This morning, we were at breakfast together. As only Mom can do, she threw together homemade rolls with ham, fresh fruit, grits, juice, coffee, and tea! Susan had spent the night,
and Dad, while always eager for breakfast, had to be stirred this morning from, as he put it, his Rip Van Winkle sleep. We laughed and chatted over the fine meal and then admired the fragrant and colorful flowers adorning the dining room. Tomorrow will be Easter, and Mom had been given some lovelys to honor her and the occasion. Susan had happened to bring daffodils for both Mom and me, and so in tribute to Susan and the fact that both Mom and I were preschool teachers at various times, she and I recited together the following famous preschool verse: A little yellow cup. A little yellow frill. A little yellow star. That’s a daffodil!! We all laughed with joy and then together Mom and I went on next to a preschool Spring song: Hi, Mr. Robin, Robin, Robin! Hi, Mr. Robin! What do you say? Cheer
up! Cheer up! Cheer up! Cheer up! Spring is here today!! It felt good to remember, to share a common thread, and to laugh over such sweet, innocent tributes to Spring.
Dad rose and went to his room, and I knew instantly, that he would come back with something he wanted to share. With one of his Wordsworth books in hand, he sat with us at the table and read:
“Daffodils”
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.”
His voice caught as he finished the last few lines, and we three women wiped the tears we could not contain. My Dad will soon begin a new round of treatments to address the cancer growing inside of him. From MRI to MRI spanning the past three months, I have been diligently praying we would not find ourselves in this place. As I prayed, I would envision the healing hands of God, shrinking and shrinking and shrinking the lymph node of concern.
I put my trust in the power of God and positive thinking and believing in all that is good, pure, and holy. But as Dad and I met with the oncologist, she shared that it had grown,
and that we needed to decide the next best step to take.
So where did my prayers go, and how it is that Dad must face and somehow welcome the new experience of radiation? Typically, I would have spent the past three months asking God to be with us in whatever the outcome might be. But that felt somehow wimpy. I wanted to set my intentions, my energy, and my prayers on affirming Dad’s health and the healing
abilities of the God of love. So… what happened? How do we even wrap our minds around the notion that Dad has another growing cancer and that we must scorch it out of his body? How do we trust God in the midst of this? I believe with every fiber of my being that God is love, but I am bewildered and saddened that a simple faith did not defeat this cancer.
And so, I return to the image of those healing hands, and I watch them work. They are feminine hands that cup the lymph node again and again. As the hands come closer and closer together, the node grows smaller and smaller. This was how I saw it, over and over
again as I prayed. Feminine hands holding that node with such love, care, and protection.
Perhaps, what I was seeing was not so much God eliminating that node…but containing it. The oncologist was clear that this is the only growing node. Dad’s lungs are clear. We are not preparing to treat numerous nodes. We are about to treat one. And so, this is how I am making peace with God right now. This is the only way my human mind can see this as loving. I am sure some might say that God will use all of this to teach or to bless or to expand my father and those who love him in some amazing way… and perhaps something beautiful will blossom out of this sorrow. But I don’t think for a minute that God needs or wants to inflict suffering on his precious children. God is wiping tears with us and cursing the disease of cancer.
What I also know is that God was sitting with us at the breakfast table. My father felt that presence in the catch in his throat as he connected with Wordsworth’s daffodils. The bread my mother baked, the laughter spilling out through children’s rhymes, the tenderness of our friendship with Susan and the ongoing absence of our Bill… and all the tears we have cried and will cry… are God’s own.
It is Saturday. Not Good Friday. Not yet Easter. We sit in the in between… not knowing how the story will play out in our lives or how we will find ourselves each morning that we rise.
But we know the wealth that Wordsworth speaks of in his poem. We know that life moves us and to acknowledge such is freedom and bliss. And we know that our faith teaches us every year in this season, that life pushes the stone away, pushes the clods of earth to the side so that golden daffodils may offer their ‘spritely dance.’ It’s all we can do tonight. We hold the
vigils. We pray the prayers. We trust that the dark night of the soul will lead us lovingly toward the ten thousand rays of light.
As Susan and Mom and Dad and I joined hands in prayer this morning, this hymn rested quietly upon my heart. To be with God is all we can ask… and in all and through all, even when I am sorrowful and perplexed, I give thanks.
“O God our help in ages past, our hope for years to come, our shelter from the stormy blast, and our eternal home; under the shadow of thy throne thy saints have dwelt secure.
Sufficient is thine arm alone, and our defense is sure. Before the hills in order stood, or earth received her frame, from everlasting thou are God, to endless years the same. A thousand ages in thy sight are like an evening gone, short as the watch that ends the night before the rising sun. Time, like an every rolling stream soon bears us all away. We fly forgotten, as a dream dies at the opening day. O God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come, be thou our guard while troubles last, and our eternal home.”
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