Category Archives: cancer

when a friend crosses to Canaan ahead of you…

Judith made it home to Jesus on Thanksgiving Day. I’ve been living with her absence since then. Four days is hardly enough time to displace my grief. I don’t have a place to put my grief, not really. I can’t send a casserole to the West Coast… can’t stop by the family living room to offer my condolences. I wouldn’t even recognize her family members if I saw one of them on the street. I’ve never met any of them face-to-face. Not even her—my Judith friend. Our lives didn’t connect the regular way. Our lives connected here … in this place, this space that I have reserved for the public sharing of thoughts. A domain named “Peace for the Journey.” A home for my words and the birthplace of some rich, kindred friendships.

Judith was one of the first of you, extending our relationship beyond customary comments to include nearly four years’ worth of phone conversations, e-mails, snail mails, all kinds of communication that move a friendship past common courtesy. In doing so, I’ve experienced one of the truest, most honest and encouraging relationships of my lifetime. Judith has been my mentor, my cancer sister, my sounding board, my “middle-of-the-night” friend who listened to me and understood me when others couldn’t. She was the second person I called after receiving my diagnosis and almost always the first person I called when I was hunkered down in the middle of my pain. These last years with Judith have strengthened my heart and my faith in a way that furthers the cause of Jesus Christ.

Judith sometimes worried about her doing enough for the kingdom. She wanted to be used by God but often didn’t recognize the weightiness of her witness to others. Who I am today, in part, is a direct reflection of the time that Judith Guerino invested in me. She was never too busy, too sick, too tired, or too perfect to take me on. She was just willing, and that willingness, friends, is an extraordinary gift to receive. I recognized its worthiness early on in our friendship, and I cherished each moment that I was able to share with my beloved friend. One of those moments came six weeks prior to Thanksgiving.

While out for an afternoon walk, I felt strongly that I should try and call Judith. She’d been in and out of the hospital, not able to take calls most days, so I was uncertain about her availability to speak with me. One of our great concerns for each other (especially during our sick days) was not to wear one another out with conversation. We made a deal. If we couldn’t talk (for whatever reason), we wouldn’t answer the phone, and we wouldn’t be mad about it … we’d just understand.

Six weeks ago was not one of those moments. Instead, six weeks ago hosted a God-ordained moment for both of us.

“Judith, if this needs to be our good-bye, then let’s do it right. Let’s say everything we need to say, and let’s do so with great clarity. This could be our hand-holding, bedside release.”

And so it was. Our final conversation. We talked for over an hour … laughed, cried, prayed, and tenderly released one another to the roads in front of us. We knew where hers was heading, and while it seemed that my road was taking a detour or two that would eventually catch up with hers, I couldn’t escape the fact that no matter the path in front of both of us, we would stay connected because of our kinship in Jesus Christ.

“Wherever I go, Judith, from this point forward, you’ll be with me. I’ll keep your story as a part of my own. I’ll wear this mantle you have given me and place it on the shoulders of other cancer patients who need the love and encouragement of a friend like you. I will do so in honor of you. I’ll carry it for both of us.”

It’s not easy to speak words like these … not easy to articulate the inevitabilities of our up-and-coming departures, but when it happens, it’s a sacred gift to those who are standing at the portal of heaven and to those who are left behind to wonder, to imagine, to believe and to grieve. Judith may have crossed the Jordan River into Canaan ahead of me, but she didn’t do so without me. She carried my story with her and, in return, she left her story with me. This is the unity we share as believers in Jesus Christ—the eternal thread that links us together and that pulls our heartstrings forward in faith.

We don’t enter into the presence of Jesus Christ without the present witness of others. Those we love and those who have loved us, well, I believe they’re part of the cargo that we’ll carry with us into our forevers. When our crossing-over day comes and we arrive on the shores of Canaan, not only will we step forward into the arms of our Father, but also the testimony of a great many heart-investors will step with us. It’s just how it works, friends, this investing of love. Eternal love rooted in Christ’s love plants seeds, and all eternal seeds harvest hugely for the kingdom.

It matters what we do here, how we love here. How we give and share God here. And while we aren’t privy to the arrival of others when they finally meet our Father face-to-face, wouldn’t it be wonderful to know that a part of us arrives there with them as a lasting witness to our willingness to love on the front side of heaven?

Yes, Judith went home to Jesus on Thanksgiving Day. Part of me did as well, friends, and I cannot tell you the joy this brings to my sadness—knowing that as she steps in glory, so do I. A little bit of my faith, a little bit of my heart is already dancing in heaven, alongside my kindred friend. Oh that I… that we would take each step, live each day, love this way with eternity in mind!

Our stories belong to one another, and I can’t think of a finer group of people I’d rather carry with me into Canaan when my crossing-over day arrives. Until then, let’s keep planting God’s eternal seed into the hearts of those we love, and let us celebrate the thread that binds us all together as one–Jesus Christ.

Let’s do it right … say everything we need to say and do so with God’s great clarity while today is still today. It’s the best we can do. I love you each one.

Peace for the journey,

~elaine
PS: To read the guest post that Judith wrote for me last summer, click on this link.

when the words don’t come…

You know the feature at the bottom of blogging posts… the one that suggests other posts “You might also like”? Well, every now and again I go there—click on previous posts I’ve written, some dating back to my beginning days as a blogger in 2008. There are a lot of posts to choose from, nearly 500 of them. Hard to believe. Where did all those words come from?

Sometimes it’s fun to look back and reflect upon a certain situation that fostered my creative juices; sometimes, incredibly painful. Regardless of the emotions that surface with the remembering, one certainty emerges for me each time I read one of my older posts.

Words came more easily for me back then, sometimes effortlessly. Today I have to fight for them—so much so that I sometimes question whether my writing days are coming to an end. It’s hard for me to type that. I suppose I don’t really believe it, but this I do believe. What was once the absolute passion of my heart has now been stymied by a season of pain and physical struggle. Prior to my cancer diagnosis and even in the midst of my cancer journey, writing was surprisingly easy for me. But now, as I’m cycling back toward health again, there is an ever-present struggle in me to be creative. To write what I feel, what I learn, what I truly want to say. Words get lost somewhere between my thinking of them and my putting them down on paper.

I grapple for the “want to.” Sometimes it all feels very hard, and I cannot express to you how incredibly painful this new reality is for me. So here I am tonight, caught in the darkness, praying for the light to dawn and to lead me back to what once was—a writing life that I enjoyed. A writing life stoked by the fires of creativity that once burned as strong passion in my bones.

For all the time I’ve spent writing and talking to you about the ways that cancer has given back to me, I’m wondering if just maybe this is one area of great depreciation… great reduction. It hardly seems fair. I’ve given so much to this cause… to this healing. Why must my words now also pay the price of my cancer?

God and me? Well, we’ve talked this one over. A thousand times over. Perhaps this is one of my “Why’s?”. Not, “Why did I get cancer?” I’ve never asked that question. Never. But just maybe I’ll ask it as it pertains to my words. “Why this, Lord? With every other surrender I’ve made, why now must I suffer with this deficit? Where have the words gone? Why have they abandoned me? Why does it have to be so hard?”

I wish I had the answer, friends. I also wish that I was more adequately able to express my heart to you with creative and powerful prose. I want the words of my heart to move you closer to the heart of the Father. My heart certainly resides there… in close proximity to God’s, but as I’m wondering and thinking and turning things over a thousand different ways in my head, for whatever reason, I seem to struggle with leading you there. And I am not at peace about it, not yet.

Yes, this is my why for this season. Maybe you harbor one as well. Maybe what you thought would be your case has, instead, become your question, your struggle, your wrestling with God. You want nothing more than to step back a few paces and recapture the magic of yesterday’s passion, yesterday’s dream, yesterday’s up-and-coming “sure to be.” Instead you hold your confusion out to Jesus and whisper the frustration of your heart—your “Why?”

I don’t know the “Why?” behind your “Why?”, but I believe the asking of it is relevant, is worthy, and is needful for each one of us to get back on track and to stay on track with Jesus. At least with the asking, we’ve opened up the dialogue. A good “Why?” is never wasted with Jesus. God always enters into our questions, and I believe that, in time, our hearts will resonate with an answer that allows us some measure of peace. Maybe not perfect understanding but at least enough peace to push us past frustration toward contentment. Until I arrive there, I whisper this prayer of strong hope…

Bring my words back to me, Lord. Cycle them back around to warm me. To comfort me. To write my life into remembrance. To write your truth into remembrance. Loosen their silence and fuel my pen with their refrain so that the meditations of my heart might be found acceptable, profitable, and beneficial for the kingdom. Let my laboring feel less like obligation and more like privilege. And when I am tempted to stay stuck in my “Why?” answer me with the truth of your promises for me. Let your words flow through me, not be hindered because of me… because of my cancer. I want to survive beyond this surrender. Walk me past this moment, past this famine, and let me thrive in the land of the living. You have saved me for a purpose. Please use me accordingly. Amen.

~elaine

When Cancer Comes Calling…

She called me to tell me that her cancer had returned. Truthfully, neither one of us thought it had gone anywhere, but we didn’t mention it. Instead, we just held the moment together. Paused long enough to breathe in and out a time or two and then continued in our conversation. Inwardly, I was gasping for air … careful not to fill the moment with my fret. It wouldn’t have been fair to her, to her news, her disappointment, the painful reality that was about to unfold for her … again.

More chemo. More testing. More spreading of the disease she’s fought against so valiantly in the eight months I’ve known her. I don’t really have the words to give to her. She doesn’t need empty promises or half-truths based on sentimental notions. She certainly doesn’t need false hope or a casual toss of faith-speak in her direction. No, she needs more. Something solid, real, tender, and truthful. A safe place to place her trust. A refuge in which to plant her seeds of pain. A retreat from the cruelty of blood draws, intravenous drips, and the stale taste of poison in her mouth.

She needs a friend, and she chose me. Silently, I struggle for the right words, questioning my qualifications. How can I mend this one, love this one, help this one through the struggle this go around? There are so many of us, Lord. So many cancer friends.

  • One who’s just finished her chemo.
  • Another one just getting started.
  • A mentor beautifully gracing the stage of her Stage IV.
  • Another fourth grade mom swollen with lymphedema.
  • A farmer who buried his daughter—my friend—and who now wages the cancer battle himself.
  • One of my “ancients” struggling in isolation from the rest of them, from me.
  • Several of us in a holding pattern—caught between our last year and the year to come. All of us quietly wondering if maybe the cancer’s just napping beneath our scars.

Yes, so many of us walking the ribboned road. Trying to be brave. Trying to hold the banner of hope high so that others won’t worry. Trying to be friends, be comforters, be supporters, and be the hands and feet of Jesus to those who need to be touched by truth. It’s a weighty responsibility, yet one gladly accepted by most of us. One I willingly accepted just over a year ago.

Entrusted. Remember?

Every time I want to quit, want to pull away and pretend that I am someone without a story, I look down at my wrist and think on that word. That charge. That privilege given to me—to be trusted with so much. When I go there with my thoughts, I almost always go to my knees, and I say “yes” all over again to the story that is mine, come what may.

Cancer will always be coming for someone. Fifty percent of all men and one-third of all women will personally experience the disease at some point in their journeys. Cancer doesn’t seem in a hurry to retreat, so neither must I. It’s as simple and as difficult as that.

To stay. To stand closely to cancer. To straddle the fence with one foot in the path of healing and one foot in the path of pain, with faith as the sturdy post in between. I will not leave the wounded behind. I will wait with them; walk with them; wonder with them; weep with them. It’s what I choose to do, because I believe it’s what my Father chooses to do every time his children come crawling to the threshold of heaven extending their personal pain in the direction of his heart.

God never fills those moments with his fret. Instead, he offers something solid, real, tender, and truthful in return. He offers his presence. A staying, standing-close-by promise of personal involvement. Why? Because he was the first one ever entrusted with a story. A cross. A red ribbon embedded into his brow, tied to his hands, threaded through to his side, cascading downward to his feet. A ribbon that threads through to our hearts and that pulls tightly on his every time our tears shed their witness.

When we need a safe place, a refuge, a retreat, a friend … we have one in Jesus. Every time he thinks about us … looks down at his wrists and reads the truth written behind the scars imprinted there … he goes to his knees on our behalf and says “yes” again to the story that is his. A weighty responsibility to be sure, a worthy gain for all eternity.

Oh to be like Jesus … even a little bit!

There will be no quitting today, not for me. Just more of the road in front of me and more of the ribbon behind me. If you need to, grab on friends. I’m heading in the right and good direction. I’m heading home. As always…

Peace for the journey,
~elaine

Thus far…

“Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer, saying, ‘Thus far has the LORD helped us.’” (1 Samuel 7:12)

I thought, perhaps, that it might just slip by. But it didn’t. It hasn’t. It’s here.

Today. A mile-marker in my fight against cancer. An anniversary. One year of survivorship. One year of wearing the pink ribbon. One year beyond hearing those first words of initiation from my doctor…

Mrs. Olsen, the tumor is cancerous … Invasive Ductal Carcinoma.

Her words are as vivid to me today as they were 365 days ago. Not as shocking as they were back then, but just as real. I don’t suppose I’ll ever forget that moment. I don’t suppose I’m meant to forget. Some moments in our journeys are intended for remembrance. Not to serve as an idol but rather as a memorial. A stone or two gathered in our pockets that, from time to time, can be touched, felt, held, and raised in honor to the one God who’s been faithful to walk the road with us.

Thus far, the Lord has helped us. Thus far, the Lord has helped me.

As I’ve thought about Samuel and his “Ebenezer”—his stone marking the place of God’s deliverance—I’ve looked around my house for what might serve as mine. What stone, what tangible “holding” can serve to bookmark this milestone in my survivorship? Seems like there should be something, some way of  honoring this occasion with the respect that it deserves. Some sort of celebration to acknowledge the accomplishment.

Alas, no parties. No balloons. No etchings in marble. No altar of stone.

Just life. A new day to live with the rich perspective afforded to me because of a year’s worth of struggle. A few words of remembrance from my pen. A few words of prayerful pause from my heart given to God in thanks for the deliverance I have known. A few moments of looking back at the journey and believing God for the next 365 days that will follow this one.

When I began my cancer survivorship on August 23, 2010, I did so with one overriding prayer in my heart. Knowing what was coming, knowing something about the requirements of my disease, I asked the Lord for his enabling strength to keep me writing from time to time. I knew there would come a “look back” day—a season when I would want to reflect upon the fullness of my walk through cancer. Today, a year down the road with nearly 100 posts written since that time, I’m able to look back and to trace the love and faithfulness of God that has been present in my pain. And therein, I find my “Ebenezer.”

Today I raise this collection of remembrances to God and call them grace. Call them mercy. Call them deliverance. Call them enough. The beauty in my “Ebenezer” is that it is a stone you can gather around as well. Because of God’s empowering Spirit within me, I’ve been able to chronicle some of my journey. Lovingly, you’ve come alongside me and shared in my struggle. Together, today, we can gather around this collection of words … stand around my story, and raise our voices to the Father in thanksgiving for what he has done in the last 365 days.

Thus far, the Lord has helped me. Continuing forward, he will do the same. I am a child of promise. A child of the kingdom. A child who knows who her Father is and a child who trusts him to walk her safely home.

I pray you know the same. As you look back on your previous 365 days, I hope that you are able to trace the hand of God’s faithfulness in your life. Most likely, it wasn’t evident to you on a daily basis. But I imagine that in its entirety, this last year has afforded you some moments of knowing and living the promises of God. Today is a good day for reflecting, for remembering and for speaking the truest witness of your faith.

Thus far, the Lord has helped us all. Continuing forward, he will do the same. As always…

Peace for the journey,

~elaine

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