Addition/Subtraction and Boiled Feet

This is from earlier last week.. I just couldn't push the publish button:

When I sit here this morning, I miss Mom. I have had a hard time with Christmas this year. December is when everything starts. Zach and I spend Christmas Eve night with Mom and go to the Christmas Eve service at First Pres in Kernersville. Later that night, Mom tells me she felt so bad that she sat there and prayed "Just to be able to make it through this service with us and not be sick. To have this memory and not be sick." I spent Zach's Birthday last year with Mom doing Chemo. This round is where Mom has the allergic reaction to the Oxalaplatin and we spend Saturday/Sunday at Wesley Long worried that she has had a stroke.


This year has left me with a list of people that I will continue to miss. I miss the space you filled in my life.


This year has also brought a new list of people that I didn't know I missed. For everyone that helped me take care of Mom, I miss you. For everyone that took care of me, I miss you. And again, I am so thankful for everything that you did for us.


What has helped me push the button is I got my feet boiled today.. As I kept trying to work my way out of the boiling hot water, all I could hear is Mom saying "We no boil feet here..."

Christmas Eve

Zach and I just got back from our Christmas Eve Service at church. One of the duties of Elder is to serve Communion. I am always deeply grateful for this opportunity. I can't find the words to express how my heart feels to serve my church family.

During the service, what always speaks to me is the passage "This bread and wine are now set apart from a common use to a holy use. " Things that normally sit on the counter and in the fridge are now set apart, to join us together and celebrate this physical act that is the cornerstone of our relationship with God.

This is what I want for Christmas.. I want to be set apart from a common use. I want to be more. I want us all to be more.. More loving, more giving, more trusting, more caring, more more.

I want to live in a world where everyone is warm, safe and full.

The IN Crowd

I was reading a blog tonight and didn't need to google any words. I knew them by heart.

It is amazing the words that we couldn't spell 2 weeks ago, we can now say and recite the definition by heart. We become a walking PDR for meds, our hands are raw from the washing, and we always cough in the crook of our elbow. We learn to change bandages, figure out morphine doses, and deal with IV's.

We toss words like port and tumor markers in our conversations. We know the fast pass trick at the Emergency Room (3 little words "High Dose Chemo"). We know to steal the adhesive remover packets whenever we see them because they are like gold. We know to flush twice after chemo.

I don't want to know these things. I don't want anyone to know these things. I don't want to be in the In Crowd, that group of people that has cared for someone with cancer or been that person. I pray for the day that cancer is something we talk about in the past tense in a scary bedtime story. "When you were little, there was this horrible thing called cancer. It made people very sick. But one day, very smart people figured out how to make everyone all better and no one had cancer ever again."