guest post: a mother's story

Many of you know that my mother died when I was 19.  She was first diagnosed with cancer when I was 11.  During that time, chronic illness became another member of our family.  Because Mom and my stepdad Mark were so frequently gone for treatment and doctor's visits, I developed independence and self-care way beyond my years.  In that way, I am grateful for what cancer did to my family.

I was approached by Heather, a reader who asked if she could share her story.  She struggled with a diagnosis of mesothelioma shortly after her daughter's birth.  I cannot imagine the pain that goes along with such a story.

Find Heather's story below, along with a picture of her beautiful family.  What a blessing that she is here to share it.  Contact me if you would like her email.
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A Mother's Story

At some point in just about everyone's life they will find a time when they absolutely need to rely on their family and loved ones to help them through a tough time. Mine came when I was a new mother of my 3 and ½ month old daughter, Lily. When Lily was born, our family and friends surrounded us with love. My husband, Lily and I were so happy in those first few months of her life. We never could have been prepared for the storm that was about to hit.

The storm started to come upon me shortly after I returned to work full time, about 1 month after I gave birth. I noticed that I was losing about 5 to 7 pounds a week and was feeling an extreme lack of energy. Although these feelings are somewhat common to new mothers, I felt that this was unusual enough to warrant a visit to the doctor. This is when I found out the news.

In November I was told that I had a cancer that was in the lining of my lungs. Malignant pleural mesothelioma.  It is almost always associated with being exposed to asbestos. I had apparently been exposed to it when I was just a kid without my knowledge. My father was a construction worker and would often come home with asbestos on his clothing. I would always wear his coat outside to feed our rabbit or just to play. That is how I was exposed to asbestos - and as typical with mesothelioma, no symptoms arrived until decades later.

As any new mother’s would be, my first thoughts after diagnosis were of my sweet Lily. I did not want to even think about leaving her alone to grow up without me.  I was given 15 months to live if I were to forgo treatment. Obviously, that was not enough, and we chose the most drastic treatment option available.

Based on the grim nature of the diagnosis, my husband and I decided we had to fly to Boston to be in the care of one of the best mesothelioma doctors there is. There, I underwent a surgery known as extrapleural pneumonectomy. This involved the removal of my entire left lung. I had to recover for some 18 days in the hospital and then recover an additional 2 more months at home before I could begin radiation and chemotherapy treatments.

While my husband and I were in Boston for my treatment, Lily flew with my mom to her home in South Dakota. My parents immediately had to go from being grandparents to parents of Lily in a matter of days. Luckily, others in the area around them were kind enough to come to their aid. Those I had grown up around were nice enough to come together to help them with babysitting as my  parents both still worked full time.

In Boston, I learned of so many of the firsts in my daughter's life from pictures sent by my parents.  The nurses would crowd around my bed and look at the pictures with me, while I was holding back my tears. I missed my sweet Lily so much, but the love and care that I felt from those around me was certainly very helpful in getting by each day.

The bond between a mother and her daughter is so strong that nothing can break it. I was so happy to know that there were people stepping up to help both myself and my parents.

Seven years later I am so grateful to be here and be cancer free. As a family we still work to embrace life as best as possible. We enjoy each minute together and know just how fragile life can be. Cancer is such a horrible disease to have, but it can bring out many of the great things in life as well.

guest post: ordinary time

My friends, welcome to the stage Jacquie Hauth.  Jacquie and I met when we started together at Vanderbilt Divinity School four years ago.  I have always been impressed with the precision and depth of her thought.  She also blogs over at Constant Conversion.  I asked if she would write a little bit for us on what "ordinary time" means for her.  For those who are not living and breathing the church calendar, ordinary time represents two LONG stretches from Pentecost until Advent, and then from Epiphany until Lent.  It eats up well over half of the year, as you can see:

Church leaders sometime struggle with what to do in ordinary time.  Do you stretch out Pentecost and Epiphany and act like they are seasons, rather than just days?  What do you emphasize?  In what direction do you drive the life of the church, or your own personal spiritual pursuit?  Here are Jacquie's reflections.

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Ordinary Time

Does the church year really mimic the academic year, or has my experience lead me to that conclusion?

For nineteen years of my life, I have had my seasons dictated by the school calendar.  It is hard to suddenly think of the 
year beginning in November instead of late August (or for that matter, January).  But this isn't meant to be a reflection on 
the start of the year, but the middle.  Or rather, the first long stretch.

The Christian year begins with Advent, and then comes Christmas and Epiphany.  Soon after, Lent arrives to mark the road 
to Easter.  Easter comes and goes, then begins the even longer season of Ordinary Time.  Unlike Lent, Ordinary Time is 
not marked by a sense of anticipation or special longing.  It is the first long stretch of time in the church year when there is 
nothing hovering just along the horizon.

In my academic career, Ordinary Time has always coincided with summer--vacations and blissful forgetting of all the lessons 
learned the previous year.  When I was growing up, this was a season of low attendance at my church.  No one said it aloud, 
but I got the impression that it was acceptable to miss some church in the summertime because nothing really "important" 
was happening.  Jesus wasn't being born, baptized or executed, nor was he rising.  Mary wasn't waiting patiently, and we 
weren't fasting or feasting.  Instead, it was a time for parables and summer reading lists.  Not terribly exciting.

But now that I have been outside of the academic pattern for over a year--and I haven't had the ending and beginning of a 
school year to approximate Ordinary Time--it's starting to sink in just how odd this understanding of this season really is.  
Ordinary Time is by no means unexciting (as a time devoid of other more thrilling things) but this popular perception fails to 
recognize just how exceptionally ordinary the rest of the year is, too.  This is the first season of Ordinary Time in which I'm 
not gearing up for some new beginning: I've just been chugging along in my life at the intersection of love, worry, work, and 
food.

How much of my life really is wrapped up in those four things: love, worry, work, and food--even and especially in those 
other more exciting seasons of the church (even in those other more exciting semesters of schooling).  And now that I don't 
have a new semester or a new thrill to look forward to, I'm beginning to fully realize it.

So perhaps this is more a reflection on how much my life's seasons have been dictated by the school year rather than the 
church year.  Or perhaps this was a chance to muse over how much I love Ordinary Time's insistence that the everyday 
matters just as much as the exceptional (otherwise, why devote a whole season to it)?  I rejoice in the ebb and flow of daily 
life... in the knowledge that this first long stretch of the church year is in many ways more like our everyday lives than the 
other seasons: the long quiet stretches when we get to practice life without glamour or pretense or any other "event" to 
make life meaningful.  It just is.  And that's the wonder of it.

In a way, this is a season for me to regret all the past seasons of Ordinary Time that were nothing more than filler between 
things that I thought were more exciting.  It is a time to give thanks that--despite all the imbued glamour we give to other 
seasons of the church--life itself is fantastically (miraculously) ordinary.

guest post: the pace of life

Gentle reader, please find below the thoughts and musings of my very best friend, Amanda Rose Smear.  We met in 2002, shared many misadventures, laughs, and tears, and now we are separated by 1260 miles.  I came thisclose to staying in New York with her before my life pulled me in another direction.  She is a talented and thoughtful person, so enjoy!

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Just before I sat down to type this "guest blog post" I did something that no New Yorker - or at least no stereotypical psychotically productive maniacally driven blackberry-addicted Manhattanite like me EVER does: I prepared myself for 48 hours of nothing. Calling my life "fast-paced" would be an understatement. I often describe my work schedule as frantic, frenzied, aggressive. I'm in a constant fight against the clock...appointment, conference call, meeting, site visit, deadline, emergency, site visit BOOM it's 11pm. And that's how every day goes until I catch 5-6 hours of sleep wake and do it again, sometimes pressing pause for a 6:30am yoga class. So to tell myself today at 3pm than I will literally do nothing other than kill time until Monday morning (or longer) is a little eerie.

As you may or may not know, NYC as well as the rest of the Northeast is preparing for what may be a very windy/rainy day. Some are calling it a "hurricane". I'm skeptical but nevertheless did the practical thing and stocked the fridge with bottled water, groceries, skittles, Kettle Popcorners, you know...The necessities.  I'm not being completely honest. Paul wanted to buy enough snacks to last the entire armageddon. MY mission was to find an open Starbucks, caffeinate, and possibly find the motivation to do something. To my shock and dismay, Bloomberg had frightened every shopkeep and restaurant manager from opening today and not even STARBUCKS was there for me. Normally I could get 5 Frappucino Lites on the way to work (15minute walk) without having to go out of my way. Today, at least lower Manhattan is utterly Starbuck-less. I came back to the couch without my normal fast-forward jolt of espresso and proceeded to do nothing.

Why does it take a natural disaster to force us to slow down? Take a siesta...maybe NOT work for a few hours (or even a few days!). Why does everyone have to call your cell phone if you don't immediately answer your land line? Why do we doubt someone likes us if they haven't replied to our text or email within 5 minutes of hitting send? Why do we let ourselves go go go until we physically shutdown and are incapable of normal human interaction by Friday afternoon? And by we, I mean me.

I'm most aware of how quickly life is moving when I look back at old files- for me, files that contain all the details about a past party I have planned. I remember the client, how we interacted, what random bits of drama they brought into my life and if I felt it was successful. I looked at a folder two days ago and was horrified to realize that the party had taken place SIX YEARS ago. I remembered every detail of this particular party like it was yesterday. How did so much time go by so quickly?

A few months ago Maria and I were talking about a song we had danced to at my epic 80s 25th birthday party (2.7 years ago!) and were shocked that my mom had no clue what song we were talking about. "I was really busy in the 80's" said my mom with out a hint of sarcasm. It was true! She had 4 kids between April of '76 and January of '84 and an entire decade had passed before she knew it. A flurry of diapers, packed lunches, soccer practices, play rehearsals from morning to night.

Anyone who knows my mother knows what a notorious night owl she is. Maria- a relatively new mom with a rambunctious 16 month old told me she totally understood why. As a mom, each day is like a marathon. You are constantly "on" - under a microscope. Baby baby baby all day long. When else do you have time to attend to yourself - (shower? read? eat? relax?) besides after dark? When I see my sister being pursued relentlessly by the needs of her little Ella I am actually amazed. "No day at work is ever as hard as every day with a baby" is another famous quote of Ria's. Wall St. guys and race car drivers may think they've cornered the market on "fast-paced" but can anyone even hold a candle to the mothers of small children?

Hats off to you ladies. Because while Hurricane Irene has me wine-drunk eating skittles on the couch surfing the Facebook, I'm sure my sister, similarly housebound, is working her ass off chasing a baby and swiffering up after a messy snack-time. And my darling Emily is somewhere changing a dirty diaper even on Saturday, a day of universal repose. I'm gonna enjoy this day of pure laziness because who knows how many more of these I'm going to get in my life?