When I preached during Lent I would refer to the final 4 as - Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter.
The last 4 days of Holy Week were important to me and I want to get it down what it meant to me. I did not go to a Maundy Thursday service because I had a support group meeting with what I call "the gyno gals" - the women who are on this journey with gynecological cancers. It is a zoom meeting and we did not have a speaker. Instead what we do is tell where we are at this point in our treatment. After one speaks, she names another until we have all had a chance to share. These are my favorite meetings. It seems appropriate to choose this over the church service about the last supper. Some of us are facing the prospect of death coming and others are hoping for a cure or a few years more to live.
So I heard about the side affects that continue for some after the cancer is presumably gone, about those who are on the same chemo regimen as me, those who battle fatigue just like I do. There were two who were new to the meeting who had just been diagnosed within the last month. I recognized the way we all have to get used to this stunning news of cancer. There was so much caring, and understanding and honesty to all of this. Last year we had three die over the course of the year but no one now seems to be that bad. I end up feeling connected and aware of what may be coming and also some terrible things that I have missed - like radiation. We all have suffered and will suffer and somehow it reminds me of the suffering of Jesus. We are not alone with any of this although we can certainly feel it.
Friday night I went to the Good Friday service at Northwest Christian Church with John and Audrey. I made a joke when we got into our pew about the kleenex on the seat asking John if he thinks he might cry tonight. All it took for me was the opening hymn and I was grateful to have kleenex. It is a somber service and the air felt heavy like it does when people are praying. I just allowed myself to be present for all of it - the tenebrae service where I heard the familiar story and lights were slowly extinguished The choir sang "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross" powerfully and at the end - in the dark - an older man sang the first verse of "O Sacred Head Now Wounded".
O sacred head now woundedWith grief and shame waighed downNow scornfully surroundedWith thorns thine only crownHow pale Thou art with anguishWith sore abuse and scornHow does that visage languishWhich once was bright as morn
And this service touched my soul in ways that I cannot give words to. It was about death and suffering and love and life. It's the suffering of Jesus and the suffering of the Ukrainians and Iranians and these 10 women whose faces I saw the night before talking about their cancer. And feeling it and naming it and trusting God somehow with it all.
And then the next day was our family's Easter party. I did my 4th annual Easter Egg Hunt and Scavenger Hunt Saturday morning. the weather was perfect - from 11 to 2 it was sunny and warm and perfect for wandering around our wooded site looking for eggs and clues. It did clues for two teams and I think they were hard enough but not too hard. Alyse is a puzzling genius so nothing seems hard for her but it was fun to watch the kids and to interact with everyone. I love just watching people mix and mingle and really engage with each other. I looked back that evening and thought about the sweet vignettes of people connecting - cousins, sisters, friends, grandparents. It was a very satisfying day for me.
And then finally there was Easter Sunday. Audrey and John and I went to church at Northwest again and experienced a another wonderful service. There was a brass band accompanying the choir and at the end they sang the Hallelujah Chorus. I love the text of Mary in the garden after Jesus tomb was opening and found to be empty. There was a gardener who she did not recognize as Jesus until he spoke her name. I think of the old hymn "Open my eyes that I may see." The word that I most associate with Easter is "SURPRISE". And for Mary and for the Disciples it was - SURPRISE! I am here and you didn't expect me. My sense of Easter this year - was to remember that this world is Enchanted with all kinds of SURPRISES - like the people that support you when you have cancer, like grandchildren in the 20's who are willing to accommodate their grandma by collecting eggs and running in the woods after clues, like crocuses and daffodils in the spring, like these soulful experiences in worship that leave me speechless and in tears and still comforted.
It has been a Holy Time and now back to real life. My numbers have gone up a bit and now I am back to living in "I don't know" land. I don't know what the doctor is going to do, I don't know whether there will be a different chemo, I don't know how long my life is going to be.
Yet - I do know that no matter what is happening in the near future - there will be more surprises as God is not done with me yet.
No comments:
Post a Comment