Full Circle (adv.)-through a series of developments that lead back to the original source, position or situation.

We stepped out onto the sidewalk into a light rain. Lifting our umbrellas, we set out and made our way to the coffee shop around the corner. He had just been fitted for a tuxedo for his Senior Prom. Great care was taken to make sure that his bow tie would perfectly match the dress of his chosen lady. He was full of plans and his eyes shone with excitement.

We ordered and then looked around for a seat. We passed a shelf with all manner of games. He said:

“Oh look, they have Battleship. Let’s play!”

And so we did, and I was reminded of another day, now a long time ago. A day when I started my day with a change of plans that I documented on Facebook. It was September 11, 2008

“Staying home with Jackson who is sick. I will take him to the doctor and then spend the day letting him beat me at Battleship.”

Oh if it had only been that simple. But life has a way of dealing you a blow when you least expect it, and when I stepped out into the blue sky of a fall day I could never have imagined where the day would lead me. By that night we would be at Children’s Hospital, and that 6 year-old boy would spend his first night away from home in the I.C.U., with a diagnosis of Leukemia. It would be 3 1/2 years of treatment before the Specter was removed from our lives.

And now I gazed across the table at him, brow furrowed as he considered his move. Six feet tall, with a first attempt at a mustache, honors student, football player. He is headed to college in the fall to be a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner and wants to work at Children’s Hospital with kids with cancer. Full circle.

This year has been full of the sweetest of bittersweet moments. He’s my last so there’s that, a season, a role, almost completed. All the milestones the more poignant for that and for the fact that we did not know if he would be here to mark them.

This fall we stood at the edge of the football field ready to walk him out for the Senior Night football game. As we made our way across the field, it seemed a short walk considering all the miles we’d come to be there in that moment.

And so I spent an hour with him, my last born, the one that almost got away, and I could feel the time pouring through my fingers like water. An exquisite moment in time, everything behind him and everything before him. A moment routine to him and precious to me. No words could capture a moment of such sweetness or the mercy of a God that made it possible. Full circle.

He sank my Battleship and I didn’t even have to let him win. And then we finished our coffee, picked up our umbrellas and stepped back out into the rain.

Dying, like being born, is hard work. Even when all hope is gone of continuing in this earthly shell, the body refuses to believe it. Bravely it goes on trying to do what it has always done, to breathe, to continue, to remain.

And we keep watch, talking until there is no more talking, no more goodbyes to say, no more unfinished business. Then we sit in whispers, offering sips of water, bites of food, our eyes pleading to be able to offer something that is wanted, when nothing is wanted but release.

Then we sit in silence, sitting Shiva in advance, a vigil for what was. The last service we can ever provide. Sorrow and love moving in the room like a vapor.

By his last bed is a picture of a bridge into woods, in the fall, strewn with golden leaves. The path at the end leads into the woods. As the days go on, I picture him coming ever closer to that bridge. Closer to putting on his familiar red, fleece jacket and picking up his old, trusty Nikon camera. Closer to going over the bridge to capture what is next.

And I picture our old wonderful German Shepherd Waylon, our beloved dog emeritus, standing at the other end, tail waving, faster and faster as he approaches. Until they continue on together to where the path turns out of sight.

When I was in college I lived in an apartment in a series of red brick buildings, built just after WWII. They are gone now, swept away as though they were never there at all, in the Tornado of 2011, but that’s another story for another day.

There was an elderly couple that lived just across the way, their names lost to me now in the mist of time. They were alone in the world but for each other, and kind, and I would go and sit with them from time to time. Just inside the door, in their entryway, was a picture on the wall. I passed it every time I went in. It’s golden frame held the photograph of a beautiful little girl, with blue eyes and blond hair. Forever frozen at 3, swept away by a tornado of another kind, Leukemia.

I would sit with them in the stillness, surrounded by old things, listening to their stories and the ticking of the clock. I would glance at the picture of their little daughter as I left and think it was sad, knowing nothing yet of sorrow. And then one day, without either of us knowing it, it was the last time I came and went, and I consigned them to the drawer of memory.

I would remember them again many years later as I sat by the bed of another tiny patient, a boy this time, and 6 not 3, but the same mortal enemy. But for 3 years I would hold my boy, ghostly pale and limp, and wipe away vomit, and hope and pray and claw and fight our way to the cure she never had the chance to have.

One night after a long day at the Clinic my son fell asleep in my bed although he wasn’t supposed to. I was reading Siddhartha Mukherjee’s masterful biography of cancer, The Emperor of All Maladies. I came to the chapter on VAMP, the first Clinical Trial that tested many of the drugs now used to treat childhood cancer. The name an acronym for the combination of drugs used. The year was 1961, and the regimen so toxic that many children died outright, and many died after a brief remission because they didn’t yet have the final piece of the puzzle, that you had to give radiation to the spinal fluid or it would come back. But for the first time there were remissions and for the first time there were survivors and it was the beginning of Leukemia becoming a curable childhood cancer.

I read, the words falling like drops of blood on my eyes, and I thought of those long ago nameless children, the hell they went through, and their desperate and courageous parents, and the incredible debt I owed them. And as I read, my hand kept slipping over to touch my beautiful boy, and be reassured by his warm flesh under my fingers.

And as it turned out, mine would live, and grow his hair back, and have birthdays and go to DisneyWorld, and hold his baby cousin on the day he was born, and play in the ocean, and go to camp, and kick a football and kiss a girl for the first time, and have it all before him.

And I thought of my long ago neighbors, and their long ago girl, who died years before the VAMP trial was ever thought of, when all there was of treatment was to take them home and make them comfortable as they faced their certain and miserable death. Guilty of nothing but being born in the wrong time. Consigned to be only a golden girl in a golden frame, in a room full of old things and the ticking of a clock.

“More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered prayers.”-Truman Capote

The route to my son’s school goes down a road with a now closed factory. The fence is lined with Bradford Pear trees that snow blossoms on my windshield in the spring, and lay a ruby carpet in the fall. The factory once made those relics of a bygone era, cassette tapes. (Children of the ’80s remove your caps for a moment of silence, and then be grateful that you will never again have to re-spool one with a ballpoint pen.)

One morning on the trip to school I saw a police officer lying in wait for the speeding unsuspecting, hidden beside the old guard shack at the entrance; no doubt hoping to nab one of the late to schoolers flying by. As luck would have it I was going the speed limit (or at least I was by the time I got even with him), and drove by without incident.

On the way back, I remembered that he was there and carefully maintained the correct speed as I approached that stretch of road. Behind me, a car began to follow very closely, the driver growing more and more agitated. I could almost see the veins bulging out on his forehead. He veered over slightly to assess his chances of passing me on the double yellow lines. My eye caught his in the rear view mirror and he threw up his hand in the universal gesture of frustration. I held up one finger (no, not that finger) and shook my head. He gave me a disgusted look and stayed on my bumper.

Just at that moment we came around a curve and there was Mr. Officer, parked beside the guard shack. We passed him uneventfully, and parted ways at the traffic light, him to go left, me to continue on straight. As he passed me, he gave me a wave and a sheepish grin, realizing that I’d probably saved him from getting a ticket. I gave him a smile and a thumbs up.

And it got me to thinking, how many times I am impatient, riding life’s bumper, looking for a way to pass any frustration on the double yellow lines. Heaving sighs of frustration as I look for a shortcut to get where I’ve decided I need to go.

And all the time, it’s God in the car ahead of me, fully aware of the danger ahead that I don’t yet see. Not trying to slow me down, trying to spare me avoidable pain and suffering.

Sometimes, when I get past the guard shack and see what I was spared, I flash my maker a wave and a sheepish grin. I go my way and vow to remember it next time. And sometimes, I’m so full of self will and pride, or plain old spiritual blindness, that I just won’t be spared. I blow past the warnings and right into the speed trap. And when I do, He patiently walks with me to pay my ticket, and I vow to remember it and never try to pass Him on the double yellow lines again. With mixed success.

And either way, He gives me a smile and a thumbs up.

“In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.”-Romans 8:26

The year was 2002. I had a 5 year old, a 3 year old and a new baby. I was the kind of tired that only a new baby brings. The kind where your skin hurts, and you can barely put a sentence together. I’d been meeting the needs of my baby, but the other two had had a lot of time on autopilot, in front of Thomas the Tank Engine videos.

So, in a moment of caffeinated bravado, infused with guilt, I decided to try and be “good Mom”. You know her, she is able to meet emotional needs and the requirements of early childhood development instead of just preventing death by misadventure. And so in pursuit of her, I made the greatest sacrificial offering in the Mothering world. I decided to let them paint.

So we dragged out the art box, blew off the dust and began to set up. They were excited to have some of my time and attention. Even the baby was a part, sitting on the table in his bouncy seat. (I know he shouldn’t have been on the table, hush.) Finally, little smocks in place, paper and brushes out, I began to set out the paint. Since it had been awhile I had to shake it up before pouring. Blue, then green, then yellow, then red.

As it turned out the lid on the red paint was not on very securely. I gave it one good shake, said lid flew off, and red paint went everywhere. Everywhere. On me, the table, the chairs, the walls, the upholstery, the rug. Everywhere. My “good Mom” impulse had just turned into an hour long clean up in addition to everything else that needed to be done. If a car had pulled up the the door and honked the horn at that moment, I like to think I wouldn’t have gotten in and driven away from my life, but I can’t be sure.

For a long moment it was as though time stopped. Everyone froze, even the baby, and turned to look at me. If I’ve ever sent up a Mayday prayer it was at that moment. I knew I didn’t have it in me to have the right response and that I was about to blow it. I was dangling by a tattered fiber from the end of my rope.

And in the silence of that moment, I felt the Lord whisper a word to me. One word.

“Laugh.”

There was nothing in me that wanted to laugh at that moment. I wanted to scream and throw things and cry my eyes out. But I looked around that table, at those little faces looking at me, waiting to see what I would do. And I saw the one thing on them that I never hoped to see, fear.

And so, I laughed. I didn’t mean it, but I did it. As an act of love. I saw the relief shoot across their faces and then they laughed too, and they did mean it. The moment passed and they began to paint and I began to clean up.

I doubt they even remember that day, but I count it as one of my parenting “wins”. There have been many more times I’ve blown it and maybe I’ll blog about them too one day.

All these years later there is still a little red paint in the woodwork of one of my dining room chairs. I decided to leave it there. To remind me of the day the God of the Universe heard an S.O.S. prayer and reached down into my dining room and saved the day. To remind me that at least once in a while I got it right, that sometimes in life, no matter how careful we are, red paint goes everywhere, and when it does we clean it up. And we laugh.

Exchange of the Day: (re. Shopping for new apartment)

Me: “Nick do I even need to buy you a mop, will you use it?”

Nick: “Yes…but not for months. We’ve got plenty of time.”

So, my 21 and 19 year olds are moving into their own apartments next week. I offered to take them to Walmart to help them get the things they will need. They both managed to look very affronted that I thought my presence would be required, they are after all, legal adults. I may or may not have seen surreptitious eye-rolling. They liked the idea of of it being on my credit card however, so in the end I went.

I was very glad I did because as we cruised the aisles I began to suggest that they avail themselves of items such as dishes, utensils, pots and pans, towels, mats. This was met with looks of wonder as though it had not crossed their minds that one might need to purchase such items. Apparently, they had come to the conclusion that since all of those items were present in MY house that they must be standard to all places of living. That one merely opened drawers and forks appeared, that shower curtains rose from the drain and hung themselves on rods that came down from Heaven. I was happy to be able to share with them the information that if you don’t bring these things with you, you won’t have them. Who knew?

Once they grasped that concept the idea of this Walmart visit began to make more sense and they threw themselves into selecting all kinds of things, including some trippy looking flatware, that looked like it came from the Jerry Garcia Collection. I do wonder a bit what they had thought we were there to buy? What essentials of apartment living they would’ve bought? Posters? Pizza rolls? The Camo Black Bear soap dispenser that I made them put back?

After this success we moved on to advanced concepts such as dry goods, dish drainers and trash cans. But just as it appeared we we’re making progress I came upon them on aisle 7 using their carts to joust with their new brooms.

This is what I’m unleashing on an unsuspecting world next week, incomplete frontal lobe development and all. World, brace yourself.

Memorial (n.)-created or done to honor a person who has died.

I have a friend whose Father was killed in Vietnam when she was a little girl. Forty eight years later she can still tell you everything about that day, about that moment, when the soldier came to the door with the envelope in his hand.

She can tell you what the weather was like, what she was wearing, the way her baby brother’s foot looked hanging from her Mother’s hip, about the strangled sound her Mother made and then the wailing.

She wonders what she was doing at the exact moment her big, strong Daddy laid down his life in a rice Paddy far away.

She tells me all of it, with tears in her eyes. Her tears are frozen at her eyelids as that moment is frozen in time. Her shoulders drawn in as though to ward off blows on a place still tender. After all these years.

Today, maybe even at this moment, somewhere in the world, someone’s child, someone’s parent, someone’s friend, someone’s someone will die for our country. It will probably be in a desert rather than a jungle, but still, alone, afraid, miles away from anything that feels like home. We will be eating BBQ when this happens, or lounging by the pool, or binging Netflix.

May we all stop for a moment and remember that somewhere in this country, a soldier is coming to the door with an envelope in his hand and drawing a line of demarcation down the middle of a life, across which all events will now be placed in time as either “before” or “after”.

And in a moment, I will send my friend a text, as I always do on Memorial Day, to let her know that I am thinking of her…and that I remember.

“Oh the overwhelming, never ending, reckless love of God.

Oh it chases me down, fights ’til I’m found, leaves the ninety-nine.”-Reckless Love, Cory Asbury, Bethel Music

So, I stumbled across an article in a Christian magazine the other day, inspired by the song quoted above. The title was “Do We Really Believe in Reckless Love?” It went on to question whether it is theologically correct to say God’s love is reckless. Many learned people weighed in on the subject, and after much discussion, decided that it was not.

First of all, really church? Really. That’s how we want to spend our time and energy, practicing semantic nitpicking and taking shots at our brothers who poured their heart out in worship to God? They had people like that in Jesus’ time. Synagogues full of them. They were called Pharisees. Part of why He came the first time was to let them know that they were seriously off-task. That they had gotten so wrapped up in the letter of the law that they had forgotten the spirit.

If statistics are to be believed, in the time it took me to read the article, thirty children starved to death across the world, and this is what we want to be caught doing when Jesus comes back? Just a reminder, He is coming back. Look busy. Busy doing something else.

I looked up the definition of reckless. (On the dictionary app on my phone, because I’m a total nerd, if you must know.) I found some that fit their arguments, but I also found one, that to my theologically untrained eye, fits the spirit of the song.

Reckless (adj.)-having or showing no regard for consequences or danger.

It’s reckless to leave ninety-nine perfectly good sheep behind to go looking for the one. The one that’s lost probably because of something foolish it did. Got its fleece caught in a thornbush because it wandered away, and now can’t get free, or fell into a swiftly moving stream because it didn’t see the current, or got stuck on a high rock ledge because it didn’t realize it would be trapped, with no idea how to get down.

The world would tell that Shepherd

“You’ve got ninety-nine. Forget that one. It made it’s bed, let it lie in it.”

But instead, that Shepherd puts on His cloak, picks up His rod and staff and goes out searching, until He finds the one. He patiently untangles it’s fleece, or pulls it out of the stream or gently coaxes it down and takes it home on His shoulders to join the ninety-nine. I’ve been that sheep…a bunch of times. And when I was running away from Him as hard as I could, He was rearranging all the walls of the maze so that I was headed straight back to Him. I couldn’t earn it and I didnt deserve it, and yet, when I cried out He came. There’s a word for that, Grace.

My God forgives sinners who are just going to sin again, and He knows it. He loves people who are never going to love Him back, or will blame Him for everything that’s wrong in their lives. He rescues people that will never acknowledge that it was Him. He helps people who fight Him every step of the way. And still, He goes out and looks down the road every day hoping He will see us coming. He never stops wooing, never stops calling, never gives up on us, always hoping, always loving. Again and again and again. There’s a word for that too, Savior.

I call that reckless.

“The days are long but the years are short.”-Unknown

I sit at a red light on a route I don’t usually take anymore. I look to my left and see in a field, an ocean of red clover, undulating gently in the breeze. And suddenly I am hit with a wave of sadness, so visceral, so sharp, that it takes my breath away. And then the memory of a thousand trips on this road, that leads to my children’s elementary school, flood in. The school is not even there anymore. And for just a moment I feel such a feeling of panicky loss that I would give anything to be back in that time again.

A time where I was the sun and they were my planets. Always underfoot, always dirty, always needing a bandaid, tumbling around me like puppies, vying for my attention. All the minutiae of life with little boys comes back to me in a rush, crazy mornings, eating lunch with them in the cafeteria when they were little enough that when they saw me their faces would light up. Kindergarten graduations and Science fairs and Spring Flings and so many costumes for so many things. Endless creations of construction paper and cotton balls and pipe cleaners, that weren’t endless after all as it turns out. And in the Spring, Awards Day. And I was always late, racing down this road; but I always noticed the beautiful red clover in this field. And the sight of it this day is enough to take me back instantly and make my heart ache with the loss of it all. A door to the past firmly shut.

Red clover, red clover, send my babies back over.

Then the light changes and I drive on, leaving the nostalgia behind me in the intersection, because I must. It’s the way of it. From the very first one, every step they take, is a step away from you. And as a parent, if I do it right, I am supposed to be working myself out of a job.
And I think of the men they are becoming. They are walking away from me now into their lives, one cautiously, one without a backwards glance, and one, it remains to be seen. For them it feels like a light step into the next thing, but to me it feels like tearing. They must increase and I must decrease. It’s the way of it.

But even bittersweet, I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. For the refining fire that is being a Mother. They have shown me the limits and limitlessness in myself. They been my greatest teachers. Of all I have been and done I am proudest of them. My face still lights up when I see them.

I am drinking the last of the cup of Motherhood. It is joy, sorrow, fear, longing, hope, pride, and the slightest bit bitter, but in my mouth, it tastes just like love.

I’ve been to two funerals recently. Two “good” funerals. Both were for good people who left us too soon. Both of whom would still be here if it were a matter of who deserves a long life based on merit. I left both services wanting to be a better person.

The first was for Tom, a man I never really knew. The brain tumor that would take his life had already taken his ability to speak and move freely by the time I knew him. I mostly knew him through his wife, who was devoted to him and a wonderful person in her own right. You could see how loved he was though. After he got sick the men in his church small group, that he had poured so much into, brought the group to his home every week, right up to the week he died. Even though he couldn’t speak, they wanted him to feel community.

At his service people who had known him in many different ways spoke, and as they did, they painted me a picture of the teammate, church member, husband, father, brother and friend he was to them. And I could see for the myself the wonderful man he had been. The one thing said about him that has really stayed with me, was that he could always see when someone felt left out and knew how to draw them in. What a lovely gift.

And then I began to realize that I had known him, maybe not the stone itself, but the ripples the stone had caused, that are still going out. His wife’s kindness to me, drawing me in at a difficult time. The families of those men in his small group still diligently serving and living others. The way even in his death he inspired people to be better.

And then there was Rhoda, whom I did know and whom I loved. Who left us a week before her 60th birthday, after fighting two kinds of cancer. I heard so many good things about her yesterday, all of them true and yet somehow not enough to convey her sweet, serene spirit. She would’ve been amazed at the accolades and depth of love poured out for her yesterday, and probably feel she didn’t deserve it. Because part of why she was so wonderful was that she didn’t know how wonderful she was. Many people who knew her in many different ways, all saying the same thing. That from her closest family, to friends, to the custodian at her school, she saw them, that she touched them, that she cared.

And that was when I realized what it was about her. She was really good at loving people, and she just started with the people in front of her, whoever they were. And if you do that for 59 years you can touch a lot of lives and leave a lot of ripples behind you.

So today as I head out into this rainy Saturday, the first of the rest of my life, be it long or be it short, may I remember the lessons. Look for the one who is is left out and bring them in, and love the one who is in front of me, whoever that may be, with everything I’ve got.