My mother has brain cancer. And you know what? I feel like everything is going to be okay. And yes, okay no matter what happens – no matter how long she is on this dirty globe with her lovely light – but I feel like she will be here long. I feel like this world isn’t ready to let her go and so… we won’t.
But also? This is crap. And I’m not shaking fists at Heaven, but God and I are shaking fists at Hell. There is some fury here where we stare at the dark spots invading this person so full of everything Light.
When someone cuts in front of you at Starbucks it is unfair, this is a spitting on justice, an assault on holy.
Have you met my mom? She is silly. And sometimes she doesn’t try to, but she makes herself laugh. She has a really great smile and when she’s in pain you are compelled as if by the earth itself to make it right. She gets animals in a Snow White sort of way. She thinks she belongs in the ocean. She actually probably is part mermaid. And her faith is that childlike kind that everybody is trying to get. She trusts Jesus like it’s just the only way to breathe. I can see her smile-scoffing, “ugh, yeah…” at that.
So this is complete bullshit. Go away, cancer, you don’t fit in here.
But when someone like this gets cancer that ugly, ugly thing becomes something… lovely? Becomes a catalyst for beauty. She gets cancer and deep lessons about what it means to really hope spring up. Old lessons culminate. She gets cancer and everything is somehow okay… Really okay.
Ugh, yeah….
And so here we are with peace. Like we’re standing in the middle of the ocean and just being okay while waves tumble around us and our boat drifts further away. Just looking at Jesus and being okay. Because yeah, he led us where our feet would never wander – never in a million years would I walk here on my own – but if this is where He is, it’s where I want to be. In Crappy Cancer land with the most beautiful woman I know and that one we are crazy about, the one who calms the storms and makes us laugh when we don’t mean to.
The one who makes bullshit beautiful.