CARS

Dick and I are not very materialistic people and we’re very thrifty. We have few “toys” and like keeping our lives simplified. My mother can attest to phone calls from me after scoring a great find at our local thrift store. My day is made when I find a great fitting pair of jeans for $1 (I usually shop on half-price day) or a brand new (tag still on) designer tote bag for $1.75.

The most obvious indication of our thrift is that we drive our cars until they die. We currently drive 16-year-old and 11-year-old cars. We are pretty attached to our oldest car. It was the car we took Sam to his first day of kindergarten in, the car he had his first and only accident in, and the car he drove home from his last day of high school. The clock and radio are burned out and the under-car support where the jack goes was so rusted through that it has fallen off the car. The white is trimmed with rust in a nice bilateral pattern and Sam’s dent is still the focal point on one panel, but oh….the memories it holds.

Knowing that its demise is not too far off, we decided we should start researching cars so we have an idea of what we want to buy when the end comes. I’ve started to notice the car ads in the paper and have made a few phone calls. It was clear to me during my first conversation with a car salesman that the definition of "bells and whistles"......which we thought we had when we bought Rosie (our 11-year-old car).....has significantly changed. I was seemingly out of the "car features" loop.

Me: I see this car has models that range from $21,000 to $34,000. What could possibly be the reason for a $13,000 difference?

Him: Oh, the stripped down model has nothing.

Me: What do you mean NOTHING? Does it have cruise control and air-conditioning and heat?

Him: Of course, but really nothing else.

Me: Well what else would I need?

Him: It has no power seat adjustment and no keyless entry.

Me: I’ve used keys to open cars my whole life, and I am still quite able to adjust my seat manually. Does this stripped down model have a clock and a radio?

Him: Of course, that’s standard. Also a CD player.

Me: Well, I don’t know what that $13,000 is buying, but I would not need it.

Him: You don’t get a GPS (I want to tell him that I am a closet cartographer and a directional mastermind and would never use one), or a TV/DVD (in a car? and I would use this when?), or heated seats (our butts need pre-heating when the car has a heater?).

Me: Well, thank you for your time. We are just starting the process of looking, but if we decide on this car, we would be more than happy with the stripped down model. It has more than enough to get us from one location to another.

Him: Well, please come in and test drive both of them. I think I could persuade you to buy one of these loaded models if you would just look at them and see all the features. There’s a good chance you’ll reconsider.

Under my breath: Good chance? Not a snowball’s chance in hell.

Me: Thanks again. Goodbye.

I may be as rusty as my old car when buying a new one, but I know that the gap between needs and wants has become much narrower in our culture, and I am still wise enough to discern the difference, and be content.

FEELIN' GOOD AGAIN

Today is the very first day since January 2nd that I have not been sick or dealing with a medical problem. I am not exaggerating. Today I feel ME again. Praise God for that. I counted up all the issues of the last 6 weeks and they totalled 12, including a 2nd bowel obstruction that was dealt with over the weekend. I'll spare you the details this time!! But each one is over and life feels normal again.

Tonight I start the new chemo drug again. My body is cleansed out and I have high hopes that the reduced dosage will sit just fine with my innards!

Happy Valentine's Day to the people who make my life so great.....far too many to name....you know who you are! Richie and Sam, you know how much I love you and love being your wife and mom. You two are my air and water.

LIFE

The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.   Job 1:21

My 45-year-old cousin Joe died last week. Because he had my same stage 4 lung cancer diagnosis, it is still hard for me to talk about or think about. I haven't called his family yet, because I can't. I would like to say he died after a long battle with the disease, but the fact is, he didn't have time to even pick up a sword and a shield. Like a category 5 hurricane, the cancer swept in without warning and took him in 7 weeks. Parents should never have to bury a child. Siblings should not have to bury their "little brother" at this young age. If I could have given Joe some of the months I have been given, I would have, in a heartbeat.

A new baby girl has arrived in our family. Eddison Elizabeth, daughter of my niece Anna and her husband Tim, was born a week ago. I am so glad she has arrived-----safe, healthy, and loved. A new life, fresh from God, is such a blessing. I can't wait to meet her.

The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Job 1:21

SEASON OF WONDER

          Twenty years ago this week, this article of mine came out in the February issue of the magazine for which I was a monthly columnist. Just for fun, I thought I would reprise it here. It was written just 3 months into motherhood.

THE WONDER OF THIS SEASON

            Three months ago, I simply wouldn’t have understood. Even my sage older friends couldn’t have prepared me.

            I couldn’t have begun to understand what a fierce, protective, primitive love I would feel the first time I held my child. Nobody could have told me that one of my son’s gummy, dimpled smiles would warm my heart for an entire day.

            I would never have believed that baby spit-up on my linen suit (dry-clean only) would go unnoticed, or that a living room littered with rattles, burp cloths, diaper coupons, and clean baby laundry would feel like HOUSE BEAUTIFUL to me.

            I heard my parents and older friends say a lot of things over the years. Good things. Wise things. Things about time and kids and growing up and growing older. I listened. But I never really understood until now.

            Children grow up before your eyes. You turn around and they are adults.

            Enjoy your kids. They are small only once.

            Time sadly speeds up as you age. Years fly. Don’t take time for granted.

            Loving a child will forever change you.

            But these wise friends….they never told me about how it would feel to have a tiny hand wrapped around my baby finger. They never suggested that seeing my two “boys” cuddled up asleep together on the sofa would make me fall in love with my husband all over again.

            And no doubt they should have warned me about this time thing. How does it all change so quickly? A few weeks ago, time was just time. It passed. I lived it. And now in the wee hours of the morning when I nurse my son, my fingers brushing his head of strawberry blond silk, Pachelbel’s Canon in D softly playing, I value time differently. All at once I want to suspend these moments. Time is going too quickly. I see Sam growing before my eyes, and I too now yearn to slow the clock.

            I know there will be moments when he is fussy from teething or ‘terribly two’ when I will wish for “this too to pass.” And then I will probably wish it hadn’t.

            So I will seize the day with my little Samuel. We have stories to read, songs to sing and loons to listen to. We will find rainbows and catch sunfish. And I will squeeze every second from the wonder of this season….and feel all these feelings that nobody prepared me for.

            Perhaps part of being wise is knowing that there are some things you just can’t tell a person….things they need to discover all by themselves. Someday I will tell my son that if he ever has a daughter, he will stare at her sleeping face with tears in his eyes and feel like the luckiness man on earth. He won’t have any idea what I mean.

          Since I wrote this, life happened just as the adages promised. Time flew. My sweet babe grew up all too quickly and I could do nothing to stop the clock. Sam never did go through the “terrible twos” and there was never a day of tear-my-hair-out parenting that I wished would end. I loved putting my Gerontology career on hold to stay home with Sam. We read thousands of books, sang a bazillion songs, danced, snuggled, baked cookies, took long walks, caught fish and played ball. There truly was wonder in that season, but oh……it went too fast!

            The strawberry blond 3-month-old I wrote about then has become a bright and talented 20-year-old college sophomore with Joe Mauer sideburns, a mass of brown wavy hair, exciting dreams, and a passion for all things sports.

            Since this was printed, I call a different city home, have taken up new hobbies and work more with kids than seniors these days. My once post-partum body is now middle-aged, touched by lung cancer and more than a few wrinkles. The home once littered with baby laundry and burp cloths is now an empty nest.

            Sam and I still love to go fishing and bake Christmas cookies. I am still the only barber he has ever let touch his curls. We still sing together----one seriously stupid song we made up about a Twins baseball player. Our relationship now is woven with threads of those rich first years we spent at home together, and the multi-faceted strands of his 20-year-old life.

            An entire generation has been lived out since I wrote this column. I have to pinch myself to believe it. But while change has been inevitable in this blink-of-an-eye mission of raising a baby boy to a man, there are still a couple things that have not changed. 

            Sam still has no clue the fierce kind of love inside his soul that will emerge when he has his first child. And when he comes home, I peek in his room from time to time, early in the morning, look at his sleeping face with tears in my eyes, and still feel like the luckiest woman on earth.

         

CHAPTER ALREADY OVER

That new chapter I was entering on Friday? Already over, and I am just now coming up for air. Apparently I had good reason to be anxious about side effects of something new because boy, oh, boy did I have them. Intense nausea (that made bad morning sickness seem like a walk in the park), abdominal pain, intestinal pain, the taste of food completely changed, and I had trouble eating (lethal for me who doesn't have a pound to spare). Finally after 3.5 days of misery and trying 3 different anti-nausea drugs, they pulled it. I am not to take it for one week, clear up my bloodstream, my emotions (I was spiraling down), and my head, and then next Tuesday they will have me take just 1 dose per day instead of 2 and see if my body can tolerate it.

This is the drug that gives me the best chance for more tumor shrinkage, and I am really hoping that I can take the lower dose. However, I already know that I cannot live my life sick either and understand that sometimes the treatment is worse than the disease. So.....please pray that I could tolerate the side effects on the lower dosage. There is no other drug that is targeted to this mutation that I can try.

In the end, though, I know that what my sweet, wise, Godly son texted me is truth: "Mom, maybe this is just God's way of saying He doesn't need that stinkin' drug to heal you." It was that text that broke my chains and allowed me to be OK getting off the drug. I had put hope----too much hope---in the new drug. I took my eyes off Jesus for just a minute, and, like Peter walking across the water, I too sank when I looked down. Sam is right. With or without this drug, we stand in faith for healing.

For those of you who have texted, emailed, left messages.......I was too sick to answer anything. As my body starts to recup here and the queasies leave my bloodstream, I will try to pick up the slack and get back to some of you. I'll do what I can do and know that the rest of you understand.

A NEW CHAPTER BEGINS TONIGHT

After my doctor's office, my insurance advocate, and I spent a lot of time on the phone yesterday stripping through a little red tape, we finally got approval and shipment of my new chemo drug approved. It will arrive sometime today, and I will take my first dose tonight. I have been saying wonderful protection Scriptures out loud this morning, that every cell in my body except those with cancer, would be protected from the effects of the drug, and I am standing on those today as I await the package. Prayers are welcome!

It looks as though the drug has another site of attack. My doc and I talked yesterday again after I had the chance to read through my own PET report, and there has been a growth on my lower lung which the radiologists keep saying, "We SUSPECT inflammation." Well, it seemed to me that inflammation doesn't really make sense after a year, and my doc and I both agreed that it is likely that site is cancer as well. There has been increased metabolic activity and that raised a red flag for us. In addition, I have a brand new mysterious scar on my upper lung that is consistent with what they see in patients with tuberculosis!!! Unreal. No explanation. I have not contracted TB in the past 4 months. This spot we will just watch.

I was initially a bit shaken over this news until Dick came home from lunch and got in my face and said, "Mare, this changes nothing. The treatment is the same whether you have one or 8 tumors. It's just another one for God to get the glory for healing. It means nothing."

He seems to have a way of putting me right back on track. His faith is so strong and I don't even know if he realizes how his strength carries me.

I had a good conversation with my cousin Mae 2 nights ago. She works for an oncologist and they had an in-service on the drug I am starting, so she passed on all the little tips she gleaned from the training. I was especially glad to know that they really recommend taking it with food. The literature says with or without food, but I guess people are getting fewer tummy issues if food is involved. She also gave me the low-down on the blurry vision side effect.

Waiting on God is maybe one of the hardest tasks we all have in life. All of us want our prayers heard and answered the minute they leave our lips. I have to keep reminding myself that His timing is perfect. Always perfect. Waiting......it's been on my mind alot this week.

Yesterday, after my talk with Dr. T, and after Dick went back to work after lunch, the mailman arrived with a package from my sweet high school friend Colleen. It was a beautiful 2012 inspirational calendar. I was delighting in every month's scriptures and picture captions, when I glanced down at the floor where the publisher's cardboard packing piece, which was inside the calendar, had fallen as I opened it up. I saw that there was writing on it and I picked it up.
Here is what is says:

       When the time was right,
the sea parted,
the walls fell down,
the lions went hungry,
the sun stood still,
the star appeared,
the waves were calmed,
the stone was rolled away,
the Lord ascended.....
        And when the time is right,
        the King of Kings will return.
God is never early, and He's never late---
He's always right on time and His plans for you are good.

Colleen could never have known that the cardboard piece in this calendar would speak to my
heart at the precise moment I needed it most. Tears fell as I read it two more times and the words implanted themselves in my heart.....God is never too late to heal cancer......God will be right on time to do His work in my body.....His plans are ALWAYS for my good.

Colleen, a note is in the mail to you. God used you in a big way when you were prompted to get this for me and send it on the day you did!! (I want to frame every month....they are simply charming!)

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares in Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."    Jeremiah 29:11

SCAN RESULTS

So many of you have been praying about the results of my PET scan…..I owe you a post. Thanks from the bottom of my heart for all the prayers. They mean so much to me.

The news we got yesterday was not the news we wanted to hear, but it was not the worst news we could have heard either. While the primary lung tumor has not grown, the cancer cell activity within it has almost doubled. The cancer cells adapted to the chemo drug I have been on, and started multiplying again. So that particular drug is useless now. If I had not tested positive for the mutation, they would now be experimenting with other drugs to see which might be effective. But the drug I will start at the end of the week will be targeted for the mutation. Dr. T said, “Mary, at least we have a positive plan for this disappointing news. Just remember that.”

I won’t lie and say we were not disappointed. And by last night I had a total meltdown. Rivers of tears were shed (I don’t know what I would do without my husband). I could literally feel the devil taunting me with, “See, a lot of good your faith has done you. You are gonna be six feet under in no time….” That Scripture verse in 1 Peter 5:8 that describes the devil as a prowling lion looking for someone to devour is SO SO SO true. The enemy was on high alert for my vulnerable heart yesterday and he tried his best to take me to the dark side.

But perspective came. Did this news take God by surprise? Did He take a vacation from His throne? Did the words in Scripture change from Monday to Tuesday? Did God transform Himself from Healer to disease-giver overnight? Are all the promises about healing in the Bible still there, in the exact same chapters they were on Monday? Did God, who is unchangeable, decide overnight that He was going to change His will about healing which is so clear in His word? Has God ever given me His timetable for my healing?

I know every answer to those questions. And because I know the answers, I have faith. My doctor said, “You know, Mary, God’s timing is almost never ours.” Oh, how true!!

When you pray to a big God who does big things when we have big faith, you start having expectations with human timetables in mind. This was not the time God chose to show His power and glory through healing. But I know like I know like I know that He is who He says He is and my unwavering faith in His word about healing is solid. And so we wait. And trust. And have faith…..believing with absolute confidence in that which we cannot yet see manifested in my body, but is being done by the hands of the Creator.

I have to share with you a God-moment that happened to me just before I went to bed. Sitting next to my bed is a little devotional I picked up in Sioux Center, Iowa, where Sam goes to college. I had skimmed through it back in November, but had never really read any of it. I don’t know why I picked it up last night underneath 6 other books I am reading, but I opened it up. This is the page I opened to.

WAITING FOR GOD

Each of us has experienced the hard task of waiting. Waiting for “the news,” waiting on God, waiting for someone to change, waiting in lament, or waiting in hope. The words of Isaiah 64 rise out of a people who are waiting for God. Though the Israelites have returned home physically, the feeling of being in exile are still with them. They long for God to intervene. They cry out to God to make things right: “Oh, that you would tear open the heavens and come down” (Is 64:1). But they remember the experience of God’s presence on Mount Sinai and the “awesome deeds they did not expect” (Is 64:3).

As they recall God’s faithfulness, a reawakening happens. In their waiting, trust is reborn. Yes, God is trustworthy. Yes, God is faithful. Yes, we remember now “from ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who acts for those who wait for him (Is 64:4).” We are a people who belong to God. Yes, we are the work of the Father’s hand, the clay, as God is our potter. In their waiting then…..and in our waiting now….the promises of God are more than enough.

The devotion was a little goodnight gift from the One who knows my disappointment, who spoke to my heart from a little dusty booklet I never look at, and who reminds me, “Mary, I am faithful, My promises are enough when you trust Me, and I will act for you because you wait for Me.”