Three Months...and AH-CHOO

The 25th marked three months of being Meli-free. Sigh.

Some well-meaning people have wondered if/when I may consider getting another dog. I haven't yet, mostly because when I think about it I realize that I just want my dog back: my gentle, well-trained golden retriever who slept on my bed and was my best pal through thick and thin. But in addition to the emotional baggage, I was diagnosed with a whole slew of allergies just after the first of the year--including one to dogs. For those of you who see/hear me on a regular basis, this is why I sound like I have a perpetual cold. I'm allergic to just about everything. Should really live in a bubble.

I don't know how a person can go from having mild seasonal allergies to sleep-disrupting can't-breathe-at-4am allergies, but that's what happened to me starting in late-August and increasing to true misery in late November. (I'm trying not to make the connection between the start of the allergies and the start of my new job...)

So my doc says that until I get my shots cranked up and running, I can't even think about getting another dog. And if/when I do, it needs to be a hypoallergenic breed.

This was affirmed this weekend while hosting a friend's dog. When I was asked to host Daisy, I made the decision with my heart and wasn't giving a thought to my sinuses. But as soon as Daisy hopped up onto the bed and settled in Thursday night I promptly sneezed 15 times in a row. After 36 hours with a dog in the house, my friends noted my swollen eyes and excessively-stuffy-sounding voice. Yep, I've got allergies bad.

This is annoying to my general sense of well-being, but it also has professional implications. My voice isn't as strong as it needs to be. When my head is full I can't hear well. I don't have the resonance in my voice that I'm used to. So the things I love to do---preach, teach, sing---are all compromised. And I tire easily. Breathing takes effort and at times can only happen through my mouth. I never travel anywhere without kleenex.

So if you are of the praying sort, feel free to add my battle against allergens to your list. It has really become a 24/7 fight. And if you have any of those 20% off coupons to Bed, Bath & Beyond that you're not using, send them along. That allergen-free bedding is expensive....

Incarnate

The first intense round of chemo for my friend has blasted the leukemia cells. He received word last Friday that the cancer cells are gone. This was incredible, heartening news. He still has a road ahead, but this was a huge hurdle cleared.

Of course, as too many of you who read this know all too well, the slaughter of the cancer comes at the cost of many good, noble, well-intentioned cells who were doing their jobs just fine, thank you. So my friend is incredibly weak and incomprehensibly vulnerable. He has no white blood cells to fight against infection. He has no platelets to clot the blood if he is injured. A common cold or a misstep could turn serious.

I bang my shins on something just about every day. I get tiny paper cuts all too frequently. When I look down at my legs while riding the exercise bike or preparing to jump in the pool, I see the little bumps and bruises I collect in every day life. I never thought before about how many things in my body need to be working right in order for those bruises to appear. Vessels need to be clogged by platelets. A parameter is set up. The platelets say that the wound can go this far, but no further.

And as my hand grabs a door handle and then I push back hair from my eyes, I expose myself to a kabillion little germs that set my immune system in motion. As someone who suffers from (too many) allergies and has to get shots to train my immune system to calm down, I am all too aware of the work of my white blood cells. Maybe I could loan some to my friend and we'd both be better off!

When I ponder these things, I realize how dangerous it is to live in this world in these fragile bodies and at the same time I marvel at what these bodies can do. This morning, I went surfing (I'm in California, at present) and my body simultaneously helped me balance on the board, warmed my hands and feet against the 60 degree water (the rest of me was in a wet suit and just fine), and kept me attune to the presence of other surfers all while processing the granola bar I'd had on the drive down to the water.

Later this week I'll watch my friend Scott ride in the Tour of California, a week-long bicycle race. Last night I heard amazing music produced by human voices singing a capella in the Cathedral of Los Angeles.

All of these things we humans can do. If we're healthy.

And so while I waited between sets this morning, I sat on my board and I prayed for my friend. I prayed for the singers and the cyclists and the surfers. I prayed for all of us incarnate beings, who are fearfully and wonderfully made. And I prayed in awe and in thanksgiving for a God who was willing to take on flesh and become like one of us--fragile and fearfully made--so that he could heal all our diseases and redeem our lives from the pit.

Blessed be his holy name.

What to Say

I've been blogging a bit less regularly.

It's the end of the quarter around the sem, which means a flurry of grading. But that's not really why. I've been battling illness for weeks now (a cold-turned-sinus-infection), but that's not really why. I've picked up a new course for the spring to cover for my sick colleague, but that's not really why, either.

Mostly, I just don't know what to say. It seems that so much of my mental energy is focused heavenward and there's a lot of anxiety in the building around his absence, and it seems that writing about Tony Campolo's new book or the end of the writers' strike just seems trivial.

Mostly, I just want to write about how much I want God to show up in a big way in the life of my friend and how terrified I am that he won't. I want to write about how scared I am that all of my prayers and the prayers of people around the world will come to naught and then I'll be sitting right on the ash heap all over again. I want to write about how tired I am of trusting God and how I know I shouldn't be and how that makes me tired. I want to write about how mysterious it is to love God so deeply and be so afraid that he won't listen to me. I want to write about how I wish, wish, wish we were all through this already and my colleague were safely tucked in his office preparing for the fall.

I want to write about a miracle. I want to be pulled into the good news. I want to preach gospel about this. But I can't. Yet.

And so I wait. Along with so many others. Taking shallow breaths and holding our shoulders tight and gazing out windows looking at nothing.

To wait on the Lord, my students have preached this quarter, is to wait within the context of the covenantal relationship. It is to wait the way you wait for a dear friend who is sometimes late but never forgets. It is to wait the way you wait for Christmas: expectant and hopeful. It's not waiting for a plane only to be told that the flight's been canceled. It is to wait in assurance. To wait in true hope. It is to wait while being cradled in the hollow of God's hand.

This doesn't make it any easier, some days. But wishing for time to fast-forward may mean that we miss what God is doing today. How he's showing up today. To wait for the Lord is to look for the Lord. To watch for the Lord. To play "I spy" with the God of heaven and earth.

My friend slept well last night, after days of discomfort. Relief for him, and for us all, and a direct answer to prayer. I spy.

Wait on the Lord. Be strong, and take heart, and wait for the Lord.

Complete Remission

One of my dear friends and colleagues (actually, he was a dear friend long before he was a colleague) was diagnosed with leukemia on Thursday. The news has made us all sober and quiet. Since this colleague is the one who climbs mountains and skis down them, the rest of us mere mortals feel vulnerable and exposed ("if this could happen to him..."). And as another colleague said to me yesterday, "This place just feels diminished without him here."

My friend will endure an 8-day chemotherapy cocktail which they are hoping knocks the cancer back on its, well, yes, its ASS. (I find no reason to be polite where cancer is concerned.) The docs start with this 8-day intensive, and then move on to other chemo a few weeks after that. Because the illness and the chemo will make him incredibly vulnerable to any illness, visitors aren't permitted. This has all of us who love him feeling incredibly helpless and disconnected. The poor man will be flooded with emails and cards, mostly because it feels like that's all we can do.

But it's not quite.

The goal of this treatment is the complete remission of the cancer. That's the word used on websites and in medical literature. Complete remission. I grew up in a faith tradition where those words were used around the table of the Lord: "Take, eat, remember, and believe that the body of our Lord Jesus Christ was given for the complete remission of all our sins."

It was my friend Jim who first noted this connection for me, having walked through his wife's and son's cancers. "Complete remission" spoken at the table suddenly had 3D meaning--the death of the things that are trying to kill you. That's what chemo attempts to do: kill the things that are trying to kill you.

As we sit here on the brink of Lent, I think about "complete remission." I think the things that are trying to kill me--greed, the idol of comfort, anxiety, apathy, sloth, pride--and how often they bounce back in all their seductive splendor after my vain attempts to rein them in. My self-control in these matters is about as effective as taking a Flintstone vitamin to fight leukemia. I need hard-core chemo for these things. I need something outside of my self and my will and my ability. I need something--someone--that will kill the things that are trying to kill me.

"Take, eat, remember, and believe, that the body of our Lord Jesus Christ was given for the complete remission of all your sins."

That's the only thing that works. The body and the blood, the bread and the wine, the symbols of great sacrifice and great victory. The presence of Christ himself. This is what gives me complete remission from all my sins. This is what kills the things that are trying to kill me. And while I taste remission now only in part, the ingestion of the elements prepares me for the day when I will taste remission in all its completeness.

So during this Lenten season, I'm going to enter into a regular practice of prayer and fasting. I won't spell out the details here because they aren't important, but I will spell out the goal: I will pray and fast for my dear friend, that the chemo kills the things that are trying to kill him and as I pray and fast for him, I will pray and fast for myself, that through the power of the Spirit and the power of the sacraments I will deepen in my gratitude for the One who died that I may live, for the One who still prays and lives and works to kill the things that are trying to kill me.

And I will pray, daily, hourly, with each breath, that my friend and I, and may we all, will awaken at the dawn of Easter light to hear these powerful words of grace: complete remission.