Final Update

I've been home since Saturday night and feeling a bit better each day.  There's no place like your own for recuperating.

I spoke with the doctor this morning and the pathology report shows there is no invasion of the cancer beyond the tumor, which means no further treatment will be necessary.  There will be frequent checks, of course, because one bout may often lead to another, but as of now it is safe to say that I am cancer-free.

It's all been an odd ride in many ways, but the one important thing I take from it all is the loving care of our God and His people who have carried me through it with complete confidence in that care, no matter what the outcome may have been.  

Thank you again to all who have prayed and emailed and helped in so many ways.  God bless you all.

Update 3

Tuesday's surgery was about 3 hours.  The doctor is pretty sure he got everything and the cancer hasn't spread -- but this is nothing that can be known definitively until the pathologist's report comes back, we hope by Monday.

It looks like classes are out of the question for this next week, though I'll try to teach Friday if I possibly can.  My wonderful colleagues are going out of their way to help me out so the students don't get too far behind.  

I am feeling pretty wretched right now, as one might imagine -- but it's so much better to feel wretched at home than in a hospital!  An hour's sleep here is like a night's sleep there, and the freedom to do as I please whenI please is amazingly helpful. 

Thanks to all who have prayed!

Update 2

The surgery has been rescheduled for Tuesday at 1:00.  This was upsetting at first, because I would like to have the entire break for recovery, but God's timing has been perfect with everything thus far, so I will trust that this, too, is perfect timing.

Request
Again, please don't post replies to this here or at FB.  Also, I will probably prefer not to have visits and phone calls in the hospital (I don't even know yet how long I'll be in), except from immediate family.  If you feel called to pray for us, thank you so much.  I love and appreciate my family in the Lord and could not make it through a day without you all.

Update

I was told mid-week that the biopsy confirmed colon cancer, and we set surgery for this coming Monday.  Then one of the scans that had been done revealed a spot on one lung which was considered to be “suspicious.”  This led to a scramble for another scan to find out if it might be another cancer, which would have meant a totally different, and very aggressive, treatment strategy.  There was an opening to do the scan this morning, they rushed the results, and they showed that the only cancer is the small tumor in the lining of the colon.  This means that I will be having surgery on Monday as planned, for the removal of the colon tumor, and it is even possible that no further treatment will be necessary, though this will probably not be determined until after the surgery.

Thank you, more than I can say, to all of you who have prayed for me and those who have sent me good wishes and encouraging words.  It has been a roller coaster two weeks, but I am grateful for all the support I’ve had and for the remarkable timing of each event.  There’s still much ahead, of course, but I’m confident in God’s grace and the love and prayers of His family.

Request

Again, please don’t post replies to this here or at FB, as I don’t wish to be drawn into public discussion, and please don’t accost me in the hallways asking for updates (private communications are of course welcome).  I’ll post any relevant information here at Inscapes when it becomes available.  If you feel called to pray for us, thank you so much.  I love and appreciate my extended family and could not make it through a day without you all. 

Solely To Stop Speculation

I feel the need to explain why I’ve been out of classes a couple of days recently, since there have been some questions and concerns, and I don’t want rumors going about.  I am not posting this because I want lots of public sympathetic responses; in fact, I am requesting that no one reply to this, here or at Facebook.  I know some will feel called to pray, and I appreciate it more than I could say; the love of God’s family is amazing and encouraging.  However, I do not wish to have public conversations either on social media or in the hallways about my health.  (Emails and private conversations are different.)  When there is further information, I’ll post an update for those who care to know.  Please don’t misunderstand; I’m just not able to “chat” about this informally and constantly – thank you.

The Problem

I went to see my doctor for a minor problem, and he decided to do some blood tests.  He found that I had been losing blood to the point of needing a transfusion, which was done a week and a half ago.  Of course the next important thing is to find out the source of the bleeding, and I am now waiting for test results to find out if the cause is colon cancer.  If so, I will need surgery, hopefully during Spring Break, and the hope is that no further treatment will be needed after that. 

How I’m Doing

I’m fine; I’m really not worried over this at all.  We’ll do what needs to be done and take each step as it comes.  I am concerned about avoiding over-aggressive treatment, which can create problems where none were.  And I am concerned for my mom, who understands that this may be nothing too severe, but who has lost four family members, including her husband and son (my only sibling) in the past two and a half years.  I’m her only immediate family left, and I’m half the country away, so of course she’s struggling a bit to maintain her usual optimism.

Request

Again, please don’t post replies to this here or at FB, as I don’t wish to be drawn into public discussion, and please don’t accost me in the hallways asking for updates (private communications are of course welcome).  I’ll post any relevant information here when it becomes available.  If you feel called to pray for us, thank you so much.  I love and appreciate my extended family and could not make it through a day without you all.

"Dearest freshness deep down things . . ."

It’s one of those mornings.  Gloomy, rainy, cold for the second week in a row, exacerbating the fibromyalgia and arthritis.  Too little sleep.  Many people I love dearly facing deep, life-challenging problems and nothing one can do to help but cry with, pray for, let the heart ache. 

Then, coming up the drive to campus, movement in front of the chapel.  Odd, at first, coming out of shadow and fog, but resolving into the graceful form of a doe leading her yearling fawn, stretching to full speed to make it across the road and into the grassy field before the beast with the too-bright eyes could cause them harm. 

Beauty, beauty, beauty.

In all our brokenness and despair, He keeps giving us beauty to remind us of His presence and His care for this world He created.  Hopkins says it best, as always:

God's Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.


It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;


It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil


Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?


Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;


And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;


And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil


Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.



And for all this, nature is never spent;


There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;


And though the last lights off the black West went


Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs --


Because the Holy Ghost over the bent


World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Lord, may we always cling to Your Truth and be open to Your beauty in this world, broken though it is, allowing You to remind us of Your great love for us, whatever appearances may be at any given time. 

Glory be to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever will be, world without end.  Amen.

Blessed Christmas

Brokenness sometimes overwhelms me at Christmas, the fog rolling in tonight a stealthy reminder despite its soft beauty.  When I was a freshman in college, we opened our gifts on Christmas Eve to accommodate my brother’s stepson and his other grandparents.  On Christmas morning, my mother’s birthday, her father died at 3:00 a.m.  We’ve opened gifts on Christmas Eve ever since.

Two years ago was the first Christmas without my daddy.  One year ago was the first Christmas without his sister.  This is the first Christmas without my brother, the last of the immediate family.  And here I am in Tennessee, while my mother celebrates Christmas without family. 

Yet we celebrate, because the Babe came to bring hope, to bring light, to offer the star that ever shines above our Mordor, no matter how impenetrable the clouds of sin and sorrow may seem.  On this foggy Christmas Eve, I have our own unique Christmas tree to remind me.

The jade is an offshoot of the one my daddy grew at the University of Kansas; his was quite a large tree when it finally died long after his retirement.  But he had given me a shoot from it when I got married – “it’s the only thing I know you won’t kill,” he teased me, knowing I never remember to water plants.  We lost the original, I fear, to the abuse of some move or other, but this is its descendent.  We never got a “real” Christmas tree, because we always traveled to my parents’ home, where a tree and wreaths and lights and cookies waited, when the kids were growing up – but I love the little blue lights in the glossy green of the jade leaves, and the simple crèche at its foot. 

As this jade with its tiny lights comes from my father’s better-cared-for and massive plant, I am reminded that hope comes from my heavenly Father’s gift – and however much I and the rest of the world may try to darken and twist and destroy that gift, we cannot.  His light will always be shining, always be waiting, anticipating our upturned eyes to see.  And even the tiniest light will penetrate the darkness if we only look.

A blessed Christmas to all, especially to those who suffer loneliness, loss, sorrow this season.  May His light brighten even the darkest moments with His hope.

On Style

One of the books I'm perusing this break is Richard Weaver's Visions of Order: The Cultural Crisis of Our Time, a book which is third in a trilogy about culture along with Ideas Have Consequences and Language is Sermonic.  Visions is his last work, published after his death in 1963.  It is, as the subtitle suggests, a definition of culture, an exploration of what has gone wrong in 20th century America, and how we can pursue the resurrection of a true culture.  The following passage, however, is a sort of side trip (to the point but not straight on it) having to do with style -- an issue writers and readers discuss and debate continually.  (I have added boldface.)

"True style displays itself in elaboration, rhythm, and distance, which demand activity of the imagination and play of the spirit.  Elaboration means going beyond what is useful to produce what is engaging to contemplation.  Rhythm is a marking of beginnings and endings.  In place of a meaningless continuum, rhythm provides intelligibility and the sense that the material has been handled in a subjective interest.  It is human to dislike mere lapse.  When one sees things in rhythmical configuration, he feels they have been brought into the realm of the spirit.  Rhythm is thus a way of breaking up nihilistic monotony and of proclaiming that there is a world of value.  Distance is what preserves us from the vulgarity of immediacy.  Extension and proportion in space, as in architecture, and extension in time, as in manners and deportment, help to give gratifying form to these creations.  All style has an element of ritual, which signifies steps which cannot be passed over.

"Today, these factors of style, which is of the essence of culture, are regarded as if they were mere persiflage.  Elaboration is suspected of spending too much time on nonutilitarian needs, and the limited ends of engineering efficiency take precedence.  Rhythm suffers because one cannot wait for the period to come around.  In regard to distance, there is felt that there should be nothing between man and what he wants; distance is a kind of prohibition; and the new man sees no sanction in arrangements that stand in the way of immediate gratification.  He has not been taught the subtlety to perceive that what one gains by immediate seizure one pays for by more serious losses.  Impatience with space and time seems to be driving the modern to an increasing surrender of all ideas of order.  Everywhere there is reversion to the plain and the casual, and style itself takes on an obsolescent look, as it belonged to some era destined never again to appear."