comfort to me.

She tells me surely it must be a comfort! I reply that maybe one day but not now. I can't even begin to tell her why it is of no comfort. I've opened myself up to so much already just by disagreeing with her. She turns to the woman beside me and they talk about other things that they also are so sure of when it comes to God. I decide to look at my feet because I don't want to give any indication that I am in agreement. It also helps me keep my mouth shut tight. Conversations like this make me want to scream.

I've made it through the evening in the company of many people we used to go to church with before we became Catholic. A church that held a Sunday School class on cults after we left and included in that teaching was Catholicism. That makes me want to scream, too.

It's a wonder I was honest with this woman. She's probably forgotten the Sunday, when I was still trying to go to both churches in an effort to support my sons whose friends were all there, when she remarked to someone while right in front of me that what could ever be wrong with the gospel that I'd have to go 'there' to church. It's a reminder to me that what I see and the conclusions I come to are just that. My conclusions. Not the truth. But man, it stung.

She had stood just inches from me telling me who God is at a celebration of mutual friends' reaching milestone birthdays. I'd looked forward to the evening, to good visiting. Despite our veering off in a different direction and the misunderstanding of those we used to fellowship with, I still can visit about a myriad of other things and enjoy myself a lot. They are good and decent people. They mean well. Generations of belief that Catholicism is not only downright wrong but perhaps evil cannot be changed in one conversation. I have reminded myself more times than I can count that my only recourse over the years is to live out my belief. And I'm aware, more these past 8 months than ever, how poorly I do that.

There are many things I do cherish about my time amongst these people. They loved me when I was a brand new Christian and forgave me for much spoken out of turn and in mockery and bluntness. They watched me grow and cheered me on. They were long suffering and extended grace upon grace. Which is perhaps why it bothered me so much to be judged when I became Catholic because it was as if they had to forget all they knew about me because my choice made no sense to them. No doubt, no doubt, I do that, too.

I'd told God on the way to the party that perhaps I was done being mad at Him and would go to church on Sunday. I haven't been to Mass in a very, very long time. Why? Because there is no getting around God when presented with the Eucharist. Opening myself up to It renders me completely vulnerable. Several months ago I  told God, ' sorry I can't open myself up to you right now because if I do I am going to start sobbing and won't be able to stop.'  You know, that snot inducing ugly crying? There's no place to hide that level of emotion in our little church in the boondocks when there are only 10 other people present. In the past long while I've guarded myself every time I've been lector at Mass, unwilling to be undone by reading Scripture in front of anyone.

My plan for today is to go to Mass really early. Our little church in the boondocks has a key we all have access to. I will sit in its cool interior on this hot summer day and have a heart to heart with the God of my understanding. Who, if He is in control of everything, sure fucked a lot of things up.