All Things New

From April 4, 2020

Dear Friends --

Who knew we'd all become expert readers of exponential charts and curve lines. Who knew life could be altered so dramatically, and forever fall into the time before Covid, and after.

I think maybe I did, and anyone whose life has had a before and after. That's practically all of us, I suppose. I just didn't think my days would involve so much time pondering exponential chart lines that help us all know how to flatten the Covid curve.

While I shelter in place here and do my part to flatten the curve, my cancer trek continues, and thanks to all who have reached out to see how I'm holding up here in these pandemic days. The short answer is I'm doing well, and better than I had expected. Foxy round 12 is now complete, and lucky round 13 will include a shift: I'll have just one infusion drug, and then I'll take home pills for a two week course of Foxy to go. Think Foxy light. The good Dr. Colocci didn't think it wise to push the full Foxy beyond 12 rounds, and so hopefully this new chemo cocktail won't come with any unpleasant surprises.

Scans to take a looksie at my lung and all the rest will be the week of April 13. We'll know then what the next chapter will hold.

Until then, I wait, and live, and continue to find my footing in my altered world, which now is marked by both cancer and Covid.

But how to live well in this expanse of waiting? Will the waiting ever end? Will we ever go to a baseball game again and not be distracted about the person coughing near us? Will I ever have a scan and not wonder what new agony might come next?

I honestly don't know.

But I do know that tomorrow is Palm Sunday, which means something new is in motion. I suppose if Holy Week has any lessons for me -- and maybe all of us -- it's that our treasured dreams rarely come in the form we expect, especially for those of us living in altered times.

So while we wait for specific solutions -- like clean scans and a vaccine -- our stories will continue, and be made new, like never before. And all kinds of magical chapters will unfold in the in between.

If there's a little insight I've gained from my long and twisty mountain trail, it's that the most important days of our lives actually happen in the waiting, those days when we find new trails because the familiar path no longer exists. Maybe the most urgent truths of our lives are discovered when we're called into the slow waiting, and the uncertainty.

It's in those times that we have an invitation to choose hope on purpose, like when I exhale and feel the first infusion of Foxy pulse into my veins, or when I see images of doctors barely covered with enough PPE go rushing into a patient's hospital room.

It's in those times that we allow ourselves to sit next to fear because it will teach us we're far braver than we ever knew. 

Perhaps the deep mystery of Holy Week is revealed in the unexpected discoveries that will find us in the agonizing, but forever sacred, waiting time. Renewed discoveries like the miracles of humility, gratitude, courage, truth, patience, generosity, and somehow -- who knows how -- peace.

Here's how: While we wait for the victory -- for an end to all this Covid and cancer madness -- we'll discover that we've become transformed. We'll emerge with eyes better to spot all that beauty surrounding us, and if we're paying very close attention, that vision will transcend past this terrible chapter, into the one that will call us forward to the next one.

What will that chapter hold? I have no idea. But what I do know is that we'll all be made new, and far better equipped for the adventures, and the waiting, ahead.

xoxo