Standing Stone

While riding in the car today with Scott, I started an out loud, verbal list.  It's a hopeful list.  There are some things on the list that I have thought about for a long time.  The official name of the list is "Three Weeks After Chemo".  Three weeks is enough time for my blood to repair and for me to finally indulge in some things I have really been missing.  A lot. 

So three weeks after chemo and one week before surgery, I have a lot of living to do. 

1.  I am going to kiss Scott on the lips.  (sorry if we make you blush kids ;)

2.  I am going to share a glass of wine with him - drink out of the same glass.  I am going to steal something off of his fork and not worry about the germs.  I am going to hold his hand after school and not think about picking up strep. 

3.  I am going to hold those sweet grandbabies - even the bigger ones - and not let them go.  I am going to smother them with "grandmumsy-kisses" and tell them when they think I am done, that they need more.  I am going to wipe their noses and lay down with them when they aren't feeling so well and stroke their hair and faces. 

We will not ask them ever again to put on hand sanitizer before taking off their coats.  

4.  I am going to hug my kids every time I see them.  And when I am hugging them, I am going to say into their ear "I love you". 

5.  I am going to eat a really big salad.  With strawberries and blueberries on it.  And cheese, really good cheese on it.  Fresh salad greens that came off of the dirt pile of a garden just an hour before.  That dirt out there that has so much bacteria in it.  I'm going to eat the salad greens off of there even if they are old and snarly and bitter.  And if that is the case, I will be glad to taste the bitter.

6.  I am going to go sit in the middle of a mall and just watch people.  Just enjoy being around people and conversing some and interacting. 

7.  I am going to eat a soft serve ice cream cone while sitting in that said mall. 

8.  And one of the biggest tests of all - I am going to go to a large discount department store.  In our town that's Walmart.  But it could be Target.  Or Kmart.  Or Meijer.  Or Costco.  Any store that has that many people walk through that many doors on any given day has a lot of germs.  A lot.  I have avoided them like the plague, and now, now I will go into our local meeting place of all of Ashland with a great big smile.  

I might even sit down at their little diner and eat something. 

I am going to walk into that cauldron of recycled air that collects all of the germs in any three county area and keeps pumping them out over and over and over again each day - sometimes even breaking them apart further causing them to do more damage.  I am going to walk into that germy, oozing, sneezing, coughing, viral place - and that's just touching the cart - then I am going to walk on in and check the blue-light specials.  (and my doctors thought I was a little too brain damaged to remember all of that)

9.  I am going to take a long, hot bath.  I am going to soak my muscles that have been longing for hot water therapy for ever so long.  I am going to luxuriate in hot water that has not been boiled up to my chin.  With a couple of drops of peppermint oil in the water to completely relax. 

10.  I am going to get a massage. 

11.  I am going to go outside and pull weeds.   And dig in the garden.  And transplant my flowers.  And touch dirt.  And plants.  And not worry about bee stings and mosquito bites that could now send me to the hospital. 

12.  I am going to drive a car for miles and miles and miles and miles and go far away.  Not sure where yet, but far away.

13.  I am never again going to treat the act of reading and reading comprehension as a secondary blessing.

14.  I am going to pick up, smell, imagine the taste, then purchase fruit.  Fruit that has had 25 hands touch it from harvest to my mouth.  I'm going to touch it, taste it, eat it.  

15.  I am going to take Scott out to a nice restaurant - we have not sat together, perused a menu for half an hour then ordered a meal for over six months.  Longer - the last meal we ate out together was when we were doing some early Christmas shopping.  Last year.  We had no idea. 

I want to sit with him and have someone serve him, and I want to enjoy it all.  We have missed our four-hour-restauraunt-meals a lot.  We have missed trying new foods, new wines, new ideas.  We have missed dipping a common loaf of bread into olive oil and ordering a second one.  We have missed delicate desserts served with flourish.  It was a pleasure that we did not get to enjoy nearly enough because we were always conscience of the cost, but now it seems more important than ever. 

We have missed dining with each other in a large room with other people.  

16.  I am going to get up in the morning and not feel bone-scratching tired.  Not feel half sick.  Or wholly sick.  Not feel a dozen pains.  Not wonder about my blood counts.  Not take my temperature. 

********

That's just a partial list. 

I need a list like this because I don't want to ever forget.  And forgetting pain is sometimes too easy.  With getting some chemo reductions this past month, I suddenly crave coffee.  I could barely smell it three months ago - but I choose not to remember how loathsome it was. 

It is so easy to forget.  And the forgetting makes you live a life that takes away from others that are in the midst of pain - just because you don't remember it so keenly, doesn't mean it is not tearing their lives apart.  Just because you are not feeling it hit you hard now, does not mean it does not hit hard. 

Stuffing it somewhere in the back of your mind and trying to forget the pain only makes the journey somehow cheaper.  Less worthy of telling.  Not as important as it should be. 

If there is one thing I must remember on this journey - it is not to forget. 

That's why there are so many stone pillars throughout Israel - they didn't want to forget either.  They had gone through great fear or pain or suffering and then met God - and they set up a stone stack or "massebah" as a remembrance.  Because they knew that humans are pretty good at forgetting the bad horrible things they don't want to think on, but they also knew you had to remember those to remember how you met God through it all. 

If we down-play the bad, that makes God's intercession not quite so awesome. 

If we over-play the bad, we miss life, and His great blessings that He meets us with while we are in the pain. The "prepared banquet before my enemies" talked about in Psalm 23. 

So as a good balance, I want to make up a list, so I remember, but I want to make up a list that puts me back into living life. Back into eating at His banquet table.  In the midst of the desert.  In the presence of my enemy - cancer. 

The shock of hearing the words "aggressive" and "fast" and "cancer" all in one sentence does not ever sound better or easier or kinder.  But knowing that God has given me this moment - this time, this living right now because none of us are promised tomorrow - knowing that and remembering that makes the good so much sweeter. 

I don't want to ever forget what God has done for me.  How He has met me at my weakest, hardest moment.  I don't want to ever forget that God can take my life tomorrow, or I might have thirty years of life left.  I don't know - but I do know that I have been given a gift.  A gift of knowing Him deeper.  A gift of knowing Him in the storm as well as on the beach.  A gift of knowing Him when evil, like leaven, tries to overtake one of His children. 

A gift of seeing miracles and knowing that He is a God that delights in delighting us on the toughest trails of our journey through life. 

Ray Vanderlaan has a great study on the "Standing Stones" of ancient people.  In the Bible, we are told of many who used such examples to signify great events when they "met God".  In his words:  

"They are lonely sentinels on the ruins of ancient cities' gigantic stones erected by a past civilization, their purpose and message lost to history. They provide a glimpse into a custom that lies behind several significant stories in the Bible, and they are the foundation of modern practices in a Western world 6,000 miles and 3,000 years away. They are "standing stones."
The most impressive collection is in the high place at Gezer, where ten stones, some over 20 feet tall, stand in silent tribute to a long-forgotten event. Their size is probably evidence of the importance of what they represented. How they got there is uncertain, although clearly they came from some distance away.

Long before the Israelites arrived on the scene, pagans in the Middle East erected sacred stones to their gods. If one of their gods (or so they believed) caused an important event or provided a significant benefit, a stone was erected as a testimony to the action of the god. If a covenant or treaty was signed between cities or individuals, stones were erected to declare the agreement and to invoke the witness of the gods. Travelers who saw the standing stones would ask, "What happened here?" and the people who knew the story would give testimony to their gods.

To this Middle Eastern culture, God revealed himself so that he could accomplish the great work of restoring a lost world to himself. His people worshiped him and memorialized his acts of deliverance as their custom dictated: by erecting stones."

I want to be a standing stone.  I am the most imperfect, sinful person some days.  And yet, God has chosen to do a work in me, and therefore, I want to be a standing stone to Him.  

I pray for "clear margins" and "no cancer cells" to show up on that pathology report after my surgery - but I have no guarantees.   And these last months having listened to the ones that He loved struggle over and over and over again in the scripture, makes me realize all the more that I have no guarantees. 

But I have a God.  A Savior.  A Redeemer.  And a Healer. 

Quoting Ray Vanderlaan again:

"No massebah or stele mentioned in the Bible has been found, though it is possible that someday that may occur. Nevertheless, we must find ways to remind ourselves of God's presence in human history and to lead others to him. In a sense, we must become standing stones ourselves, living testimonies to the power and love of God, pointing beyond ourselves to the God who is at work in our world as he was in the world of the Israelites."

I want to be a standing stone, pointing beyond myself what God has worked in me on my journey. 

He has taught me some things on a deeper level than I ever dreamed imaginable. I have sat in His classroom as He taught me all alone what it is He wanted me to know to this date on my God-journey with Him.  He has shown me His mighty wings.  His angels.  His words in a wordless situation. 

I have a God that is alive and acts on the behalf of His people.  

All this. 

What He wanted me to remember. 

And I pray I never forget.  





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http://www.followtherabbi.com/guide/detail/standing-stones

http://followtherabbi.com/journey/israel/standing-at-the-crossroads