waiting, waiting, waiting…

You can get so confused

that you’ll start in to race

down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace

and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space,

headed, I fear toward a most useless place.

The waiting place…

From Oh the Places You’ll Go!

by Dr. Suess

Life is full of promise.  My life is, your life is, everyone has a life full of promise.  We have hopes and dreams. We have goals, we have wishes and prayers. My life is full of promise.  If I keep saying it, soon I will believe it again….my life is full of promise.  I love Oh the Places You’ll Go! by Dr. Suess.  It captures the promise of new journey in our lives. It tells me of talents and dreams, yes, talents and dreams that I possess, but it also captures the feelings of challenges and pitfalls along the way.  A life full of promise isn’t a perfect life.  It isn’t an easy life, but it is a good life.  We must participate. We must help this life of promise flourish. I love that, I really do.  I love the book. I love it so much I give it as gifts to graduates, colleagues starting in new directions and I read it to my children.

Waiting. Unfortunately for me, I find myself in the waiting place quite a bit.  This is a place that Mr. Geisel describes in his book.

The waiting place…

for people just waiting.

waiting for a train to go

or a bus to come, or a plane to go

or the mail to come, or the rain to go

or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow

or waiting for a Yes or No

or waiting for their hair to grow.

Everyone is just waiting.

When my husband was diagnosed with Stage IV pancreatic cancer, I entered a waiting place in my life. It started with his illness and I still battle it today.

…or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake

or a pot to boil or a Better Break

or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants

or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.

Everyone is waiting.

I started waiting for a cure or waiting for my husband to die…not sure which. I didn’t want him to die, but we knew that he would. I started waiting for someone to help me understand how life could deal me such a blow.  I started waiting for a Better Break. While he was sick, my head was full of what would happens?  and what will come next? I was waiting for something or someone to pull me out of the sad story that had become my life.

The waiting didn’t stop when he died. Next I waited for the pain to subside, the world to be hopeful again, my children to be happy. I wait. I wait. I wait. During the waiting, I have tried to escape (as Dr. Suess puts it). I have tried to find the bright places where the Boom Bands are playing. I have taken new directions, sought out support, focused on healing and balancing my heartbreak and my new life.  I have found that jumping out of the waiting place is a daily challenge for me.  I teeter between the bright new places and the waiting.

Oh, the places you’ll go! There is fun to be done!

There are points to be scored. There are games to be won.

and the magical things you can do with that ball

will make you the winning-est winner of all.

When I feel discouraged, I try to focus on gratitude.  I am grateful for the time with my husband. I am grateful for my children. I am grateful for the time I have with my children every day. I am, dare I say it, I am grateful to be here…even without my love.

I guess that’s where the promise comes to fruition.  Through sadness and pain, heartbreak and challenge, I am still grateful. I still get up every morning and breath. Even over five years later, I still have to remind myself some days to get up and breath.

On and on you will hike.

And I know you’ll hike far

and face up to your problems

whatever they are.

Every day is full of promise. Every day, I get a new chance to be more loving, less sad, more joyful, less angry. If I remember this every day, every single day…my hope is that these days, these moments will add up to a life full of promise.  If they do, I will be forever grateful.

Today is your day!

Your mountain is waiting.

So…get on your way!

the weather changes

The weather changes every season. Weather changes bring beauty and awe of the beautiful places we live. I live in AZ and the weather is just changing a bit. Our mornings are a few degrees cooler. Our nights are more pleasant, but some of our days are just as hot as can be.  When the weather starts to make its way toward fall, I feel things differently. I feel hopeful.  The beautiful, cool mornings and the orange, pink and blue sunsets stir my soul. It reminds me that seasons change no matter what….and so does life.  For better or worse, with or without my permission, life will change.

The beauty of fall beckons to me to slow down though…I want to sit, to lie, to dream and make the world go away.  I miss having someone to stand still with…to dream with, to have sanctuary from the world with…for some reason, every fall this hits me in the head like a brick.  I am alone. I was listening to a great song this morning but it really makes me sad.  It is beautiful and I love how it moves me and helps me express my loneliness.

if I lay here, if I just lay here, would you lie with me and just forget the world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GemKqzILV4w&ob=av3e

I don’t have anyone to lay with anymore.  I don’t have anyone to just make the world go away with anymore. It feels like it took a lifetime to find him and then in a few, short, fifteen years, he was gone.  I have so many years to walk through without him and that makes me sad.

But, as the season’s weather begins to change, I remember that I will change too.  If I feel these things, if I let my loneliness boil to the surface and am aware of it, maybe I can change that too. As I allow the grief to fill me each time, I change.  The heat of my anger seems to cool and leave me to rest and change. So as fall approaches, I let it come. I say good bye to the summer and look forward to the new changes ahead of me….and the possibility that lonely will leave too.

We need to seek the end of cancer

Today, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about cancer being eradicated. It is one of my deepest hopes that someday this planet and it’s inhabitants will be cancer free. Cancer took so much from me. Today, Stand Up 2 Cancer, holds a televised fund raising event.  They have really had the opportunity to bring awareness to pancreatic cancer. They put money there and when Patrick Swayze spoke publicly there about his cancer, a threshold was passed.  There is a new awareness on this deadly cancer and gratefully more money going to research toward prevention and cure.  I don’t get on my soap box too often, but today I am feeling it…I am blue, I miss my life before cancer knocked on our door and took my husband.  If you can, watch, pledge and pray for a cure to cancer.  So many like me have had their lives turned upside down by cancer.  Let’s stop it! I know we can!

Here is a piece I wrote over four years ago in July 2006 as I continued my journey toward peace in my life.  Although several more years have passed, my feelings are still well expressed in this piece…

To Cancer.

My dear foe.

I am writing to thank you. Over the past 15 months, I have been very angry with you. You caught me by surprise and stole my greatest gift on this earth…my husband. Now it is time for me to forgive you and thank you.

Thank you for teaching me that true love is between two open and loving spirits, not two physical bodies.

Thank you for taking me to levels of intimacy with my husband that I may have never known…a place where strength, loyalty, love and care are met with a gaze into another’s eyes.

Thank you for showing me that I was on the path God had chosen for me…a path of bringing loving, open spirits to God where only eternal love will fill them.

Thank you for showing me that I am a healer…perhaps not of the physical body, but of the heart and spirit.

Thank you for again letting me prove my power and strength as a loving being…to sit with my husband in our saddest moments and still be in awe of God that I was given the privilege to be there.

Thank you for showing me the love of others around me and that although my husband had to leave earth, he left me the two most significant things in his life beside me…our sons.

Thank you for helping me grow into the loving, forgiving, healing, tender, vulnerable woman that I am becoming because I will continue to become a better person because you touched my life and took my husband.

I will be a more loving and patient person, parent, spirit because you showed me that at any minute life on earth can pass.

I will be a caregiver to the ill and broken hearted because you have opened the door to these gifts inside me.

I will always be tender to a stranger and loving to my enemies, because they too may have heart break that stabs their heart like a spear.

So thank you cancer. You have been a worthy foe and have shown me the grace of God in a new way. You have shown me that there truly is no evil that love and God cannot overcome. Together with God, I will fight all evil that preys on his people…with a heart that knows pain and love.

Sincerely,

Chris

Your worthy opponent