When Things Happen

The Director of my Clinical Pastoral Education program (known as CPE ~ that training ground for pastors in which we encounter Real People in Crisis, usually in medical settings, for the purpose not so much of learning to care for them as for learning to know and care for ourselves) ( possibly a dubious enterprise, but that's another post) was fond of raising the issue of the relationship between physical and spiritual ailments, and between life crises and health.

 

I'm not sure what to make of the various theories about body-spirit connections. In some matters, the relationship seems obvious. In others, not so much.  I'm sure the examples are well known to you.

 

That said, as I ponder the book which Michelle sent to me (previous post), I find myself wondering, with ample time this week to wonder, about my own rather dramatic juxtapositions of late.  What's this journey been revealing?  What do I carry?

 

I started seminary nearly seven years ago, brimming with energy and optimism, and a year later my son died of suicide. 

 

I was called to a church after a year's wait and, in catching up on health care so that I could give my undivided attention to our official beginning together, was diagnosed with breast cancer.

 

I was called to a new church two years later and, with a congregation taking a new and positive deep breath of hope for the future, slipped down my front steps onto a fractured ankle.

 

I carry a half-filled urn of ashes (we've been some places), a long and ugly scar, and now a plate and some pins.

 

I'm not depressed at all.  Don't read despair into these words; it's not there.  And it's not as if I could make any big changes in my life; these days I can barely hop to the bathroom.

 

But I am VERY curious.  Mystified.  I have young seminary classmates, and some not so young, who in the three/four years since we were in school have acquired spouses, children, first homes, major trips, and even more confidence in God than they brought with them to school.  And, ok, to be honest, my own life was pretty spectacular at 35.   And I could write a gratitude post for the last few years a mile long.

 

But seriously, why do all these things keep happening?  And what's with the timing?!

Anger

Here's the prompt I selected from today's writing retreat at Days of Deepening Friendship:

 

“The last time I felt a truly intense emotion was  - - - and this is what I felt . . .”

 

Last night I came across a blog written and photographed by a young woman who has chronicled her experience of breast cancer since she embarked upon her chemo regimen.  Apparently I didn't save the link, and I can't remember anything about how I found it, but I do remember the small flame of anger that it generated. 

 

An appreciative anger, I would say.  Appreciation for her laying it out there.

 

So often when people hear that a woman "had a mastectomy followed by immediate reconstruction," they think, in an exceptionally brief thought, that she had a surgery and  went home a couple of days later with breasts that look like they did before she was wheeled into the operating room.

 

This particular woman had what I had: mastectomy followed by implant reconstruction.  She also had a lot of experiences which I have been spared: both breasts rather than one, chemo (hair gone), and radiation (skin burned). 

 

What we share is the reality that this type of "immediate reconstruction" is a process that begins when the plastic surgeon follows the breast surgeon into the operating room, but continues for several months of procedures, at the end of which you look in the mirror to see a kind of lump with a scar where a breast once was.  (You can have some additional procedures to make it look more breast-like but, as someone whose resistance to pain meds is legendary, I myself have steered as far from further contact with surgeons, plastic and other, as possible.)

 

I have no reason to feel anger.  It's behind me, as far as I know.  And ludicrous as it sounds, three surgeries and the removal of a major body part constitute getting off easy in the breast cancer world.  I don't usually read anything having to do with breast cancer, and usually the most I have to say about breast cancer is that it was an experience that taught me what it means to eradicate stigma, and plunged me into suicide prevention work.

 

But I did feel anger last night.  Anger for the women whose bodies are mangled in an effort to respond to a disease which no one really knows how to counteract.  Anger at the doctors who minimize the pain involved and the dismay at the results. Anger for the women who die, and whose stories remain largely untold in the face of the optimism spread by pink everything.    Anger at the press, which fuels the notion that reconstruction is as good as the real thing.

 

So, yeah.  Last intense emotion.  Anger. 

 

Breast Cancer Miscellany, Two Years Later

 

1.  I went swimming this summer.  It was glorious, absolutely glorious, to float on the gentle ocean waves and watch the sunlight sparkle all across the water.

 

I did not wear the swimsuit on which I had spent $100.  Well, I wore it once.  Not only was it the World's Ugliest Swimsuit; it did not perform as advertised.    Very secure sports bra and t-shirt after that.  Honestly, basic attire is so complicated now.

 

2.  I was looking at the results in the mirror the other day.  I actually thought, "This is not so completely terrible."  Wow.  I have no standards at all.  But I did feel  a twinge of regret for the way I reamed the plastic surgeon resident post-surgery.  I may have no standards, but I do have a fine vocabulary.  He probably didn't deserve to be exposed to it so very thoroughly.

 

3.  What brought this on?  Honestly, I don't give it much thought anymore.  But this week an $800 bill came out of nowhere for my lumpectomy just about two years ago.  After way too much time spent tracking it down, we concluded tonight that we actually owe it.  :(    It's dumbfounding to look at the insurance statements from that period -- a $40,000 bill here, a $25,000 adjustment there, another $40,000 here, several more adjustments there.  None of the really big numbers connected to anything tangible. 

 

4.  And a friend of mine is dealing with BC#2, on the other side, this month, after, I think, an eight-year hiatus.  My mammogram is in November.  Well.  S--t.

Recognizing Yourself

 

 

Last summer when I had been a pastor for just under a year, our 40-something church secretary died within minutes of suffering a heart attack while she was at home in bed.  A couple of nights later, before our monthly church session/council meeting, I thought, "Someone needs to say something to acknowledge J's death and offer prayer for her family."

 

Then I realized: Oh. That would be me.

 

*******************************

 

I have had wonderful spiritual directors.  They've all been men, and their ages range from 61 - 83.  Lovely, insightful, faithful, loyal men.  Nevertheless, a few days ago I found myself thinking, "I wish I could find a woman spiritual director, a wise and loving woman who's about 80 and has lost a child to suicide and a breast to cancer."

 

And then I realized:  Oh.  In another twenty years, that will be me.

I guess I'd better get ready,

BC Reminders

A friend just asked a group of us for recovery gift ideas for someone who's had a double mastectomy.

A couple of weeks ago, I needed to do some three-hole punching of a stack of papers.  I'm right-handed, so I slid the whole stack in with my right hand and pushed down with my left. 

OMG.  It was as if I had been electrocuted under my left arm.  (I'm so glad no one else was around to see me pacing the office, clutching my chest.)

After about three days the pain wore off and . .  you guessed it, some more papers to be punched.

This time I slid only a couple of sheets into the puncher so I could push down very gently.  Same result.

I have now learned that I can accomplish this task awkwardly by reaching around with my right arm.  (I simply do not have the kinetic acuity to do it upside down and backward.)

It's been nearly a year since my last surgery.

I presume this means that one side effect of a double mastectomy is no more hole-punching, ever.

 

 

 

As far as the gifts were concerned, I came late to the conversation, after the meal deliveries and jammies had been suggested.  So here were my ideas:

 

Gift cards to Target and/or whatever else is near. There are lots of little expenses during recovery.  An Amazon gift card; a Kindle if she doesn't have one. 

 

A beautiful pair of earrings.  (NOT a necklace!) 

 

A yoga session for someone who will come to her house.

 

A telephone call every few days.  Let her tell you how brave and on top of it all she is.  Let her tell you how chickenshit and sad she is.  Let her tell you, "They're only breasts; I'm fine."  Let her tell you, "I can't bear to look at myself; I want to die."  Listen to her, and listen some more. The best gift of all.

 

 

 

 

Depression and Cancer

Today an outstanding article about depression in connection with cancer was posted on FB. Among its statements:

"Unfortunately, many of us are never informed about or evaluated for the symptoms of depression when we are diagnosed with cancer. And we should be. In his website article, Depression and Cancer, journalist, author, blogger and bipolar sufferer John McManamy reports that current studies have found that about “25 percent of cancer patients will experience major depression over the course of their illness. People with cancer are three times more likely than the general population to develop depression, and twice as likely as other hospitalized patients. The greater the pain, the more likely the depression.”

And, in another quote from from Mcmanamy,  "The consequences of untreated depression can be severe.[...]Estimates of cancer patients who take their own lives range from twice the incidence of the general population to ten times."

Naturally, this was of considerable interest to me, since undiagnosed and untreated depression is what so many of us affected by the suicide of loved ones come to understand as the cause of the event which has so altered our own lives.

I was also interested because, a year later, it is clear to me that I suffered from profound depression in the early months of my cancer treatments.  

I was the only person who knew just how profound. 

On the surface, I was extremely busy, preparing for the joyful day of my ordination, and researching my treatment options.     From the doctors' point of view, I was someone with a very early stage and highly treatable cancer.  My family knew that I, like the rest of them, found it extremely difficult to focus on the reality of cancer, serious no matter how small, in the context of Josh's death.  In fact, for me, the worst part of cancer, much worse than the diagnosis, the drastic solution, and the three surgeries, was that Josh did not come home to be with me.  But I don't think even my family knew how quickly that reality sent me into a deep downward spiral of depression.

Early in the course of my care, after a lengthy consultation with a radiologist, I was asked whether I wanted to meet with a social worker in the practice, who happened to be immediately available.  So I had that hour or so of therapeutic conversation, and I have to say, she was outstanding.  I should have gone back to see her.

But, you know, depression . . .  we don't usually recognize it for what it is.  And no one wants to ask.

I think, in retrospect, that it is astonishing that in the course of cancer care in which I consulted over the course of several months with two breast surgeons, a radiologist, and a plastic surgeon,and was treated by three of them, that no one other than that one radiologist ever said to me, a woman who had recently lost a child, "Mental health care might be the most important part of this whole ordeal."

I think it's astonishing that that recommendation isn't made, emphatically, to every cancer patient.

More tomorrow.

The Battle We Didn't Choose: Breast Cancer Photography Exhibit

Photographer Angelo Merendino chronicled his young wife's breast cancer journey in a series of photographs which are currently on exhibit in a wonderful space, a former church, on the east side of Cleveland.

I first read about this exhibit when controversy erupted some weeks ago about its placement at The Gathering Place, an organization and facility which offers all kinds of education and support for cancer patients and their loved ones.  Many of The Gathering Place's clients and friends protested its showing an exhibit in which the stark realities of day-to-day life with cancer are depicted.  They found it depressing and disheartening to walk into a place of support and hope only to be greeted by these graphic reminders of serious illness and death.  And yes, Jen Merendino did die.

Angelo has written about The Gathering Place's decision to close the exhibit, and several other related articles and posts appear on his Facebook page.  That's not my issue: I have long understood that my desire to know about and to see birth and death up close are not universally appreciated.  Those great transitions of human life have a claim on my curiosity and imagination that is shared by few people, and my wonder at photography and what it conveys seems to be unlimited.  I never found childbirth photos "gross," and I do not find pictures of illness to be depressing or horrifying.

What I saw in this exhibit was the power of love and the strength of human courage. 

And sometimes, the lack of the latter ~ but then, that is part of the human experience as well.  There is a moving series of photographs entitled "Reactions" that should give us all pause.  They were taken in public places, out on the street.  Jen moves through the scenes, a frail and bald woman grasping a walker, while the faces of those she passes are recorded by the camera.  Curiosity, surprise, distaste, rejection.  I remarked to the exhibitor that in not one of those photographs do we see a stranger reacting with a friendly, welcoming face.

In my favorite photo, Jen is seated, I believe in a window, wearing a dress and painting her toenails.  Her hair is gone, her body is thin, and a cane rests nearby.  You cannot miss understanding that this is a woman in great crisis exerting the power of color and beauty over pain and sadness. 

The woman who owns the gallery ~ yes! an artist purchased this abandoned sacred building so that she could house art exhibits ~ and I talked for a long time.  She lost her first husband to suicide several years ago, and so we were able to talk candidly about how losses of such magnitude change who we are and how we respond to life, and to death.   

I have often mentioned my frustration with the remark "I can't imagine" that comes my way so often.  I believe now that in saying those words people are simultaneously expressing sympathy and erecting a wall of protection around themselves.  We all do care for and love each other, but we don't want to imagine, much less know, the day to day trauma of the lives of others. 

For those who are brave enough to learn this particular walk, these images are a treasure.

Girls Only (Breast Cancer and Ministry)

So this afternoon I was at the hospital, where a lovely lady had been brought following an apparently terrible fall.  She was extremely disoriented and agitated, and several of us were needed to help calm her, physically, which meant that I had to contort my body over her bed in various ways.

A little later, walking down the hallway, I realized that something had slipped.  I was able to make a quick and, I hope, subtle adjustment, but it did cause me to wonder: what would I have done if it had fallen out?  There I would have been in a public hallway with some of my parishoners, and also some extended family members I had met only moments earlier, looking at the floor in dismay.

I suppose that I would have scooped it off the linoleum, said, "This is what a fake boob looks like, in case you've ever wondered," and plopped it back in.

On the upside, and no pun intended, and it's not really an upside at all, at least two of the women in that little group have had breast cancer, so they wouldn't have been much bothered.

I'm guessing that guy pastors don't have to think about these things. 

Breast Cancer - Things I Notice Sometimes

This evening I went out to dinner at an assisted living facility with one of my parishoners and two of the women with whom she regularly dines.

Afterward, I stopped by the local nursing home to visit briefly with two other folks.  (Very briefly.  As I reached the second room, I realized that I was almost too exhausted to stand up and, seeing one of the man's daughters there, I excused myself as quickly as I could.)

At any rate, most of the employees at these facilities are women, young women and middle-aged women.  And it's summer, so they are wearing t-shirts and light cotton tops.  And it dawned on me that, as far as I could tell (and obviously I can't), all of those women have two breasts, the originals, which they are able to take completely for granted. (Actually, I can kind of tell.  What they have matches, and moves naturally.)

I can't say that I usually give this matter much thought, or any thought at all.  And considering the environments I was in, I probably shouldn't.  The people I was visiting are struggling with the loneliness of widowhood after long and happy marriages and with the consequences of heart disease and major medical incidents.  Their lives are extremely difficult.

But I did feel very sad.  The residual disfigurement of breast cancer is so permanent.

Women and Seminary

Back to seminary for me today, for the first time in two years.  One of my friends was diagnosed with an extremely aggressive form of breast cancer a few days after her graduation this past spring, so two of us showed up to have lunch with her and offer a little support for her journey.

Meanwhile, on Facebook a group of women (me included) have offered some suggestions in response to a question from someone about to start seminary, wondering what no one told her that she should know.  Lots of great ideas posted for her.

But from today's lunch table, the advice might look like:  Try not to be a single parent.  Try not to let one of your children die.  Try not to get breast cancer.

And make friends; they'll be there when those things happen anyway.

Progress

I posted this on FB yesterday as a thank-you to the seminary classmates who sent the t-shirt to me at a time when wearing t-shirts in public wasn't gonna happen.  Now I can both wear it and do it, and I'm very grateful for the encouragement.

The other day I made my first visit to a physical therapist so that I can begin to address some of the winter's damage.  I realized that I AM making progress ~ in March, my first attempts at walking got me about halfway down the block ("Mom, give yourself a break; you've hardly left that chair since mid-November, and it's going to take some time," my son pointed out), and now I can make three miles easily.

And in the rest of my life?  I have been very much affected by Walt Farrell's death and, as the Josh anniversary date of September 2 approaches, I can also see how far I have come since those dark days.  I don't just preach like a girl. I preach like a mother who has walked through hell and begun to understand resurrection in ways that would have not been possible otherwise.

Tee Hee (Breast Cancer Humor)

I wrote a profoundly depressing post this morning, a continuation of the past one.  I thought better of it, clicked on "save," and hopped into the shower.

I had two appointments, one for spiritual direction and the other for which I had set aside four hours to spend in the dentist's chair.  As I was dressing for the latter ~ jeans and a comfortable t-shirt ~ I was interrupted by a phone call from the dentist's assistant, who needed to reschedule; the building is doing some maintenance and there is no AC, making dentistry both miserable and ineffective.  It took us quite awhile to find another date (six weeks away!), and so I had to hurry to finish dressing.

Now, you need to know a bit of the back story: as a result of my mastectomy, I decided to have reconstruction via implant, which was finally completed at the end of February.  The implant side is not a match for the real side, and so I am now in possession of what is called a "partial prosthesis."  A blogger whom I read refers to her prostheses as her "FOOBS" ~ fake boobs ~ so I guess you could say that I have a partial FOOB. You may interpret the "F" as you please.

(As an aside, my partial foob led to an angry and humorous exchange with an insurance company representative.  The anger?  He told me that I was entitled to only one prosthetic device every two years, and the "inside one" was it.  I reminded him of federal law, and insisted coverage was mandated for the "outside one" as well.  The humor?  By the time I finished, he was so rattled that I had to spell the word "breast" for him.)

Anyway, you've probably guessed it.  I went off to meet with my directee and, as I unlocked the door of the office in which we meet, I glanced down and ~ !!!!!!!!!! ~ I had just walked confidently across the John Carroll campus in the beautiful sunshine wearing a t-shirt with, yes, only one side of my chest intact.

Sigh.  

I raced to the bathroom for some tissues, it turned out that my directee had written down the wrong time, and I headed back to my car, purse held over my front.

As I left the campus, several young mothers were walking across the parking lot, little daughters in tow.  Some kind of camp program, I'm sure.  They all looked so sweet and innocent.  I'm sure they all aren't (see previous post). But they did make me long for the days when going out in pubic was a good deal simpler.

A Little More Breast Cancer Commentary

Plastic surgery commentary, really.

Final post-op appointment yesterday.  Having rescheduled it twice, I thought I might as well get it over with.  

Half an hour's wait for a ten minute appointment.  The doctor offered the usual suggestions for future "work," and then asked me what I thought of the results.

"Really ugly," I said.  Calmly.

He then launched into his usual explanation as to this being "not a real breast."  

Uh, duh.

That was about it.

Surgery is a bizarre endeavor.  As far as I can tell.  This doctor seems to be a very nice man with a great deal of expertise and a good sense of humor.  But limited in what he can or wants to know and address about anything beyond the technical and physical aspects of his work. 

The fact that I am now completely alienated from the portion of my body on which he has expended his time and skill is not of any interest to him. 

It's really not of that much interest to me, so I suppose I should expect no more of him.  But it makes me a little sad, you know, that that particular area of my body can now best be described as grotesque. 

Several women have pulled up their shirts to show me their results.  I don't think I'll be one of those.

Well, I'll see how I feel at the end of a hot and sweaty summer.  Maybe I'll do something about the situation next winter and maybe I won't.

I guess that first we'll see how the next mammogram goes.

"Be Gentle With Yourself"

Among the (many) facets of grief which I had to discover for myself after Josh died was that of fatigue.  I was submerged under wave after wave of physical and mental exhaustion, complete and unrelenting, for months.  Even today, three and one-half years later, I find that two or three consecutive days of intense work deplete my resources entirely.  I may have ambitious plans for the third or fourth day, but they are seldom realized.

In the wake of breast cancer, I have discovered yet another loss, one which I did not expect at all.  I have a long way to go in terms of re-building my physical strength and stamina, but I am not plagued by constant fatigue anymore. The surprise is that my natural capacity for emotional resiliency has almost completely deserted me.

Thursday afternoon, after two days of challenging pastoral visits to people spending time in various medical facilities, I headed out for a doctor's appointment of my own.  A simple follow-up visit, with no real purpose that I understood.  I went anyway, thinking that it might serve as a cap to this whole breast cancer narrative, a sort of experience of closure.  ("Closure" being a term which I generally scorn.  But, whatever.)

I lasted for 35 minutes in the waiting room, and then I left.  The receptionist was a bit taken aback, and insisted that my wait would not be much longer, but I knew that I was finished.  Quite.  I knew that ahead lay the disrobing, the examination, the conversation about possible options for future procedures ~ and I had lost the wherewithal even to sit still in the waiting room for another ten seconds.  Another full minute and I was in danger of complete meltdown.

Combativeness ~ that would have been my M.O. a few years ago.  I don't have it in me anymore.  I carry so much sadness; such a sense of isolation.  A friend of mine is fond of proclaiming that she can bounce back from anything, but her anythings have not included lost children or lost body parts.  I think it is probably a good thing, and a source of compassion for others, to recognize that there comes a time when the elasticity of the spirit is stretched to the point of frayed limpness.  

I think that, despite my own reality, I am still a good pastor and spiritual director to others.  My imagination, my ability to tolerate ambiguity, my passion for fostering others' encounters with God liturgically and academically and prayerfully and pastorally ~ those are all intact.

It's myself whom I have to learn to care for.  "Be gentle with yourself."  That's what I hear in my prayer.  This afternoon in a workshop on using the arts in spiritual direction, I persisted in smoothing out the contours of my clay shapes and turning them into containers of varying forms.  

A couple of days ago, I sighed as I left a hospital visit, wondering almost aloud why God has such a penchant for vanishing when people are most in need.  There are so many of us in need of hiding places within the cool, smooth container of God's Spirit, places in which we might be gentle with ourselves.

Breast Cancer Fallout

It was discovered as a consequence of a routine mammogram last fall.  I had scheduled a series of medical check-ups, making an attempt to put all routine health matters behind me prior to embarking upon my first call in ministry.  I got as far as having my teeth cleaned and going in for the mammogram.

Breast Cancer 101 now a month behind me, I need to pick up where I left off and take care of the rest of my body.

I find that I have been unable to make a single call.  Even the idea of the two fillings I need sets my heart pounding.  (Figuratively speaking.)   And the other things?  Terrifying.

Merely observations.  No advice needed.

Suicide, Breast Cancer, Ministry ~ and Healing

Sometimes people tell me stories about what they, or someone they know, have done or been in the wake of a personal crisis or loss.  Usually when they relate these things to me, I feel extremely inadequate and wonder whether I should have pursued a different path, been a different person, known things I didn't know.   Their comments tend to make me feel that I have been all wrong about pretty much everything.  And yet . . .

"I don't see any way that I can ever be a spiritual director now," I said some weeks after Josh died.  

"I think that if you pick up your internship and start trying to help other people, you will start to feel better," responded my own spiritual director.  

What kind of counsel was that supposed to be?

"I just can't do this," I wrote a couple of years later to another wise person.

"You can either let this all go," he wrote  back, "or you can accept that you may be embarking upon the most fruitful period of your life."

He didn't sound so wise at that particular moment.

"They said 'no,' " I explained to someone else when a big rejection came my way.

"I suppose they want  you to 'work on yourself'?" he said. 

At least that one made me laugh.

I'm not saying that a person shouldn't look directly at heartache and loss and then walk straight into it.  I'm not saying that repression and avoidance are good things; usually they aren't. 

But I guess I am saying that it's possible to do both, to soak yourself in your grief and your sadness and to move on into that to which you are called.

Last night, I took a quick glance in the mirror and thought, "You know, you got the minimal result you asked for.  You get dressed and you look fine.  That's good enough. And by the way, at the moment you don't have breast cancer."

This morning I got in the car and breathed to myself, as I so often do, "Josh, please come back to me."

I'm not going to look fine again unless I'm fully dressed and Josh is not coming back.  One of those things isn't very important and the other is.

Nevertheless, I am beginning to use the word "heal" in connection with myself.

I am slowly coming to grips with reality:  My life will never be the one I dreamed of, planned for, worked toward:   Body.  Family.  Work.  The answers are:  No, no, no.

And yet:  in traveling the roads onto which I've been diverted the past three years, I have seen places and done things that aren't really all that accessible to the typical person in midlife in our culture.  I myself would have chosen to skip them altogether. 

And I have turned out to be all right.  

 You can ask me whether I can accompany you to the top of the Eiffel Tower or to the depths of hell and I can say, "Sure.  Been there done that.  I'll go with you."

I won't always get it right.  But sometimes I will, and that's something.

Feeling Like Myself Again (Warning: Girl Talk)

I'm not exactly sure how I got from there (this morning's prayer) to here, but . . .  this has been coming for a few days and: I feel like me again.

I have spent a small fortune on undergarments over the past couple of weeks and I've finally reached a point at which I can make myself presentable without much effort.  No one wants to talk about that?  Well, I do.  Just as I mentioned pre-surgeries that great little presents for women in my situation would be gift cards ~ all those little recovery expenses in the pharmacy and men's t-shirt department and Kindle add up ~ let me say post-surgery that there are a lot more unexpected and expensive aspects to living with a different body.

I've also had some conversation with a friend in a similar situation, some of it about accepting that the bodies we have are neither the ones we had nor the ones we thought we were promised,   (I thought my expectations were appropriately low, like: in the basement.  I see now that I should have been thinking more like down to the core of the earth.)  As a consequence, I've been wondering:  What if I develop cancer on the other side?  Would I do this again?

I think (not entirely sure, but probably 95%) the answer is, Hell, no, and get rid of this one while you're at it.  I mean, seriously: months and months of immobilizing pain and weekly doctor visits and more trips to the OR?  Was I OUT OF MY MIND?  (Quite possibly.)

Amazingly, despite the fact that I still live under a cloud of grief and am sometimes staggered by the degree of loss I have experienced:  I still have a lot of things I want to do. 

Like talk about Mary's son.  That's what emerged from my prayer this morning.  And walk on the beach.  That's what emerged from the last hour of researching vacation rentals.  (Oh, you though I was writing a sermon?  Not always . . . ).  And take pictures, zillions of pictures.

And all those things take energy, which I have utterly squandered on this whole breast cancer mess.  I don't apologize for my feelings, for the incredibly debilitating sadness of another maternal loss but ~ I am so ready to be finished.

I'm gonna go walk in the sunshine, start planning a sermon, and head home to celebrate a friend's birthday.  I'm gonna be grateful for a way early diagnosis, PO'd at the current state of medical knowledge, satisfied with the attentiveness to the technical aspects of my care, dismayed at the lack of appreciation for the affective aspects  -- and DONE.

Image:  All those pictures of women looking out of windows?  My plan is to look out of one on St. George's Island, sooner rather than later.

Shifting Spirituality: God Our Mother

The maternal dimension of my life has been something of a disaster.  Mother, son, breast.  And lest you think I am veering toward the melodramatic, let me remind you:  Instant death in a car crash.  Suicide.  And now the carving up of my body, three times so far.

I haven't focused much on the feminine aspect of spirituality.  For one thing, I've never been surprised or perturbed by references to God as mother.  (All those years in girls' boarding schools, perhaps?) It's God as father that causes me some consternation.  I heard few references to God as father in my church home, but it was a consistent phrase in seminary, and is even moreso in the community in which I minister. Yesterday I was repeatedly distracted for the first hour of a presentation by the speaker's references to the Holy Spirit as "he."  But I try to let it go.  I recall my first spiritual director stating  one day in regard to another topic that he didn't want to say anything that would make it difficult to anyone to pray, and that seems a reasonable stance to me.  Of course, it requires me to overlook the endless invocations to "Father God" that make it difficult for me to pray.

For a second thing, my spiritual directors have all been men.  Jesuit priests.  Yes, I've needed father figures in my life, but they're also all brilliant and well-educated.  YEARS of education that I wish I had.   Give me a keen mind and a wide-ranging knowledge of literature, history, philosophy, psychology, and spirituality, and my religious little self is hooked.  I used to be a little bit circumspect in what I said because they are, after all, guys, but breast cancer has demolished what reserve I had.  Probably to their dismay. 

Interestingly, as Catholic guys, they may have more to offer in terms of feminine spirituality than even most women in my own branch of the church.  Catholics, after all, have Mary.  And all those saints.  And, I might add, it was a Jesuit who wrote to me when I was approved for ordination to say that he was praying  that the Holy Spirit would guide me to exactly the call she had in mind for me.

At any rate, these days I find myself experiencing what may be a major shift in my spiritual orientation.  The last couple of weeks have been hell, with my experience of aesthetic devastation now followed by the most unwelcome reality of whole-body pain, which I have a sinking suspicion has to do with a third surgical assault in a six-month period.  As a consequence, I find myself wondering much more about the feminine in the divine, or about the divine in feminine contexts.

I guess we'll see where she leads me.

Image: Julian of Norwich, who wrote about God Our Mother in the 14th century.

Breast Cancer, Month Seven

So . . .  this morning I went in for my one-week post-op check, the follow-up to what was, as is obvious at this point, only my first reconstruction surgery.

Let me preface this by saying that my plastic surgeon is the  chief of the division of breast plastic surgery at a university hospital.  He's out of town today, but his fourth year resident took care of me, and he's no slouch either.

Having had two complicated pregnancies, I learned early on not to waste my time with doctors unless they are affiliated with major medical centers and are also kind, funny, and relaxed. I have no complaints with my doctors as experts in their field and as human beings.  And I am very fortunate to have health insurance that covers both of the major medical systems down the street, one of them being the Cleveland Clinic and the other being University Hospitals, so I have good choices available to me.

I told the nice young resident exactly what I would have told his boss: that I am 100% horrified by the results and that I feel like Frankenstein's sister.  We had a lengthy conversation and he seemed to hear everything I said and he responded very appropriately.  And explained that there is still lots of healing to happen before we make a decision about what's next.

But he also said, "This is a pretty good result."  (I have also learned that these doctors at major medical centers are very reserved in their commentary.  They never say things like, "That was genius quality work," even though it often was.  So "pretty good result" means "outstanding.")

And I thought: Wow.  Followed by many silenced expletives.  Have we been on different pages, or what?  In different books?  On different planets?

RevGals: AMAZING!

I just got off the phone after a long conversation with a RevGal who has been in my shoes, more or less.

Breast cancer, surgery plus reconstructive surgery, a congregation, and all the attendant issues that pop up when it's the new pastor who needs care.

I've just been sitting here thinking: Wow.  I have been navigating some incredibly complex territory for the past six months.  And it hasn't even occurred to me that I've done it reasonably well.  As has she.  Maybe more than reasonably.

I feel a whole lot better.   :)

So I went looking for a new window image.  One with two women.  They're almost all of women shopping!  So I found a better one.