As a Thousand Years

I like to think that there are moments in life when God may give us a glimpse of his view of time. Those are the tiny eternities when it feels like so much gets crammed into an hour or a day or a week or a month that you could swear you have spent at least a year (or five) living it all.

I've had a couple of those weeks lately.

Just over two weeks ago my grandmother died. It was completely expected and completely unexpected. She had been suffering for a while, but she always managed to hang on. I think part of me half-way expected her to just go on hanging for another several years. That, however, by he grace of God, was not meant to be. Further surprising me -- I should add that I take great pains not to be surprised by planning for ever imaginable contingency -- was the fact that I had a strong, immediate urge to go back home for the services, and a much deeper emotional reaction than I had anticipated after waiting in what felt like limbo for her to pass from this life for so long. Lately, however, I think God has been reminding me in a variety of ways that there are things I simply can't plan for, anticipate and control. Thankfully He has also given me mercy to handle most of it somehow without coming entirely unhinged.

Two weeks ago Thursday I flew out to Southern California to be with my family for my grandmother's funeral. The family time was largely great. We sat over boxes of old photos for hours, ate at nostalgic places and saw extended family that I hadn't seen in years. Grandmother's service was small and respectful, and it was a labor of love for my dad, in particular. My sisters and I sang "Be Still My Soul" together, in what was, I think, our first appearance ever as a trio. Mom has had visions of that particular trio decades ago, so I imagine it was a particularly nice moment for her in the midst of the sadness and busyness that comes with the loss of a loved one.

We even managed to find times to laugh. Those of us in the house when Mom took a speaker-phone call from a telemarketer will not soon forget her comments: "Hi! We were just singing together. Would you like us to sing for you?" Or the way we subsequently sang for the bewildered caller. We'll especially not forget the way that Mom, just a little tired and overwhelmed, then proceeded to mixed her phrases and announce to the still more confused telemarketer that we were, at this "unusual family time" ... "celebrating a death." In all the laughter than ensued, we were clearly celebrating life.

The family weekend was sandwiched by work. I was asked to stay a few extra days at the office, so my return trip was delayed. Work itself was unusually heavy. Changes were made that meant saying goodbye to people we had known and loved, and other changes were made in company structure that meant some further unhappiness for a few who stayed. My own new position in the "org chart" is exciting, but it hasn't come without challenges, some of which I doubt my readiness to handle in my weaker moments. I came away feeling very positive, and exciting about the ways I have been invited to grow, but also absolutely sapped of energy.

The whole trip was made more difficult by the fact that I traveled alone. I missed Daniel's companionship and presence, and we kept up some sense of normalcy through frequent short phone calls.

Even the lighter moments of the trip were heavy in unexpected ways. Case in point, I went to a rehearsal for the choir we belonged to in Mission Viejo. That was wonderful and I really enjoyed it. However, that visit also brought me news that one of my friends in the choir -- someone close to me in age -- had died under mysterious circumstances just before Christmas. Nobody had thought to tell me at the time, so even though it was not fresh news, it was new to me. I knew enough about her situation to realize that she had probably taken her own life, which added to the pain of discovery.

There were definite highlights... such as the rental car company running out of mid-size cars and giving me a convertible Mustang for the same price, dinner with dear friends, a visit to In-and-Out Burger, and liturgy at St. John on Sunday in their new, larger space... but by the time I sat in the airport and waited for my flight home, I was, so to speak, out of gas.

Little did I know that the trip wasn't over yet, and I needed all the fumes that were left.

I made it to Atlanta without a problem, but once in Atlanta everything started to go just a tad wrong. First the flight attendants were late so we couldn't board the plane. Then they didn't show up at all, and new flight attendants were called in (from home, I presume). When the new attendants arrived and we got on the plane, we were delayed a bit because of a back-up on the runway due to earlier storms. Then the captain announced that the smell of exhaust coming in through the ventilation system was "somewhat normal" and that we shouldn't be alarmed. A few minutes later he announced that we were 4th in line and cleared to go when our turn came. However, he then turned off the engines and announced that we were no longer cleared to go until the storm that was currently pummeling Atlanta had moved on. Said storm would be the tornado that flattened part of downtown on Friday night.

When we finally did leave, the smell of exhaust was stronger, and my grasp on reality was slipping, between the fatigue and the heaviness I had been carrying. I determined that I would remain awake (unlike most of my fellow passengers), because I wasn't about to die of CO poisoning if I could help it after all that I had been through. I started to make contingency plans... like trying to figure out if the air in my half-empty water bottle could somehow be useful to me in the event of the worst. Meanwhile, the air was so turbulent that the flight attendants had to stop peanut service at the third row. I was, needless to say, further back than that, and rather crammed into my window seat as the two larger men next to me had opted not to use the armrests and were spilling into the seats in my direction. Starving by now, I found some pulverized Ritz crackers in my purse and washed them down with the water I had brought from the terminal. We were only two hours late getting in, but it was Saturday by the time we touched down.

Let's just say that I was very, very glad to get home. I was so glad, and so hungry, that I was even willing to eat from the only fast-food restaurant that is open 24 hours near us: McDonalds. Eeeew.

Further complicating matters, I had begun to get sick about mid-week, and by Saturday morning, I was truly ill. I have been enjoying what I can only think to call post-nasal ooze, and I slept the majority of the weekend, just trying to feel something like physically normal again. My first outing once home was on Saturday. Daniel and I went to get veggie burritos at a local Mexican place. As we were leaving, we got out onto a narrow highway that winds through about 10 or 15 minutes of nothing much -- no gas stations or restaurant or offices, for sure. As soon as we were on the road and stuck behind a car that wasn't moving very quickly, my nose began to bleed profusely. I quickly ran out of napkins and finally resorted to holding the clear plastic cup of ice left over from lunch up under my chin, but my white shirt didn't escape unharmed. It was one of those moments when I wanted Daniel to "do something" and there was precisely nothing (aside from offering me his shirt, which I refused) to do.

By yesterday, I was significantly less exhausted (and much less bloody), but still decidedly sick.

I had just decided that I could live with this nasty cold/infection, and that the semblance of normal life I had adopted since my return was good enough, when I got the call from my OB/GYN office. My pregnancy was molar (happening in about 1 of 1,000 to 1,500 pregnancies), which means, in short, that what developed in my womb had an extra set of chromosomes and was not capable of coming to term. The abnormal tissue either overcomes a normal embryo, if there was one, or it develops instead of a normal embryo. We're not sure which is true in my case, but either way it brings with it further worries. I had to start testing immediately. I must avoid pregnancy for at least 6 months, during which time I will be subject to further testing, because that abnormal tissue (essentially a tumor) can return (it does in 5-20% of cases), and it can sometimes become cancerous, as it did in the case of a loved one.

Best case, the surgery I already had will have done the job and in 6 months to a year, we can try to conceive again. Worse case, the tumor will return, requiring another surgery. Worst case, and the odds are slim, the tumor will become malignant and can spread outside the womb. In that case, I would require further surgery and chemotherapy, and could result in an inability to carry children in the future. I'm genuinely scared of that outcome, because both of the women I know who have had molar pregnancies were unable to have subsequent pregnancies.

The fact is that I don't know yet how it will work out. All I can do is wait and trust that God knows better than I do what I need and that his plan is bigger and better than mine. I feel like I have been handed a choice: go to pieces, or find peace outside myself. Thankfully, He genuinely does offer peace if we are willing to surrender the worries about the known and the unknown. I chatted with a my dear trooper of a friend whose own personal story has had more challenges than my own. She told me I had been ushered into a special sisterhood of women who have the opportunity to bear heavy things, and then to pass on our strength to others when their moments come. We are, she said, to be mother angels to each other. I can only hope that she is right. She usually is.

It's all very hard. I won't lie about that. I cried over onions in a pan on the stove one morning this week, and the onions were only partly to blame. My eyes are misting now as I write. I find it very difficult to trust God through the various twists and turns in the road without asking a whole lot of "why?". However, there's a part of me that remains firmly convinced that this, too, all has a purpose. He for whom a day like this is as a thousand years will see me through... even if it takes a thousand days like this one.