Through the Deep Waters

     Roughly two months ago I had two seperate conversations, one with Clint and one with Honey.  In each I talked with them about my experiences, most especially my experiences with my mother-in-law, and how they so permanently changed me.  Changed me for the better.  I even blogged about writing my bucket list, a direct result of those experiences.  What I didn't include in that blog, but was the basis of these two conversations, was how very much I had come to understand that I am not afraid to die.  What I am afraid of is wasting my time doing things that don't matter while I'm here instead.   I can't help but laugh at the irony of a week after talking about that very thing I discover the tumor in my neck.  Looking back I can see that coming to that understanding before I found it was all part of God's preparation for me for what was to come.
     I write pretty freely in my blogs, what is going through my crazy head, and often what is in my heart. Yet, there is always a part of me that holds back, tentative I guess, maybe a little worried of offending, and always, always, always fearful of being misunderstood.  Being misunderstood could be the theme song of my life.  So I hope you'll forgive the missing filter of this particular blog, but I can't deny the almost need to write of my experiences of late.
     Surgery was, of course, a great success.  And, as I have come to rely so heavily on, I had Clint and Honey here caring for all of us.  Again, there is such beauty in family, and again I am so grateful for the one I have.  I was doing well enough Thursday that Honey felt comfortable to head back to Bama, and Clint was back at work.   I was sore, but I was doing great.  I began running a little fever Saturday night, but felt well enough to insist on Clint taking me to church Sunday morning.  Sunday afternoon I sneezed and thought I would die (I had busted apart the muscle that had been sewn back together during surgery). Sunday evening Clint started me on antibiotics.  Monday, I was determined that I was just fine and I was not going to stay in bed (I am a little famous for being stubborn).  It was Labor Day and I was going to play no matter what, and so naturally Tuesday I tanked and tanked hard.  I had redness and swelling all the way up my throat and three inches down from my collarbone.  I had excruciating pain in my neck.  I was running a nasty fever.  I felt so bad I even cried, that in itself being astonishing.  I've only felt that sick one other time.  I prayed so hard that evening.  Since I had found the lump, as I described in my earlier blog, I had felt myself being carried.  Through the whole process, even through surgery, I never doubted, I never worried because I knew I was going to be just fine.  But that evening, I felt the pricklings of fear for the first and only time.  I knew I was sick, I knew I seriously needed God's help, and I prayed hard.  Exhausted and feverish I fell asleep praying.  Being stubborn, I had refused to let Clint take me to the ER.  Apparently he didn't sleep that night.  He laid awake staring at my neck and watching my breathing ready to force me to go, saying his own prayers.  Wednesday I woke up a tiny bit better.  Clint was off from work for the day, but called in and told them to clear his schedule for Thursday and Friday anticipating at the very least I would be admitted for IV antibiotics. But by Thursday morning the rednesss had receded to just an area about the size of an egg and the swelling was all but gone.  Enough that when I went to the doctor he felt the antibiotics were working well enough I could stay on them at home.   He also let us know that all the cancer was gone.  We both cried tears of relief, but I found that my tears of relief only lasted a milisecond before they turned into some serious tears of gratitude.   I recognized instantly the miracle that had been worked in my body.  Not just the tumor and surgery, but the fight against the infection!  Surgery had been a cakewalk, it was the infection that had become so dangerous.  Suffice it to say, I should have been in the hospital Tuesday evening.  If I had gone they would have taken me back to the O.R. and opened me back up to clean out the infection it was so bad.  Then I would have spent a lovely few days in the hospital on IV antibiotics.  There is no logical explanation for why I didn't continue to get worse.  I am certain that two things saw me through, divine intervention, and Clint not hesitating to put me on antibiotics the minute he saw that I might be getting an infection.  If he had waited until Monday morning to start them it would've been too late.  However, I also recognize that having Clint here to take care of me was one of the ways God took care of me.  And yet, he still wasn't through.  I continuted to run a fever through Monday morning, all the while watching my little girl come home from school and without being asked and without telling us what she was doing, quietly gather the laundry and do it, help her brother do his homework, unload the dishwasher and try to keep the kitchen clean. I watched my husband, who has only missed work once when he had his achilles tendon repaired after he ruptured it, take days off work and completely take care of all of us.  While they were busy being angels, I was laying in bed having a life-altering experience learning some serious things I needed to know but had been too wrapped up in life to see.  It was one of those times in life when God allowed me to go through adversity to teach me things I otherwise may never have understood or taken the time to see until it was too late.  Powerful enough that I feel years older on the inside, in a very, very good way.  Isn't that what adversity and challenges are all about?  Opportunities to learn and grow by leaps and bounds.  We can either lose ourselves in despair when we are bowed down under the weight of heartache or tragedy or (in this case) sickness, or we can listen to the quiet teachings we learn from that moment that inevitably (though sometimes hard to believe at that time) give us more strength than we ever had before.  That in the end help us become by far better than we were.  In essence, grief (in all forms) does one of two things.  It makes us hard, or it makes us tender.  The choice is entirely up to us.
     I may not be able to walk across the house yet without having it sap all the strength I have, but for once in my life I'm okay with that.  The time down has been like a deep, cleansing, settling breath.  A chance to reset the compass to a better heading.  I can't wait for the journey to come!  And I recognize the miracle that God has again worked in my life.  Seriously, a miracle.  I cannot understand why he blesses me so, it unequivocably humbles me, but meager as the words are I am grateful beyond description.  And the words still echo...

'When through the deep waters I call thee to go,
The rivers of sorrow shall not thee o'erflow,
For I will be with thee, thy troubles to bless,
And sanctify to thee thy deepest distress.'

Thank you, in ways that only my heart can feel but can't express, every single one of you that offered prayers for me.  I needed them, I felt them, and I know they were heard.

The Bell of Hope

     September 11, 2001. There isn't one of us old enough to remember that day that can't tell another just exactly where they were, what they were doing, or how they first heard the news of the planes being flown into the World Trade Towers. Just like in New York City, it was a beautiful morning with crystal clear blue skies here in Tennessee.  I didn't have the television on that morning to know what was happening.  I wouldn't have had it on anyway, I never watch the morning news having washed my hands of news in general just three years before, right before Erika was born. Watching the news of suffering in Kosovo and bringing a brand new baby into this stark-raving mad world were just two things I couldn't reconcile, so I had stopped watching the news altogether. Clint was at work, Erika was running around playing, and Cletus and I were packing up the paint and supplies getting ready to head to Honey and D's house to work, standing in the driveway to be exact, when his cell phone rang. One of his friends had called to ask him if he had heard from another friend who was at the moment unaccounted for on an airplane somewhere. It snowballed from there. I remember talking to Clint on the phone after we got to Honey and D's house and sat with MawMaw and watched the events play out but we couldn't say anything, just sat with phone in hand in silence and watched.  I don't even remember hanging up.  The third plane into the Pentagon, the collapse of the first tower, the collapse of the second, the crash of Flight 93. And like the rest of the country we couldn't move. Couldn't pull our eyes away from the TV screen. Couldn't wrap our heads around what we were seeing. Unable to think. Barely able to breathe. Stunned. Furious. Disbelieving. Mortified. Outraged. Mourning. Feeling like we had been punched in the gut multiplied by who knows what. The day seemed to last a week. I walked around in a fog for at least that long afterwards. And yet all these descriptions of how it felt just don't seem to do it justice. That's okay. You know exaclty what I'm talking about because if you remember that day at all, you felt it too.
     Fast forward: Sunday morning July 18, 2010. New York City. Clint and I woke up to the alarm at 7:00am. We got dressed and were on the subway headed to Ground Zero by 8:00. The prettiest morning of our four day trip. We walked several blocks, turned the corner, and stood by ourselves at the southeast corner of the site. Not another person on the sidewalk on either side of the street. New York City was still sleeping, and we had the place to ourselves. A peaceful stillness hung in the air accompanied by that feeling.  The one that is present at any hallowed place. The second thing we noticed were the numerous cranes (eight that we could see, maybe more) sitting idle in the hole that is nearly filled, each one with an American flag hanging from it, fence wrapped in vinyl keeping the view of the the ground itself obstructed.  I instinctively smiled at the flags and again felt proud to be an American.

     We walked down the length of the sidewalk and I was immediately drawn to a breathtaking cemetery nestled in the churchyard of an old church surrounded by a black iron fence that sits directly across the street from where the World Trade Center Towers once stood. I haven't felt that drawn to a place in a long, long time and I remember thinking at the time how odd it was that I was drawn more to that cemetery and church than I was to Ground Zero itself. I had such a longing to go in the gate and sit on one of the benches in the churchyard.

     
We walked slowly past and crossed the street to where the temporary 9/11 Memorial is only to discover that we were too early. They weren't open yet. And so we crossed back over and entered in the west gate that surrounds the church, having no idea as we entered that this place would hold for us an experience that would reach down and profoundly touch our souls.  Still alone (in the middle of downtown New York City!!!) we meandered through the tombstones reading the names and dates and wondering at the people who rested there, noticing chunks of stone missing off the tops from the debri and rubble that blew through the yard as the towers came crashing down.  As we drew closer to the church we came upon a little blue sign which told a very brief history of the church and revealed to us just exactly where we were: St. Paul's Chapel. The oldest public building in continuous use and the only remaining colonial-era church in Manhattan. In 1789 George Washington prayed at St. Paul's after his inauguration as the first President of the United States. We continued up the sidewalk and hidden from the view of the street or the lower edges of the cemetery on the west side hung a large bell, sitting off to the left outside the chapel doors.  The Bell of Hope.

Inscribed on the upper portion of the Bell:  To the Greater Glory of God, And in Recognition of the Enduring Links Between the City of London and the City of New York.  Inscribed on the lower portion: Forged in Adversity - 11 September 2001.

A gift presented to the people of New York by the Lord Mayor of London and the Archbishop of Canterbury on September 11, 2002.  The Bell of Hope was created by England's renowned Whitechapel Foundry, which also cast the Liberty Bell and London's Big Ben.  Inlaid in the pedestal, directly beneath the bell, is a brass footprint of the World Trade Center Towers.  It is rung every September 11, and was rung on March 11, 2004, when trains were bombed in Madrid, Spain and on July 7, 2005, after the London subway and bus attacks.  The ringing of the bell symbolizes the triumph of hope over tragedy.  Like the majority of people in the country and the world we had no idea the bell was even there.  I couldn't resist the overwhelming urge to lightly run my fingers across the words "Forged in Adversity". 
    Emotions already close to the surface just from being on hallowed ground, then discovering this treasure, we noticed the doors to the chapel were open.  We tentatively stepped through, afraid of disturbing or trespassing, and discovered a welcome haven, a beautiful sanctuary, a museum piece itself housing displays around the edges of events of September 11th and the days and weeks that followed.  Still we were alone except for a priest standing quietly off in the corner. We quietly walked around looking at the pictures of the dirty and exhausted firemen and rescue workers and medical personnel sleeping in the pews,  the photos of missing loved ones and ribbons and memorabilia hanging from the iron fence that surround the Chapel, the small cross forged out of metal from the rubble of the towers, each small display telling a story of those haunting days. The small collection of the photos of those missing they have left up making it more than a nightmarish display witnessed on TV nine years prior.  The displays also telling the story of how in the middle of the chaos and tragedy there arose from those working there day in and day out a brotherly love, and hope.  It made it real.  As we made our way to the other side a man came in and began to play the piano, the acoustics of the old church being perfect.  And then, a woman came and began to sing.  No microphone.  Just her voice and the piano echoing perfectly in that chapel.  And it struck me to the very core and I could not keep the tears I had been choking back from coming and I wept.  There, in that chapel, on that quiet Sunday morning while New York City still slept, across the street from Ground Zero, I stood next to and on sacred ground.  It took me the rest of the day to compose myself.  I didn't take a single picture inside that chapel that day.  It would have been too irreverant.  But no picture could have ever captured the experience and the feelings that had been burned inside me.  We eventually made it across the street to the temporary 9/11 Memorial.  It was nothing after being in St. Paul's.
     Today as I have thought about those events nine years ago that burned themselves into my memory, I have also thought of the ringing of the Bell of Hope at St. Paul's Chapel. I have longed to be there to bow my head in silence and reverance and respect for all those that died that day in New York, in D.C., and in rural Pennsylvania.  I have, as I do every year, thought of the families left behind, thought of those that worked so feverishly and diligently that day and the days and weeks that followed, thought of those who of their own volition serve our country as soldiers and the families that support them.  And I have longed to hear the toll as it sounds for the triumph of hope over tragedy.  Forged in adversity.  I remember, and I hope.