Tag: hope

Shelf Life with Rachel McRae This Week

logo-altToday, please join me over on LifeWay Books blog: Shelf Life with the incomparable Rachel McRae.

It was a great honor to write an exclusive story for the LifeWay audience that is not included in the book. So come check it out.

Here, I’ll get you started…

I love stories. Maybe it’s how I learn, or maybe it’s just my dramatic belief that I could be a kindred spirit with the likes of Anne of Green Gables, but whatever it is, stories speak to me and often come closest to defining the otherwise inexplicable in life. So, I wrote you a story.

This story is exclusive because it isn’t in the book and I it put into words just for you. But this story is also a communal experience with aspects like fear, pain, love, and the unknown.

I invite you to see yourself in me. Learn from my broken story, and then go and tell your own beautifully broken story – because God is who He says He is.

The IV pumps clicked comfortingly in the eerie glow of monitors and the clock on the wall read 11:30 p.m. – late for even the children’s hospital emergency room…

For the rest of the story, click HERE.

-MbM-

In The Shadow Of Joy

I’ve come to this writing place so many times in the early hours of morning light. I’ve come here to sit and think through brain surgeries and other surgeries. Through diagnosis and heartache. Through wrestling with God and seeing his love in unexpected and beautiful ways. Through exhaustion and answerless seasons. …and if you’ve been following along for any length of time, you know I could keep going with this list.

But now, in this dawn, I wake up, not with an impending sense of dread, but with great anticipation. And it seems surreal to me to consider that I look out, not over the lake as I have so many times before, but out over my own backyard and the very window where I stood and heard that we were looking at a potential relapse back in the day…where I stood when I heard my mom was sick. In some ways, this view has become my baptism by fire – it’s my cancer window, and yet I love it.

This morning as the calendar quietly speaks May over us, next to my well-worn, well-loved old coffee mug is a piece of already well-worn art. Its 289 pages hold my blood and that of my baby, and its outside is already covered in the smudges of tiny fingers. And if you look closely, there are even some lip marks where a bald boy held it close, kissed it soundly, and whispered over it with awe: “It’s my book! It’s about me!”

Oh dear ones, once again in the dawn, I have no idea what comes next. We’re standing on the edge of something and I believe it’s for our good. Once again, I’m without answers in the wait to see. But as always, of this I am sure: There is Light in the darkness.

And as always, even though we have know idea what’s ahead, we know how it will unfold.

With all my love and gratitude, joyously waiting with GREAT HOPE… Moment by moment.

Taste and see that the Lord is good. Psalm 34:8

 

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Of Bears And Heroes

This week was meant to be filled with book launch celebration (and so it shall be too because as you will see here, we need to keep talking about children with cancer), and yet, in an ultimate and awful picture into the heartbreak of pediatric cancer and the broken messiness of life, I come to you with news that defies words.

Chase’s friend Lucas is out of curative options.

Here are some words from his parents…

“With a very heavy heart and tears in our eyes, we must write this post. This morning Mama and Papa Bear, along with his oncology team, sat down to discuss the situation. After a long discussion, it has been decided that there are no further curative options. In simplest terms, there is nothing more we can do to fight this.

We have started palliative chemo to attempt to slow the growth of the tumor. The tumor is wrapped around the pulmonary artery and is pressing on Lucas’ heart.

Right now Lucas is still playing with Legos and video games and yelling at everyone. His breathing is labored and he is swollen.

A palliative/ hospice team will be meeting us at our home tomorrow after we get discharged to work on the next steps.”

Lucas was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia only about two months after Chase was diagnosed and the boys were often admitted at the same time and would play together in the playroom or race up and down the halls. After year upon year of grueling treatment (leukemia treatments last 2-3 years at best for littles!), Lucas finished only to be readmitted with a tumor in his lungs last July. After months in the PICU, he has barely been home before this, now…another tumor…and on his heart. An endless fight.

Oh my heart…and I hope yours too. For this should not be. Dear ones, please pray for this sweet family. For Lucas’ parents, Anthony and Rina, for Lucas’ older brother, Franco – please pray.

If you’d like a very practical way to minister to this family, Lucas’ birthday is May 7th and his parents have encouraged friends and supporters to send cards. You can show love in this way by mailing cards to: Lucas Bear Heroes, 40 E. Chicago Ave., #162, Chicago, IL. 60611

Chase and Lucas in the oncology ward playroom, Spring 2013
Chase and Lucas in the oncology ward playroom, Spring 2013

There may be other words, but not today. Today, I stand in silence with this…

Moment by moment.

 

Like A Child

Long before his birth, the adults around him had prayed for a building in which to have their church.  Now, the prayer was answered.  The old building had been stripped and tooled, fashioned and made new by the loving hands of the community, all but ready for the gathering.  The flooring has yet to be laid and the pastor gathered them and challenged… Write.  Write a prayer on the floor before it’s covered.  Write your heart in faith for what God will do in this place.  And so the 8 year old boy crouched on the cold stone and wrote the prayer that came to his heart…

"Dear Lord, I pray Chase Ewalt survives his canser and they will find a cure - Life in God."
“Dear Lord, I pray Chase Ewalt survives his canser and they will find a cure – Life in God.”

They say that love can heal the broken, they say that hope can make you see.  They say that faith can find a Savior if you would follow and believe…with faith like a child.  -Jars of Clay

Moment by moment.

Shadows And Love

During the Christmas season, I attended the most wonderful wedding – it was just what such a celebration at the holidays should be, yet as I sat in the dimly lit auditorium, I felt out of place. Weddings are joyous occasions and even as I truly entered into the happiness of the bride and groom I couldn’t completely escape the shadow of Chase’s cancer. …and so I sat, taking in the beauty and feeling vaguely guilty lest my shadow burden be apparent to anybody but myself.

Words broke through my distracted thoughts as a woman in a beautiful gray dress stood to do a reading. As she spoke, my shadow seemed to grow stronger. I couldn’t hear the words she spoke with anything other than cancer ears…even though I knew that they had been chosen to reflect this marriage love at the moment of commitment, but as she spoke the familiar words, my heart was soothed by the fresh reminder of the Gracious Provider…and then she began to cry…and I cried too because I had needed to hear those words.

Much later in the evening, Providence ordained that I meet the woman who read the verses: a divine appointment if ever there was one. I learned that she too carries a horrific cancer shadow. I, my baby boy…she, the spouse ’til death do they part. We talked and cried and felt helpless together in the middle of the beautiful reception and though I had never met her before and may not see her again for some time, she is my sister because of that night.

Many times since then, I’ve pondered the strange mixing of the celebration and the sadness, and the family relationship with a complete stranger because of the pain. In my mind, pain and joy belong in different universes, yet from birth to death we cannot separate them any more than we can separate ourselves from the Sovereign One who created us.

Here is an excerpt of the words she read that night…

For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:38-39

Of this I am sure, there is a mercy in the shadows of pain – a severe, but present one nonetheless. I do not even pretend to know what it is, but I know it is there because I, and she, and all who walk a painful road walk it next to the Everlasting Love who has known us always and will know us still and what is a dim shadow now will be crystal clear when we see Him face to face. Even so, come soon, Lord Jesus, come soon.

Moment by moment.

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