Chase – Page 6 – CHASE AWAY CANCER

Rejoicing In Your Scars

Recently, as I put the littlest boys into bed, Chase stripped his shirt as he often does, referring to his white chest as his “rockin’ body’. As he passed across the room towards his bed, Karsten came to stand in front of him, stopping him, and asking with quiet interest, “Hey, Chase, what are those lines?” His small, chubby hand raised energetically to point at the slashes of central line scars that cover Chase’s upper chest on both sides.

For one small second, I held my breath. I wanted to jump in and explain. I wanted to “make it better” and take it away as I watched Chase begin to recoil. He hates questions about his physical appearance. And some days, I hate that all the kids know these strange and awful cancer-y things. But then, Chase stood up a little straighter, pressing out of his curve and removed the hand he’d used to quickly cover the scars, bringing his chest into the light.

“Karsten, do you know what these are?

Karsten shook his head and waited patiently as Chase puffed himself up with the self-importance of a sibling about to teach a great lesson.

“These are from my needles and surgeries.”

“Surgeries?”

“Yes. They’re from my cancer and my chemo. Do you know what chemo is?”

“Yes! He’s in the closet!” Karsten ran to the closet and scooped up Chemo Duck, bringing him back and placing him in Chase’s outstretched arms. “Here, Chase. Here’s Chemo. He’s probably a duck.” To Karsten, who was only 8 months old on the fateful day in 2012, “chemo” is just the name of a stuffed animal, not a torturous experience. I waited. Knowing what to say next was best left to Chase. Sometimes the simple dialogue between brothers is a thousand times more useful than maternal wisdom could ever be.

He nodded gravely. “Thanks, Karsten, but there was more chemo. From the doctors. And now look…” he flexed his arm in the air, looking up at it proudly. “Look at my muscles. Chemo gave me good muscles.”

At which point, I felt the need to interject and redirect. Some days memory doesn’t come easily for him. “Chase, the chemo killed your cancer cells.”

He nodded as if he’d known all along. “Yep. And my hair too. But now it’s coming back. See, Karsten?”

He flexed again as Karsten watched the whole show in somewhat awed silence. And then Chase stopped and looked at me.

“Hey, Mom? The doctors didn’t make me. I forget…who made me?”

I ruffled his whispy-soft head. “God did, my sweet boy.”

He nodded yet again. “Oh, that’s right. Good. I’m glad.”

Karsten jumped up and down at my side. “Me too! Me too!”

And then the moment of deep attention was lost and the boys went back to getting ready for bed and intermittently wrestling, for that is what most small boys love to do.

But I saw this amazing moment unfold before my eyes. Our history and our scars can hurt, can be shameful, stressful, and sad, but in the rehearsing of them, the telling of them to others, the owning of them, they point us to God in such unique ways.

Rejoice in your scars . . . moment by moment.

Of Cells, Thermometers, and God-Purposes

“Okay, let’s just get your temperature and then you’ll be done.” The nurse turned from the blood pressure cuff attached to Aidan’s skinny arm and grabbed the thermometer, shoving it into a sanitary plastic sheath with a soft click.

“Open wide . . . under your tongue . . . now close.”

The room was still as Aidan sat tall, silent, and brave (despite his strep throat) on the end of the exam table.

With an unusual calm, Chase pulled himself out of the chair against the wall where he’d been sitting next to me, and he went to stand closer to the table – in his older brother’s field of vision.

“I’m here, Aidy,” his pet name for his near twin from the earliest days of learning speech. “I’m here if you need me. It isn’t scary, but if you get afraid, I’ll be right here.” Nearly the identical words a three-year-old Aidan had spoken countless times over a two-year-old Chase during myriad blood draws and hard hospital days. “I’m here.” I choose to put myself next to you and try to understand.

Cancer starts as these tiny microscopic cells that go terribly wrong and it wrecks so much life. It makes me angry to consider its senselessness. But in this moment of family practice and strep throat and a check for vital signs, there was yet another glimpse of beauty in the devastation they’d caused. The boys have been bent by it – we’ve all been bent by it – but in those times when it really counts, especially when it comes down to a doctor’s office, they bend toward each other. They reach with comfort and love for one another. And care for each other has come from the long years of fear and pain.

I believe there will always be something good that comes of it all and that the God-purposes far exceed the effect of microscopic cells. . . moment by moment.

“You intended to harm me, but God intended it all for good.” Genesis 50:20a

Too Many Shirts

He scrunched up his nose, the stronger side of his face muscles causing lips to curl angrily on one side. “Bof of them!” This did not bode well.

Some days, Chase is an old soul with wisdom that brings me to tears. Other days, he has the logic and reasoning of a three-year-old, trapped in a body the size of a four-year-old, with the most of the physical abilities of a six-year-old. This means that discussions of any kind are often like trying to hit a moving target. At any given moment, he might need a pat on the head, a “quiet time”, or a higher-level discourse.

On Sunday morning, I laid out his clothes for him and went to iron Bob a shirt. Moments later, I returned to find Chase standing in the middle of the living room, his pants bustled and messed across the back where he’d failed to pull them up properly, and on his torso, he wore an undershirt, the shirt I’d laid out for him, another equally heavy long-sleeved shirt, and as I encountered him, he was attempting to frustratedly stuff his bulky arms into a navy zippered sweatshirt.

His forehead was already beginning to glisten under the furnace of clothing he’d heaped on his body and he was so mad at not being able to get his arm in the sweatshirt that I could tell he was seconds from pitching it across the room with a scream. And now, here I was gearing up to come at him with the sad truth that he couldn’t wear all the shirts in his drawer.

I hate when I know I’m right and for his own good, I need to intervene. Before I even start, nearly every time, there is the pricking sensation that it’s going to be an A++, super guaranteed, completely pitched, blood and guts battle. And on a Sunday morning too . . . because nothing says “getting ready for church” like a family fight.

Kneeling down, I started in, “Chase, honey, what happened? Why do you have all those shirts on?”

Sometimes it’s easier if I don’t assume and let him tell me in his own words, but this part takes time. And how I hate to take time.

He looked up at me simply. “Because I like them all.”

Fair enough. “Well then, why don’t you save one for school tomorrow? You may not wear both this morning. So, which is best for church? The gray one with the green sleeves, or the brown one?”

His voice grew insistent as he sensed my purpose. He would have to sacrifice at least one shirt. “Bof of them.”

“I’m sorry, Chase. That wasn’t a choice. You can wear one or the other, but not both.”

“Bof! Of! Them!” His voice raised to a scream and he played his trump card (which is only ever true about 50% of the time). “Daddy says bof of them!”

Bob’s voice came from the kitchen. “Chase, that isn’t true.”

“Bof of them! Bof of them! BOF OF THEM!!” His voice was a scream, his face red as his lips curled oddly around the “f” he substituted for “th”.

In moments like these, I want to get down on his level, and down in his face and say the four words that are always on the edge of my mind: “Because I’m the mom.” How I want to force obedience out of him as if it’s waiting to pop through just below the stubborn surface.

But at its core, the argument isn’t ultimately about his shirt, though he would have to remove at least two. At it’s heart, the argument is about all of us. Damage or not, our need to be right – to get our own way. As I looked at the “tiny” bald boy stomping his foot in anger, I found that I secretly wished him to respond better than I would have in the much the same scenario.

So often God confronts me much as I stood before Chase: Ellie , will you follow what I’ve laid out for you? I see the harm in this scenario that you do not. You can’t love me and these other things too . . . you must choose one or the other. There is sacrifice, yes, but my way is greater than you can wrap your mind around right now.

[mental angry foot stomp] No God, I want both of them! All of them! Why can’t I have everything? If you really loved me, you’d let me have what I think I want.

In the end, Chase only wore one shirt to church, the argument was diffused, and we all survived, but sometimes, in the myriad of daily battles, I find these rare moments of backing away to see my own heart in Chase’s stubborn stance. Many times, so many more than I’d like to consider, I fail miserably, but in those brief flashes of heart, I grasp just a hint of God’s loving patience with me…

…moment by moment.

For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. Jeremiah 29:11

Scars and Justice

He walked into the room and sighed loud and long, his little way of reminding me that he was here and waiting to be noticed.

Turning from making the bed, I acknowledged him.

“Hey, Chasey-bear, what’s up?”

With hands at his sides and head lowered, he spoke the words, “Today on the bus.”

I waited for a second and when nothing followed, I bent into his pattern, pieces of a sentence stated, pieces of a sentence repeated. This is his way. “Today on the bus?”

“Yes. Ian and Aden.”

“Ian and Aden?”

They said I was short and they made fun of me for being so tiny.”

I stopped still.

How do you react when you want to be justice for your children and it’s already too late?

The words were already said and heard. “Oh sweet boy . . . what did you do? What did you say?

He hung his head, but his voice was steady. “I did not yell and I did not scream.”

“Not even a bit?” I tried to see his face.

“Nope. No screaming.” He put a hand to his chest. “But my heart.”

“Your heart?”

His dropped again. The single word burning as he spoke: “Hurts.”

Some days the truth is not spoken lovingly, but hurled like a weapon and it stings.

How do you prepare a child to stand strong when all that makes him beautiful stands out differently from the children around him?

It will take a great deal of strength to meet these thrown words with grace. And he will need to do it often, I’m sure. I’ve seen how the other children look at him on the playground, and I hear them ask simple and honest “Why doesn’t he have hair like us?” They cannot know that their simplicity is painful because it’s complicated for us.

It’s funny how we want to be proud of our scars, but we’re still keenly aware of their unique quality and it bothers us. It’s too easy to compare, come up short, and sometimes even lash out as we feel our own differences.

This day, Chase succeeded. He did not scream – a huge victory for my small boy, I know. There will be times to speak up, but this day, it was better to be quiet.

And at the end of it, I don’t care how far off the ground his head stands; he can hold it high because he did the right thing.

Moment by moment.

The Past, The Present, And A Virus

Chase is not known for sleeping. Since the time the tumor first started growing when he was two, he often struggles to fall asleep at night and wakes long before the sun. From the moment his feet hit the floor, he’s going, doing, and often messing around.

When he got off the bus on Tuesday afternoon, he didn’t ask to play outside, but came in quietly, telling me he loved me and missed me. Don’t get me wrong – a docile, loving Chase is wonderful, but it’s also unusual. Most often, he walks to the door fighting to stay outside with a verbal list of all the things he wants and needs to do as he hits the front stairs. That night, as we sat down for family reading time, he laid his head on my lap and fell asleep . . .and then he slept ’til 6:30 in the morning. When he woke, he did not speak much, but went back to his room almost immediately, laying curled in a blanket on the end of the bed. Within minutes, he was asleep again.

My philosophy in a household of small children (read: boys) is “Fear The Silence” because it usually brings no good, and for Chase, this holds ten times as true. He is never still unless something is wrong. This child who sat at the breakfast table next to siblings without eating or talking – for twenty whole minutes – he looked like my child (only more pale), but I couldn’t find the pulse of his personality and that was terrifying.

Is there an increase in pressure within his skull?

Is something growing?

Is his speech changed?

Is he unsteady on his feet?

Does he seem cognizant of his surroundings and memories?

Could his hemoglobin have dropped?

Is he having any muscle tremors or signs of seizures?

Does his head hurt?

These are just a few of the well-worn panic paths my brain circles as I move into the routine of checking his forehead, looking down his throat, and asking where it hurts.

It’s quite likely that Chase was just under a hint of a virus. That’s another part of who he is. The other kids get crabby or possibly lose their appetite when they get sick, but Chase . . . Chase gets “neuro”. His speech and sleep patterns change and he often grows even less tolerant than normal – all over something as simple as a runny nose.

And me? I worry. That is my damage. I may stand still and breathe deep, but in my mind, I’m all-out sprinting across nightmare trails. The years old sentence: “There’s a large mass” opened the gates wide to every conceivable worry – and often with good reason. So once again, I ripped into the past to justify my present and by 9:00 in the morning, I was mentally on the ground, gasping for a saving thought or grace.

“Be anxious for nothing” – Yes, it’s in the Bible and sometimes I don’t know why because sometimes it feels unmercifully impossible. But like every other word in there, it has purpose and it cheers me greatly to think that God put it in there because He knew we’d struggle. And how I struggle.

This morning, Chase beat the sun by a good half hour and was back to his doing, going, and messing self, boarding the bus with a smile. It was most likely just a little virus.

And for me, there’s the quiet, hard knowledge that there is no end in sight. At this point, the only best cure for cancer and worry is heaven. I’ll probably go back to his diagnosis every single time something is even slightly off and I’ll worry myself up until I’m panicking on the ground again and hate myself for it.

And then I’ll need to hand it over once again, give it up to God who knows and loves, and wait in the grace of the . . .Moment by moment.

“Surely your goodness and unfailing love will pursue me all the days of my life.” Psalm 23:6a

Category: Chase

Rejoicing In Your Scars

Of Cells, Thermometers, and God-Purposes

Too Many Shirts

Scars and Justice

The Past, The Present, And A Virus

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