A time for flowers
When I was in high school, my friend’s parents got divorced. Her dad left. I remember one cold evening, standing outside the garage door while her mom stood on a ladder, changing the lightbulb in an outdoor fixture that was just out of reach.
I could see her breath in the frigid New England air as she looked down at me and said, This is when I hate him the most.
--—
There are moments when the wound itself isn’t what hurts, but the tender places outside that wound flinch in pain when stirred. A broken ankle might only be fractured in a tiny sliver of bone, yet the entire ankle swells, bruises, and becomes sensitive to the touch. Even the slightest movement will elicit a raw cry of agony.
--—
I’m going to the beach soon. Today, I bought a bathing suit, which felt like a victory.
In the past two years, I’ve undergone seven surgical procedures. I have scars you’ve never dreamed of, and my body certainly isn’t the same as it was in the summer of 2020 before this diagnosis changed our lives.
But so much more than my body has transformed. Nothing is the same as it was. Our marriage, family, faith, friendships, work, expectations, communication, resources, desires: all are altered—even damaged—somehow, and we are continually navigating, adjusting, pivoting, rebuilding, mending. I hate to be exclusive, but I’m not sure you can understand the complexities unless you’ve lived it.
Ty and I call these changes collateral damage because the disease might only affect my body, but living with cancer in your midst affects much more.
Divorce. Infertility. Poverty. Depression. Unfaithfulness. Debt. Abuse. Addiction. There’s the thing itself, and then the hundreds of ways that thing affects the rest of your life. And probably, nobody can really understand the complexities of those situations unless they’ve lived it.
Believe me, bathing suit shopping is the least of it.
-----
Four weeks ago, we went back to MD Anderson for my first set of scans since I finished my enormous surgeries and radiation out there in December. I mentioned those results in my last blog. Unexpectedly, the scans were not clear. There were tiny spots in my lungs, and it was undetermined whether those spots show side effects of my medications or cancer that has metastasized to my lungs.
We go back in a week. I’ll be scanned again, and those spots will have grown or not, indicating either that the cancer is back and now Stage IV or that my drugs are causing lung inflammation, which is hopefully an easy fix.
It’s a lot to wait on.
-----
Charles Spurgeon writes, “The path of the Christian is not always bright with sunshine. There are times of darkness and storm… The Word tells us that ‘the path of the just is like the shining sun that shines ever brighter under the perfect day’ (Proverbs 4:18). But at certain periods, clouds cover the believer’s sun, and we walk in darkness and see no light.”
He goes on to write that, no believer can always keep his harp from the willows.
I didn’t know what this was in reference to, so I did a little bit of digging. It comes from Psalm 137:1-2:
By the rivers of Babylon, we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. There on the trees, we hung our harps.
The Israelites were in captivity. They had been sieged, captured by their enemies, forced to leave their homeland, and now they sit by a river in Babylon where the banks are covered with willow trees.
One commentator writes, Perhaps, resting themselves after slave toil for the enemy, they wished to spend their time in worship, so they took their harps, and were about to sing one of the songs of home. But, reflecting on their own country, they became so filled with distress, that they unstrung their harps with one consent, and hung them on the willow bushes, and gave general loose to their grief.
In other words: they thought about all they’d lost and pondered everything that once was but would never be the same, and they could sing no more.
Perhaps you find yourself in a season right now where your harp is hung. You cannot sing.
Ty recently told me he sees the value of liturgy books in a new, tangible way. Someone else can give me words, he says.
How many times can you pray the same thing? Heal my wife. Don’t let this be cancer again. Protect her body. Please, please. We ask that this scan be clear. We ask that these drugs work. We ask, we ask, we ask…
After two years of the same thing over and over again, on some days, we have no song.
-----
A friend recently sent me A Time for Flowers, by Emily Scott Robinson. I hope you’ll bear with me here. I’m often the type to skip over poems, references, or songs when I read, but I can’t let you do that now. (I beg you, actually beg you to listen while you read the lyrics below. It’s a simple and beautiful tune, and while the words explain where my heart is, the accompaniment is what the artist intended, and you’re missing out if you move on without it.)
A Time for Flowers - Click to listen
I went walking down the road
With a heavy heart and miles left to go
When I came upon a woman in a field on her knees
Singing ancient songs and sowing wildflower seeds
Tell me what’s the point in planting pretty things
In these days of darkness and disease
The world is burning, have you not heard
She smiled and said
Honey, I’ve lived long enough to learn
The time for flowers will come again
Maybe in one year, maybe in ten
There are days despair will win
But the time for flowers will come again
I have witnessed funerals and wars
Worried mothers, empty shelves, and empty stores
The storms will rage and the winds will blow
You are gonna find out that you’re stronger than you know
And the time for flowers will come again
Maybe in one year, maybe in ten
There are days despair will win
But the time for flowers will come again
And when I woke up this morning
Something deep had shifted
The sun was coming out and the clouds had finally lifted
It’s time to fix what’s broken
All the willing and the able
And when our honest work is done
We’ll gather at this table
We’ll hold each other’s babies
And pour each other’s wine
And promise to remember that your fate’s bound up in mine
The skies are clear now
The moon is new
Let’s raise a glass, my friends
We made it through
And the time for flowers has come again
I know it seemed the world would end
There were days despair did win
But the time for flowers has come again
The time for flowers has come again
_____
So, during this final week of waiting, I pack my new bathing suit into a suitcase, and I go to the beach with a group of my closest girlfriends, where I’ll be by the time you read this. I’ll celebrate my very alive-ness, and our friendships, and I’ll inhale the sea air as it fills my questionable lungs. Because sometimes you hang your harp in the willow. And sometimes, you gather around the table and pour each other wine, remembering that your fate’s bound up in mine.
And occasionally, you do both on the same day, unsure if these are tears of grief, tears of joy, or saltwater from the immense and mysterious ocean in which we all find ourselves afloat.
