too much

it's crazy rain right now- and i love it. i love it in every way except one way.  except that all four of my kids are on the road in it and that is scarey because i can't imagine the what if's around that. i can't imagine, nor speak, nor write the fear that i could feel if i thought about the what ifs.  oh. dear.

life is full of the stuff that wasn't supposed to happen.

this week i went to see a friends baby, born three weeks ago, with severe hydrocephalus.  born with a head so big, it's hard to lift him.  born with so much fluid and pressure that his eyes roll down under the lids- he can't see his mother, and she can't look into his eyes.  they don't have those moments- those long staring moments that i remember so well.  that wasn't supposed to happen, was it?

when i went to their home to visit after they'd returned from the hospital 3 hours away that specializes in pediatric neurosurgery, i wasn't prepared.  i knew he had hydrocephalus.  i knew what that was, as a doctor and as a parent of a child with that diagnosis, but i wasn't prepared because it was, as his father kept saying, "too much."  it was too much. too much fluid.  too much swelling.  too much to look at.  too much to process.  too much to ask about.  too much to carry in your arms.  too much to carry in your heart.  too much to imagine the future about.  just. too. much.

i didn't mean to- like at all- but i started to cry when she brought him out and set him in my arms and i looked at his tiny face underneath that massive head and tried to find his little eyes and all i could see were the little white parts of eyes- like milk marbles.  he waved his tiny little perfect hands and it all became blurry because i couldn't stop crying.  i was so sad and so afraid and so thankful and so in awe of what i'd been spared and so undone for what i could possibly say or do- that all i could do was cry.  i was supposed to be assessing and supporting and offering advice and guidance and instead i needed a kleenex.

but there it was- all too much of it. 

sometimes all you can do- sometimes what you maybe should do- is just feel it together.  that is what i remember anyway.  i remember our good friends coming over the night that we had heard that jude was likely not going to make it past 6 months old.  they brought chicken cooked with prunes and olives and some wine and after putting it in the kitchen, because no one was really hungry that night, they cried with us.  because that is what everyone should have been doing- it was just too much. it wasn't supposed to be happening- but there it was- happening in the middle of my san francisco thirty-something life. 

when i put the baby down and took a breath- i asked his mom how she was doing....really.  not in the stoic, ugandan woman way.  not in the super Christian 'i can bear all things...' way.  but in the middle of the night- my child is crying and looks like his head might explode- and i just want to look in his eyes but i can't- way.  and then she started to cry and told me how this was all just too much.

because there it is- too much.

'yet this i call to mind...' as i have over and over again... as i have for years and seasons and moments when what shouldn't be happening is happening.  as i will again and again for the rest of my life because as much as it shouldn't happen it does.

'and therefore i have hope...' and i do- despite the what if's and the not supposed to's and the 'it's' of life. because we have to or how do we go on? because we are can remind each other and we should, that tomorrow is another day anyway.

'because of the Lord's unfailing love...' love- love even though life is messed up and we are messed up. love even when it's turned upside down. love even in the broken of it, and the sick of it and in the thick of it.  unfailing- it will not go- it will always be- that is promise and miracle and forever.

'we are not consumed...' there will be something left- something.  even if only one thing- even if only one tiny kernel of a piece of us- of hope- of life- of anything- we will not be completely swallowed.

i say that as i am about to go pick up my now healthy nine year old boy from school where he does not just okay- but very well.  i say that and he doesn't have a shunt, or trouble walking or thinking or speaking or learning. i say that and his precious not so little head has never been operated on or drilled into- but only blessed.  i say that after coming out of the darkness.  i say that when hope grew and blossomed and bore fruit. and my not supposed to happen- turned into what everyone wants to happen- health and healing- real miracle.

but i can tell you that those same words were true the night we eventually ate the chicken with olives and prunes. in that darkness was perhaps the bigger miracle- that we were not consumed....despite...the great unknown. that night  and several other nights that week- with our friends who were not afraid to sit in the dark with us- who showed us a piece of something- of togetherness- of community- of love and hope and promise- we understood that we would not be consumed.  those people who gathered around- in body, others in words written and spoken, and some just in spirit- they were the hands and feet of God- the unfailing love- the givers of hope.

so maybe in too much- we are given just enough.  enough to bear the nights of unknown- enough to hold on for that day- and that is what i asked for.  that was what i prayed on that couch - as i cried and she cried and we held hands- this woman i'd never met before- but whose pain i knew- because we all know it in some form or fashion.  i asked for the same miracle of health and healing that jude was given. but i also asked for enough of whatever was needed to get through too much.  that maybe tomorrow it would feel a little bit smaller, this weight.  that maybe tomorrow his body would grow more than his head and his eyes would open just a little so she could see more than just white. that maybe tomorrow he would eat better and cry less.  that maybe tomorrow it wouldn't feel so much like too much.

despite

i am at the gardens across the street studying in a little hut named 'jinja' where i have taken to studying for the medical boards.  i'm sitting here wondering how in the next 5 weeks, i will get all this information into my head in order to pass.  i am sitting here studying hematology/ oncology while my friend, family member, mentor is at home "living" what i'm studying.  living hematology/ oncology- fighting it.

it's these times when i hate being here. when it seems impossibly hard to be separated by an ocean. when all i want to do is sit in an infusion room with the people i love, while they experience what i'm cramming into my brain. it just feels wrong.

today buechner's reading was about not having anxiety- about paul's words that in everything- the good, the bad and the ugly-with prayer and supplication - we need to lay it all before our God- no matter what.  it was about the promise we are given- not that "it",  whatever "it" is, no matter how awful or painful or unfair or unfathomable "it" is- not that it will be taken away, but that we are promised peace in "it".  despite "it". that even cancer and loss and suffering and our own internal deep darkness- there, buried perhaps, initially obscured, is peace.

i know this to be true. a peace that makes no logical sense. a peace that can only be given- allowed to be found and clung to and dug into- if only to keep our near drowned head above the raging water of "it".

because what can you do, when there is nothing to be "done"?

i know this to be true because when jude was a baby and i was told he had 6 months to live and the only thing i should have felt was consumed and angry and empty and sorrow- i somehow felt a very strange and unexplainable peace- despite.  i still felt empty and a lot of sadness and some anger- but i crawled on my bloody knees to God.  i fell in the shower and poured it all out in tears and words and maybe loudest of all in silence- where i know the spirit interceded with groans that even words could not express.  there was nothing to "do" with "it".  "it" just was and i was just stuck with "it".

maybe that was when i first caught a brief glimpse of the trinity- that impossible idea that life and God are not so black and white- that it's not just good and bad- it's not so simple- its actually incredibly and unfathomably complex and other worldly. it is in fact, magical and mystical and beyond what we can grasp.

somehow it's these "it"s, these moments when our world is turned so upside down that our logic falls out and we are left only with our rawness, our spirit- we are almost forced to stop trying to contain God and allow God to hold us. this is Grace.  somehow, we need to move toward it, we need to fall, or crawl, or open our clenched up fists just even a finger, even if all we can do is ask for help to pick up our lead foot- that, because of Grace, seems to be enough.

and to the rest of the world it doesn't make sense.  to everyone else who in our moment, isn't having a moment, it sounds crazy, and probably because it is.  it is miracle- it is the divine touching our days, or maybe just our hour, or minute of greatest need, so that we can then get up off the shower floor.  so we can get dressed and change a diaper and nurse a hungry 3 month old- even if "it" is true- because today, he's hungry.  even though i cried the whole time i fed him and watched his little face blurry through my eyes- knowing that the pain of him not being there would make the pain of this knowledge seem like nothing- because today, he was in my arms.  even in all that ugly- was somehow- Miracle- the peace that passes all understanding.

that is not found in my reading- in my pages of books on cancer and everything else that can go wrong with the body- that is not taught in medical school or residency- but it's seen in the shadows and corners of all our lives.

it's not that God is for the weak or the stupid- it's that when life breaks us- our eyes pop open a little wider and sometimes we can see a lot more.  when we reach the limits of our knowledge and are left with little and see how small we all really are and finally we mutter, or whisper, or in silence scream 'help', then we become in a way free and able to bear "it". the beautiful awful reality of the hardness of life- to accept the mystery, to sit with the discomfort of not knowing- to even just be held- despite.

despite the fact that we are oceans away.  despite the terrifying unknown. despite all limitations and unfair and 'what ifs' - when we lay it down- there comes miracle. and to see for even a moment, the wing of an angel- to feel the shelter of the everlasting arms, to hear the breath of something so much bigger than we ever imagined- that, that is something.

neera

right now i need the mountains- to place me. i need the woods- to hide in.  i need the lake- to hold me buoyantly.  i need to sense the physical boundary of where my body meets the water- the shelter of tall trees and the perspective of heights.  i am closing me eyes. i am seeing this.  i am breathing the air of my years. i am feeling my history. i need my past to call me forward.  i need remembering.  i am longing for these things that have made me and led me.

three years ago on this day, we packed it up and boarded a plane with our years packed into 15 bags and three wide-eyed children who were stuck with us- moving their little american city lives across a large ocean to the great unknown of africa. i remember that day in bits.  it was full of piles of 'coming' and 'not' and 'trash'.  it was full of last minute gathering and hard goodbyes. the weighing of bags, the stashing of random scraps in pockets, the checking of lists. and it was full of lasts.   

the last time i see this basement playroom that we worked on every night for a week as the kids big Christmas gift.  the last time i sit with my friend sara on this bed, in this city, in this life that i'm leaving.  the last time i hear this floor squeak. the last time i sit on this porch and look over these great water oaks.

i remember thinking those things- but i didn't know how real it was. i didn't know what 'last' really meant. i didn't know that coming back was forever going to be different because i would become different.  i didn't know that things i thought were important - wouldn't matter anymore.  i didn't know that it could never be the same again because a part of me would always be somewhere else- here.  you can't go back - it's like imagining your life without kids now that you have them.  it's like what karen blixen says to denys in out of africa , "you've ruined it for me, being alone." this place has become a part of me- a part i can't imagine not being in me. all of it. the deep green and the forever red dirt and the way the rain sweeps in and then goes fast followed by the sun- never a day of only rain. this place of undone and unkempt and often broken, but generous.  full.  always the same- growing, blooming, starting over, getting back up, going on, persevering. hoping for better, trying. and those parts make sense to me. those things play out the realness of our lives- that sameness, that hope, that effort, that falling, that starting again. and again, and again, and again, neera.

tomorrow we will celebrate our three year anniversary here.  we will eat cake and hear from those three-wide eyed children and now a fourth- about this place that they know as home- more now home than they knew the last place to be. and we will talk about here and there- and transitions and living and who we are and who we are becoming and what home really means and how there are mountains and woods and water almost everywhere.  and how that same great God made all of it- and even the ocean that separates us from our old days.  and we will talk about how we are part of both now and always will be- and in that is a challenge and a blessing.  and that it's okay.  it is okay to miss and love both- that it's good to hold the tension of those opposites- to allow and embrace what makes us and leads us.

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“The Sun will rise and set regardless. What we choose to do with the light while it's here is up to us. Journey wisely.”
― Alexandra Elle

a beautiful rain

it's a beautiful rain. a beautiful day. quiet on the inside, loud and full and moving all around me outside.  the sky is shouting and the water is falling and the ground and the leaves are nosily receiving it- all slap and muffled at once.  it keeps things in place- keeps me in place. still. i am receiving it too. it's what we do. we take life as it comes to us. each day- we don't know what it will bring or take or give or ask- we don't. 

today i look at my life, but i can only see it from now- from where i am here. today at 1:39 pm in uganda on my porch with my big dog and a mother red tail monkey and her babies in the tree in front, in the rain drowning out all and any other sounds.
today, two days shy of having lived here, in this place, for 3 years. today, with my kids all back in school and the routine and adjustments that go with that.
today after 21 years of marriage to a man who still amazes me. today when we have power after 3 days with none.
today when i am checking my email every hour for updates on a loved one who is awaiting pathology results, on the other side of that ocean. 
today, after clinic and studying for the internal medicine board re-certification exam, even though i feel to old to be studying.
today with the laundry just pulled of the line and strung now around the house.  today with a cup of coffee and fresh banana bread. 
today when i woke up rose and she smiled and said, "i didn't pee my bed mama!" today where zoe gets up more easily than last year and we see the small shifts and changes as she grows up on her own trajectory, following her own path.
today when i kissed my kids heads as they left for the long drive to school and breathed a prayer of protection over them. 

today, which is only half baked.  today which still holds beautiful and awful things maybe; cuts and falls and sweets and playing; and hugs and maybe tears; and homework and dinner and feeding animals and doing dishes- all those things that are precious- just because they are.  those moments- those people- those smells and sounds and feelings- they are precious.  when we stop and listen and notice, when we pay a bit of attention we are so richly blessed.  because even the sad parts are valuable.  even the hard parts can bring us somewhere- can move us and give us shape. we are being carved here- worn and whittled- smoothed and softened- and made hopefully, to be more gentle with each other, more understanding of what we find so different in our todays, to be more like the one who made the rain and the ground that receives it; more noticing, more holding, more open to what comes, more giving of what we can, and more able to love and be loved.