5 songs, 21 minutes

Let’s just go there.

My eldest daughter would turn 11 years old in less than one month, on May 21st.

I see 521 when she is near.

It’s how she communicates with me.

In looking at my playlist, while contemplating this post - I saw 5 songs, 21 minutes.

So here goes.

I don’t like cancer.

But then, it blessed me with an awareness of the miraculous.

Some experiences take you to your edge. 

You don’t just feel the divine.

You touch it. 

And then, pink is no longer pink. But you don’t have the language to describe that. 

Still, it’s never too late to learn a new language.

You can’t try too many times.

I know that I have an infinity of tries in my heart. 

One thing I am trying… is giving myself a little credit, a little validity.

It’s so easy to feel worthless.

It’s so challenging, waiting for that moment, for your second or third chance at life to make sense.

But then I realized something today. God has already used my life to help others.

When my friends and I battled cancer in the late 90s ... we were shaping treatment for the future. 

They had not realized (yet) that giving a patient a peppermint after chemo may negate the hatred of all food. And that, associating the peppermint with vomiting - rather than all food, would help significantly. I was part of that research. We were that gang of patients battling before miracle drugs. 

I was the first in our clinic to have a Child Life Specialist work with calming my anxiety before a procedure. After seeing how well it worked it became regular practice in the clinic. While I was ashamed of my anxiety, God was using it to show the spinal taps could be done another way. It made it easier on my mind, it helped my team, and I imagine it was much easier on my body as well.

We didn’t have pretty rooms, calming decor, or cute hospital pajamas. I like to imagine some of our ideas developed into the manifestations that currently tell the story of childhood cancer. We spent hours decorating those rooms with our imagination. In a time without i pads, smart phones, or even televisions in treatment rooms - we created, in any way we could.

My actual bone marrow transplant was experimental. Yeah. Every single function of my body and mind was measured. Every single measurement they could take was given a pre and post test. 

Every organ, every breath… my sight, my hearing… my walking gate… my personality… even my ability to copy parallelograms  - it was all recorded. Every trace of me. It was all recorded. 

All who came before us paved that possibility for us, and then we then paved a little more of the route for others.

5 songs, 21 minutes.

Most of the time we will never understand our significance, if any - or not till after the fact.

But then I think, maybe I spend too much time trying to discern my mission, when maybe, it’s already happening.

I didn’t do anything to be part of life-saving research. I was just present. I just showed up.

So… maybe God is doing something with me right now. Maybe I don’t know what it is.

Maybe I am just supposed to show up.

Be Present.

Maybe?

Amen.