love song for a dying body.featured

“…this all points to metastatic cancer. I’m so sorry.”

Deafened by the buzzing in my ears, I stared in confusion at my hands. My arms. My legs that somehow didn’t buckle despite the dizzying panic coursing through my veins.

“Betrayed!” my brain screamed as it urged me to flee. To abandon this diseased, broken form. Disgust filled my throat like bile. Whether at the brokenness of my body or the speed of my mind in fancying an escape I’ll never be certain.

I watched in surprise as my chest rose and I felt air enter my lungs. Offended that they remembered their duty in the midst of crisis, I squeezed my eyes shut in protest. Or perhaps it was against the tears forming without consent. Another betrayal certain to expose my pain at the dinner table.

“Breathe.” my body beckoned. A quiet voice somehow finding its way to the forefront of my chaotic cacophony.

Minutes passed. Then hours. Each holding a lifetime in its greedy grasp.

A tiny hand broke through the haze of my numbness, and I looked down to find my baby nursing. An act now so intuitive it was almost as invisible to me as breathing.

I kissed his tiny fingers as hot tears crept past my strongest defense.

“Miracle” rose up inside me. A whisper.

Warmth flowed back into my body, and a bubble of joy escaped in a single giggle. A moment of seeming insanity in the sober direness of that night.

Moments later, a flurry of arms and legs and voices descended on me as all the kids bounded into our room in their giddy attempt to escape Jeff’s bedtime efforts. As our eyes met, I saw him exhale and submit to the cheerful chaos intent on having its moment before grief cemented its hold on us for the night.

He climbed into bed and held my hand. We lay quietly watching tiny limbs tangle and listening to little voices giggle and bicker their way to impossibly knotted sheets and tired bodies finally ready for sleep.

“Miracle” as I gazed at the family we had created.

Eyes bleary from sleepless nights of worried weeping, I held out my hands. I watched as the priest gently anointed them with holy oil. Breathing the fragrance deep into my lungs, I willed it to linger. To soak into every pore and rest there. A lasting reminder of the sacrament conferred to join my suffering to Christ’s own redemptive sacrifice.

I watched in wonder as my body that had fought every bite of food for two days accepted the body of Christ. Another blessedly intuitive act.

“Miracle” my body sang.

As days crept into weeks that blurred into months, that single whisper of truth, the assuredness of the miracle of my creation, spread to every atom of my being.

When people advised me to fight, I silently rebelled at the language so often thrust onto bodies bearing the weight of this sickness. I stubbornly resolved not to turn my body into a weapon for a war it cannot win. Not to attempt to bully it into submission or jeer at its inevitable failure to survive.

Instead, as I lay broken and sick during treatments, I whisper “miracle” to the raging beast of my suffering. Willing the meager strength I have left to recall the indelible dignity and beauty coursing through every atom of my being. Undimmed. Undeterred.

I cling to the truth that I am created in the image of God to be whole. I am baptized into the body of Christ to be healed. But more profound even than wholeness or healing, I am made by Love for love.

In the midst of brokenness that shatters my body and disease that defies any known method of healing, it is love that fills the aching gaps and seeps into every crevice. Holding back the lie that my body is a burden. A vessel to be cast aside or disdained for its weakness.

My body tells me the truth of our story. Weary, aching, and wracked with grief it reaches for comfort. For community, warmth, and beauty. It searches with firm confidence and insatiable longing for the thrill of hope, the long awaited fulfillment.

It seeks the baby whose birth resounds in every corner of creation. Who imbues our feeble flesh with His divine nature, and whose presence leaves nothing untouched. His bruised, broken, beloved body standing firmly against the temptation to disdain my own.

And without fail, I find Him. In the sharp wind on my face. In the roar of the waves. In the quiet of snow. In the arms that reach for me and those that hold me. In the most intimate, hidden moments when the ancient kinship of all creation reveals the face of my creator and my savior. The Word made flesh, dwelling among us.

My body feels the staggering rush of awe. My soul bursts forth in the song it was created to sing.

The song of a young girl who scaled forests and ran through fields and tumbled in grass, breathlessly mesmerized and overcome by the sheer delight of the world around me. My eyes never tired in their search for beauty.

The song of a wife, trusting in the power of sacrament and the gentle soul of my love to carry my heart patiently through each pain to healing. Of a partner in vocation and adventure. Far flung lands and bleary, jet-lagged wanderings the language of our love. My soul never dimmed in its longing for the divine.

The song of a mother. Whose womb carried our children. Whose body nourishes and comforts them. Whose aching arms and back and patience always find a way to rouse themselves far beyond my ability. My joy relentless.

The song of home to my husband and children. Pouring every bit of myself into carefully crafting our family life with intention and purpose. Gently filling the grooves of our days with wonder and beauty. My hope constant.

The song of a writer. Not the writer I planned or hoped or expected to be, but the one I was born to be. Instead of treatises, my words seek to capture simple, breathtaking moments of grace. To share them in a way that awakens a knowledge, however long forgotten or abandoned, of our unique dignity and worth. Our boundless belovedness.

The song of my life is not a happy accident of a being meant for death and disposal. It is a bold expression of joy and creation. It reveals the indelible image of the creator on the entirety of my being.

In the face of devastating grief and suffering, in the expectation of death, I bear the flame of joyful hope. I wait in advent not to be rescued from my body, but to live every breath I am given as a song of joy. And in the confidence that I will be raised in fullness to continue my song in the symphony of praise.