I had my treatment last Monday : the sixth of eight treatments.  I felt so much more at peace: as if I had finally resigned myself, after so long, to the onslaught against my body.  I did not cry all the way home.  In fact, I did not go home at all:  I saw my surgeon, I sat by the ocean, I picked my children up from school.  

I held that image of the worn leather bag, and the treasure within as consciously as I could, and when the crash came, as it always does, I held it even closer.  I slept more this time, and I didn’t feel as desolate and alone.  I think I was able to surrender myself, and find solace in sleep, rather than struggle against the tide of confusion.  I slept for almost twenty-four hours, but still woke on Saturday, exhausted.

On Sunday I tried to go to church.  Mistake.  I love to go to church now, and worship with my friends, and sing and pray and be with the people I love.  But on Sunday it was a mistake: I wasn’t well enough – too shaky, too exhausted, too dizzy.  I had to make a rather ignominious retreat.  And I cried all the way home.  And I frightened my children.  And Nathan got sick.  And Anna’s eyes were the size of dinner plates.

In between my wails, I heard Nathan’s voice from the back seat, “They say that laughter is contagious… I think sadness is contagious too.”

Oh, my children. 

Sometimes the burden of grief is too much to bear, and it spills out, and I can’t stop it, and I don’t even know if I even should stop it.  And my children see it, and soak it up, and store it up in their little hearts, and I wonder what it will create in them.  What will be their prevailing memories of this year? How will it change them?  How HAS it changed them? I don’t want to deny the pain, brush it away, and pretend it doesn’t exist, but I don’t want it to become the constant refrain of our home, either

I have cried in front of my children many times: gentle, oozy tears.  My emotions have always run close to the surface.  But I don’t often sob uncontrollably in front of them.

So Nathan has been home all week with the dreadful wracking cough he develops when he is under stress.  He has had it three times this year: when I had my surgery, when I was in treatment in Victoria, and now.  He comes for snuggles twenty times a day.  He is teary and fragile.  It’s funny how children differ: Nathan becomes fragile; Anna becomes demanding.  She is the imperious princess who demands attention.  She wants to play, she needs a snack, she can’t find her favourite dress, she wants to go for a walk, she needs a snuggle.  Arghh.  And my patience is so thin, I hear it in my voice: stretched taut and querulous.  

So, even though I was able to surrender to the experience this time, and find a measure of solace and peace, I don’t think my children were able to do so.  I don’t know whether it is possible for them to do so: their mother is so paramount to their world that seeing her sick or in pain is earth-shaking.  Even today, I feel my world quake when I see tears in my mother’s eyes, or hear a tremble in her voice when we speak on the phone: a cold rush of dread fills me when I think of my mother sick, in pain…dying.  And I am 44 years old!!!!  How much more for my little ones, whose mother is so present and so needful for their comfort.

I don’t really know why I’m writing all this.  When I began, I thought this post would be positive, happy – would reveal my sense of relief at seeing a glimpse of the end.  But then the events of the week pressed against me, and I saw a more realistic picture of the week that was.  I couldn’t see it before – I wasn’t really present.  

Yesterday morning Nathan woke early, came for a snuggle, and was finally able to articulate some of his fears and anxieties.  I’m so grateful for Chris and Laurie, who have modeled to us for so many years how to parent effectively, how to listen to children, how to care for their hearts.  I never would have known how to wait for my son to be ready, or how to draw him out, and read his silences.  I wouldn’t have known how to live in the hard places without having watched them live there, and seen how to do it.    I didn’t know before how to walk through the pain: in my family, we pretended it wasn’t there.

When I look at my life from this vantage point, I see so clearly how God has orchestrated the details to bring to where I am today.  Chris and Laurie have mentored us in almost every aspect of of our lives.  They were parents in a time when we thought we would never have children of our own, and they welcomed us into their family, and gave us the joy and privilege of sharing in their children’s lives.  We learned how to be parents by watching them.  

In fact, we’ve watched Chris and Laurie walk through all sorts of life experiences: mental and emotional breakdowns, the terminal illness of a parent, church issues, death, relationships, past pain, present sufferings,  you name, they’ve been there.  And what I’ve learned most from them, is how to live IN the pain, even REST in the pain and NOT flee from it.  

God brought me to this place at this time with life lessons I’ve seen in Chris and Laurie.  They are not perfect.  They make mistakes.  But they have had a powerful impact on me and my family, and I am so thankful, and sort of awed that God worked it all out.  And what is even more cool is how their children are carrying on the legacy with my children.  Luke, Sarah and Fergie have mentored my children, and loved them so utterly in all of this.  They have cared for them like siblings, and my children have flourished under their care.

God really loves us.