A Spring of Joy

“They say we go to college to find our husbands, but I’m convinced we go to college to find our bridesmaids.”

These words, uttered Saturday from the maid of honor at the wedding we were attending, struck me. Across the reception hall, I looked at my friend, Beth, the maid of honor from my own wedding. Her head turned, searching for me in the crowd. Our eyes met and we both immediately began to cry.

Thirteen years ago, she stood in all her blond gorgeousness to share at our weekly Campus Crusade meeting. “I’d like y’all to pray for…” I don’t remember what her request was, but I remember being struck by her ability to share her heart so freely, so willingly. I’ll also never forget that deep Virginia, Louisiana, Texas accent. I hear it every week on the phone still.

We met every week in college for Bible study, then accountability, then just to hang out in the Airport Lounge and talk, our southern accents lilting through the air. We danced like crazy girls at Nut House parties, and we dreamed like school girls of our own weddings. We did each other’s hair on graduation day, and we endured the rain and watched our perfect coifs wilt. She celebrated every step of my relationship with Bri, and she stood beside me at my wedding. She toasted our future.

I will never forget the picture of her out the back window of our car on our wedding day. Standing alone at the edge of the parking lot, hands clasped over her heart, tears streaming down her face. She left for a job in Wisconsin the week of our honeymoon. And I wept over the loss. Then God saw fit to bring her back… one month before my thyroid cancer diagnosis eleven years ago.

She held my hand the day of my first thyroid cancer surgery (and asked the nurse if she could have some of my drugs to calm her down). She sat with me for hours the day we lost our first baby to an ectopic pregnancy. She watched the birth of my two oldest children (and made my husband watch The Bachelorette in the hospital room while I marched the halls). She missed the birth of our daughter by 4 days. She lived only blocks from us for years, and yet we still talked on the phone every single day. She dreamed with me of her wedding day, and often talked of how she wanted me pregnant in her wedding (I’ll still never figure that one out).

She met her future husband, and we welcomed him into our lives. They came to our door to share the news of their engagement, and it was the same day we discovered we were pregnant with our Bear. And seven months later, I stood in all my eight-month pregnant glory and wept like a child when I hugged her in her wedding gown. And then she moved… to seminary with Dale. And I wept like a child and asked God why He was taking my friend so far away again.

She has struggled with her health, and almost three years ago now, we piled in the car and drove 12 hours out to St. Louis, because I HAD to see her. I HAD to hold her. I HAD to know she was okay. And then 6 months later, she came back here because she HAD to see me. She HAD to hold me. She HAD to know I was okay. And she stood next to me and cried as my long, dark locks were shaved off my head… the beginnings of my chemo and the emotional drama that would be my life for months… now almost 2 years.

Four months ago, her little Emma entered the world, and I missed being in the delivery room by 2 weeks. But we drove out, because I HAD to see her, I HAD to hold her, I HAD to know they were all okay. And the drama for all of us continues. Beth and I joke about how we are already little old women in our thirties… but we also dream of the day when we will be Wal-Mart greeters and dye our gray hair purple and blue.

We said good-bye again yesterday as she and Dale and Emma drove away from our house, and I cried. So much life we have lived together over the past years. So much we have shared. So much love and loss. So much suffering in our cup, but so much encouragement to pour over each other. So much clinging together to the sweetness of a Savior Who has given us more than we could ever imagine. He gave us each other.

I went to college and I found my husband, my soulmate.

But I also found my bridesmaid, my heart friend.

I am blessed. So very blessed.

The only option as I see it, is this delicate weaving of action and celebration, of intention and expectation. Let’s act, read, protest, protect, picket, learn, advocate for, fight against, but let’s be careful that in the midst of all that accomplishing and organizing, we don’t bulldoze over a world that’s teeming with beauty and hope and redemption all around us and in the meantime. Before the wars are over, before the cures are found, before the wrongs are righted, Today, humble Today, presents itself to us with all the ceremony and bling of a glittering diamond ring. “Wear me, ” it says, “Wear me out. Love me, dive into me, discover me,” it pleads with us.
(~from Shauna Niequist’s “Cold Tangerines”)

A few years shy of thirty years ago, two “old souls” met at the ripe ages of 4 and 7, and the friendship was instantaneous. Monica has taught me much about finding beauty in the every day since then. Whether it was playing orphans in my backyard lying beneath the Dogwood tree, or traipsing through the golf course behind her house. Whether it was writing poetry and mailing it to each other for critiques or heading off to watch baseball games together. Whether it was crying or laughing or imagining or writing or fighting, we were always there, kindred spirits. Knowing and being known by each other.

I have tried over the past days to write about my weekend with Monica, but the words are elusive. How do I describe what was shared? And I have realized that I don’t. That those moments together are heart thoughts that I will place in the treasure box of my memories.

Monica has endured much including a pregnancy and hospitalization that brutal doesn’t even begin to describe, and she has taught me about the beauty of suffering. She reminds me every day to live. To make it a great day. To wear today out. To focus on Christ, on holiness, on beauty. To be me, and to be happy in who God created me to be. Some days I look at her and I marvel at her beauty, intelligence, wisdom, and spirit. Her passion for truth and Christ and His glory. And I am grateful. So grateful. Because I truly think without her, I would have given up a long time ago. God knew. God knew 30 years ago how badly we would need each other then to walk through the fiery trials of today. And as we know and are known by each other, it is comforting that God knows us even more deeply.

It is good to be here, and it is good to be known.

Monica writes of our friendship on her blog, too…

The year’s at the spring
And day’s at the morn;
Morning’s at seven;
The hillside’s dew-pearled;
The lark’s on the wing;
The snail’s on the thorn;
God’s in His heaven –
All’s right with the world!
~Robert Browning

In keeping with our annual “grilling on the first day of Spring no matter what the weather really is,” we’re grilling up some salmon and steaks with Bri’s parents. Add to that some fresh green beans, artisan wheat bread, and a salad, all followed by some Starbuck’s decaf and a piece of chocolate fudge toffee cake. Can you tell I’m finally feeling better from that nasty infection? Food is exciting to me again.

And what’s even more exciting?

Spring.

There is a vase of purple tulips on my bookshelf. A vase of daisies on my counter. A pot of daffodils smiling at me each morning. And sunshine. Lots and lots of sunshine.

Enjoy it, y’all.

I know I plan to.

The past week has been a difficult one for me as I have pondered my recent hospital stay. For those of you who don’t know what happened, I got a horrible skin infection in my weak arm… the one where the lymphatic system is compromised because so many nodes were removed with my cancer. The biggest struggle? (Deep breath!) Realizing I could have died last weekend. The infectious disease specialist told me that if I had waited much longer (and I didn’t wait long at all), it would have moved into blood poisoning and possibly then to my heart and brain. Y’all, it has completely freaked me out, so much so that I sat in the hospital and wrote out what songs and verses I wanted at my funeral, because my poor Brian has so much on his plate that he shouldn’t have to figure that out, too.

Trust me. It scared me. A lot. Over the past months as I have battled breast and thyroid cancer, I have had to face my mortality over and over and over. I’ve been asked probably 5 times in the last 5 months, “Do you have a living will?”

I have had to come to terms with how fragile life is.

But I have also been given the amazing opportunity to see just how faithful God is.

And I have thought a lot about how I’m living life. Am I making it count? Am I being a woman of influence?

John Piper said, “What choices will you make today that will give you the most pleasure a million years from now?”

Wow.

I’ve been taking a lot of inventory of my life and how I live. Is it in integrity? Am I a woman of my word? Am I honoring Christ with the way I speak and act? Am I more concerned with what others think of me than what God thinks of me?

I can’t change my past. I can learn from it. I can move forward knowing that He has the date and time of my death fixed, and I find great security in that. My future may be unknown to me, but it is KNOWN to Him, and because of that, I can LIVE.

The truth of the matter with this is that I will fail. I won’t make every second count, and if the focus is on making every second count, I will drive myself (and everyone around me) crazy. The focus must be on living to glorify God in my choices, and that will change my perspective from a focus on self to a focus on Him.

I ask myself. Is what I am doing today rooted in what I will gain today? Or is it rooted in the things that will last forever?

And what am I doing today? I am shopping with my children. I am eating lunch with my Mom and littles. I am reading books and playing games. I am de-cluttering my house, doing laundry, and preparing for a visit from my in-laws. I am making a belated birthday cake for my hubby.

They matter. They matter because even in these very temporal things, I am enjoying the treasures God has given me here on earth. The laughter of children window shopping for toys. The smiles of a little redhead sipping through a straw. The joy of time together. The smell of fresh laundry and cleaning supplies remind me of the beauty of being clean… clean in Christ. The scent of chocolate fudge cake and sharing in the joy of my Brian, my gift. These are things that matter.

And God is being glorified. And in a million years, will it matter that God was glorified in my home today?

I think the answer to that is a very resounding, “Yes.”