port side

Things got a little matrix-y this week with the insertion of my port.
 It definitely ranks high up on the list of bizarre things that have happened over the past month.  Maybe I wish I would have known, maybe not.  It seems normal enough at first.  Take off you clothes, let's play 50 questions, lots of needles and enough cords to make you feel like a home office.  The barely 5 foot asian doctor gives you the run down, most of which I plugged my ears and hummed through.  Oh you know, it's just like your run of the mill night at home chopping vegetables and whoops, your hand slips and you stab yourself in the chest.  To which Ben replies, or your average gang fight injury.  You know stuff that happens to everyone.  You'll want to take it easy for a couple days.  
Then they wheel you into a room with four hipster guys listening to music and casually joking around about real estate and not staring too long into their beards.  I'm introduced to "my bartender."  And then my top is taken off and I'm rubbed down with alcohol while under a giant blue hospital napkin.  I'm thinking in the future that maybe they want to do all of this after I've had a few Versed cocktails but I guess they know what their doing.
On the flip side I now have a built in Halloween costume if I choose to go as Frankenstein or the victim of a vampire attack gone horribly wrong.

I can only imagine the ragers that go on in the post surgery wing of the hospital that required this kind of signage.

It probably would have been perfectly manageable if this kind of day wasn't stacked up against a dozen others like it.  I barely have time to try and deal with the physical pain and emotional fears coming at me when inserting a port and starting chemo want to come to the party.  Thankfully those who rally in love are stronger than that which whispers deceit and fear.  
I've got so many human angels in my corner reminding me to focus on the solid truth of my being loved by the most perfect love and not dwell on the what-if's, I'm-not-strong-enoughs, and it's-not-fair temptations.  There is an answer for those days that tempt me towards darkness.
Because If I say, Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me, even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.  Psalm 139 11-12
And because I cried tears of laughter I'm including this post surgery video of me that B took.  It was a toss up between this one and the one of me trying to eat a banana and missing my mouth, which I'm pretty sure I was set up for because I didn't see anyone else eating a banana there.

The part where you stay

This morning as the steam rises off my chai, the kids have been whisked off to school, and the two B's ignore the breakfast dishes in leui of extended time in bed catching up on reading, I want to remember.  I want to knit together the snapshots of these past few weeks and study them.  How did so much happen in such a short amount of time?  How did we go from stomach pain to pancreatic cancer?  When did God think I could face this reality?  I'm not the girl with Philippians 4:13 tattooed on my left ankle.  I'm the girl who, when faced with her first real crises, decided John 6:68 was the only verse that made sense.
"You do not want to leave too, do you?" Jesus asked the Twelve.

I can so picture the looks on their faces here.  Like, um well, let's see.  We've given up everything to follow you around.  You've given us the only answers that ever made sense and the only life that actually means something so where are we supposed to go.  Or as it's actually written:
Simon Peter answered him, "Lord, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life."

I mean it's not like I'm getting t-shirts made that say, Hi Jesus, I'm just here for the free food but I don't really see myself as a poster child for faithfulness through a devastating cancer battle either.  I suppose everyone is called to something different.  I was sort of hoping my calling would be of the quieter kind.  The classic Middlemarch ending of the beauty in living a simple faithful life.  I don't think it's a bad thing.  It was Jesus after all who mastered the equation that a little + a little bit less=more than necessary.  As usual though I'm prone to wanting something other and quick to forget all the ways he wants me to be less so that He can take all the glory in the end.

If there was one moment I wish I had a photo of these past two weeks it has to be a week ago today at the hospital.  The smell of flowers filled the room and the other sights and sounds had become comfortably familiar.  My bed and nurses and family were my constant security blanket.

Come to think of it, it's a wonder that they managed to get me out of there at all, what with all the morphine IV's pumping me with relief for the first time in a year while being swaddled under a heavy heated blanket with my sister finger combing my hair.  Ahhh...why did I leave?   I think there were promises made but now I can't remember any of them.

It was in this scene that my mom came into the hospital from church and sat down next to my bed.  She took her finger and gently rubbed her own forehead and then mine.  We prayed for you in church today sweetie.  We anointed you with oil even though you couldn't be there.  I can't remember if I cried then or later but just the physical feeling of the oil on my head reminded me of the extension of my experiences.  The oil had traveled from the elders through the hands and prayers of the members and from my mother's forehead to my own.  It was such a beautiful image of how I am not alone in this.  In those fleeting moments I remember that this calling is a gift and my track record for thinking I know what I need would have robbed me of experiencing the beauty that has made this life mine.  I'm still in the hard days of getting overwhelmed by physical pain and emotional fear, struck by questions and worries that I'm too scared to even put down on the page yet.
The only thing I'm sure about is that this story is going to have some twists and turns.  But I haven't painted any walls black yet and I'm still looking for manna each day to keep me from starving.  I have a sneaky suspicion that my days are going to look less like a bouquet of peonies and more like that little yellow flower that pushes its way up the ugly crack in the sidewalk.  But maybe, on most days, the sun's light will catch it just right and make it gleam.