LEANING IN. LETTING GO.

 The whole world is perched on the edge of its seat.

__________________ 

I’ve been aching for a normal week, longing for just seven days lovely and innocent as a little girl chasing monarch butterflies in the Kansas summer heat.

My prayer isn’t for the absence of trial but some small respite from it, a moment to catch my breath.

I wonder between the “Dearest Heavenly Fathers” and “Amens” if I have been conditioned to ask for less? The God of more invites me to consider this, and I am humbled by the implications of what I’ve settled for.

My cancer numbers were up this week…noticeably so.

I love that my reaction was immediately one of intellectual curiosity rather than wide-eyed concern.

There is no better way to say this:
The vibration of the whole world is on high alert.
As I read through my lab results, I feel this singular responsibility, even power, to bring that vibration down.

___________

An intriguing woman sits across from me in the circle. I observe she is powerful in a quiet sort of way. As she finds her voice to pose a question, I am absorbed in contemplating how her Converse tennies match her shirt. This distraction, of what I see from what is said, is a pleasing reminder that I am always and forever who I am.

As I turn my attention to what is spoken, she is sorting through a seemingly routine occurence wedged within a not-so-ordinary week.
I consider this disparity of life’s moments and something catches in my throat.

“My friends and I were on a walk and talking about what to do with all this fear,” she remarks.

I shift my gaze from somewhere distant and disturbing to notice the concerned look in her eager eyes. It occurs to me that there’s a profound difference between fear…and burden. And without the decorum of hesitancy, I share what has jumped to mind.

Fidgeting in the discomfort of both big emotions and my metal folding chair, I am convicted that the thing I fear more than anything else is not giving enough of myself before I die—

To exploit whatever influence I’ve been granted,

To use my voice to speak what’s in my heart,

To alter the disposition of what is in and what surrounds us,

To write, and write, and write.

I lean forward in this posture of urgency that up until this moment I didn’t know I felt. And I spontaneously begin to expose a journey of giving everything I have to the point of allowing cancer to enter in.

In this moment, I secretly feel something intensely profound:

Some things are necessary losses.

My fluctuation of lab reports and numbers seem in context to be such small sacrifice.

The woman sitting next to me is now tearing up, and in response to my admission she shares with loving admonishment what her granddaddy, John would exhort,

“Do everything you possibly can and then just don’t you care.”

 The words seem all jumbled up, so I ask her to repeat herself.

Then, in the middle of her reiteration, comes one life-changing revelation followed by the next—

~Leaning in and letting go are not counter to one another.

~To be effective for the long run, the two MUST co-exist.

 Leaning In. Letting Go. Such a breathtakingly poignant dance.

What I am left with from our conversation is this—

Sometimes it is necessary to visit the hard thing for a season.
But we are not called to pitch our tent in its midst.

Struggle is not meant to be a permanent encampment, nor worry and anxiety the invaders of the sanctuary of the soul.

NOTES:

Cancer. So many of us who live with it make it our whole world. It’s easy to do—
The fascination of what’s happening to our bodies biologically.
The fear of losing control.

I could dedicate an entire blog to what I’ve learned—about myself, the disease, health and potential cures. But what strikes me, particularly now, is we are all living through something that awakens us in the dark.

Yet, some of us are oblivious to what this chronic worry does to our bodies.
Even those of us with recurring illness are not always aware.

This week, my lab reports were difficult.
But I choose to believe this is a snapshot, and not the full picture of my life.

Leaning in…then letting go…has become the posture of my existence. It’s my homeostatic ebb and flow.

The hard season never lasts forever.
Do all that you can. Then rest.

 Matthew 11: 28-30

ABOUT THE IMAGE:  A folding chair and a wheat field. I love that what we talk about in our seemingly “closed circles,”
impacts the whole world.