Tag Archives: cancer

What Happens to Suffering When We Pray

This week, my daughter, Lydia, broke one of her arms for the fourth time in six years. There’s never a great time to break a bone, but in my opinion, the start of the summer is the worst time. As I scurried down to church camp to pick her up the day after dropping herContinue reading “What Happens to Suffering When We Pray”

Abide

I began reading The Bible Tells Me So by Peter Enns today, and in the midst of my own similar writing project on reading the Bible I feel as if I’ve found a kindred spirit. This comes early on in his narrative: “Sweating bullets to line up the Bible with our exhausting expectations, to make the BibleContinue reading “Abide”

Going It Alone

Mom and I sat in a Panera Bread on Wednesday afternoon sharing a cinnamon crunch bagel and drinking coffee, debriefing on the official CT scan results that arrived in her myChart box earlier that day. I told her how, when I read her email, I had to talk myself down, breathe and weep, again, about theContinue reading “Going It Alone”

Speak, Memory: Joy and Anguish

A couple of weeks ago now, we went to the meeting that we had been anticipating to find out whether my mom’s IL-2 treatments worked. No change. The tumors didn’t shrink and the tumors didn’t grow. It wasn’t the best news and it wasn’t the worst news. It was just news. So. Here we are.Continue reading “Speak, Memory: Joy and Anguish”

Eyes Above Water

This morning I read the first few verses of the Book of James for a Bible study, and now, lodged in my mind are the words, “Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance” (1:2), alternating with Elvis Presley bellowing, “Lord, this time, youContinue reading “Eyes Above Water”

Dying Mom Stories and New Year’s Resolutions

As a reader and editor for River Teeth, one of my major biases was dying mom stories. Writers think just because their loved one has died or might die or is dying, they ought to write about her. It’s sad. It’s hard. It’s life changing. So we write dying mom stories. The trouble with the vastContinue reading “Dying Mom Stories and New Year’s Resolutions”