Patience is a Virtue...

There is something baffling about Eternal Process...
But I don't think there used to be.
Since almost everyone in history was by necessity a farmer I think that patience has become a problem only relatively recently.

Take, for instance, my zucchini plant (give me a few weeks and I'll be begging you to take my zucchini!) When I bought the plant it was tiny. I remember thinking there is no way I am going to have too much zucchini to eat this year. Yet something in the back of my brain told me to plant it away from the other vegetables with plenty of room, just in case it did the incredible hulk transformation thing like last year. We all take a breath when we think about last year and zucchini--it became the staple of every meal.

All spring I was wondering when the zucchini plant was going to take off. It seemed like it was tiny for a long time. Watering every morning I looked for something new. Thank goodness I stopped short of measuring the leaves...the neighbors already have questions about my gardening fanaticism. Then it was definitely bigger, but maybe I gave it too much room. Look how far away the rest of the vegetables were!

Next came the gorgeous yellow-orange flowers, but where were my zucchini?!
I smiled at myself, impatient with zucchini progress and reflected on six months of Tracy's chemo treatments. Now there was an exercise in patience! At mid-forty Tracy and I were suddenly thrust into Senior Citizen lifestyle. Almost overnight all our associates were twenty, thirty or forty years older than us. We saw all the same folks--at the doctor, at the pharmacy, in the chemo treatment room. Our whole lives became centered around appointments, none of them as precisely scheduled as they sounded when we made them. It became clear, quickly, what the word "waiting" means in "waiting room". Remembering how we used to laugh at jokes about Seniors eating dinner at restaurants as early as 4pm, I suddenly caught on that the joke was on the comedian and his amused audience. Seniors aren't going to dinner at 4pm, they are finally done with their "morning" appointments and just now getting lunch!!
We learned what it means to wait, patiently.

I remember with sickening clarity our first visit to the oncologist office. If I could have sat in Tracy's waiting room chair with him, I would have crawled in. The best I could do was to lay my head on his shoulder tucking my face toward his neck so I couldn't see...patient after patient, most with no hair, walking slowly up to the desk to check in. Laughing...I couldn't figure out that part...why were the receptionists, nurses and patients laughing and joking with each other?! Didn't they know they had cancer...scary life-changing, loved-one robbing thief? After weeks of surgery recovery and waiting for enough healing to start the treatments, morning after morning brought waking into consciousness with something huge nagging at my brain. Then that moment when I was fully awake...staring with wide eyes at the ceiling...Cancer, we were living the cancer nightmare.

The first chemo treatment was terrifying. My heart beat fast as Tracy chose a recliner chair in the treatment room. Just that morning, the surgeon had inserted the port into his shoulder, sewn the tubing up into the interior jugular artery in his neck. And now the i.v. needle was secured into his port. And the forty-eight hour treatment had begun. Two hours in hospital, twenty-two with a pump at home, two more in hospital and then the final twenty-two at home. Counting the time waiting for our turn, it was over fifty hours every other week and that was just for the chemo itself. The week in between appointments was when the suffering began, hundreds of body cells, good and bad, destroyed...cheating cancer from taking Tracy, while pushing Tracy as close as possible to death. Know what you learn while you wait? Patience. I can now sit in the same chair at a hospital for hours working word puzzles or number games. The ability to read came later in treatment. At first I couldn't process the print on the page...too many racing thoughts, too much "reality" in my face to let a book lead me to escape into fantasy. My world was too harshly believable, stranger than fiction as they say, for me to run away. Music made me cry, books made me antsy, everything was different, nothing stayed the same.

Fast forward a few months...look at us! We walk into the hospital and Tracy, who is almost completely stripped of any energy at all starts joking with the receptionist and nurses. He isn't bald because his chemo doesn't strip you of your hair, but he is stripped of just about everything else. You wonder what the last thing is you will be holding when all the chips are down. Tracy's humor will never die. Cancer didn't kill it, not when it killed his brother and not when it almost took him. Pain didn't kill it...and the pain meds only sharpen his already-dangerous wit. Laugh and laugh, it was mostly black humor but we clung to it like a lifeboat. And the nurses and staff played along. One day we walked into the treatment room and I said to the nurse, "He would like steak and mashed potatoes today!" Several minutes later she emerged with his toxic meds oxaliplaitin and lucovorin, one a vitamin to kick the other into action. On post it notes attached were one label "Steak" and the other "Mashed Potatoes". Tracy began calling our visits "Kelly's Chemo Club" because I processed the only way I knew, by talking to other patients and their families. Tracy would sit down, get hooked up, and work on his laptop, listen to music in his earphones, or read. If it was a really good day, he would sleep. Nothing was as sweet as sleep, if it was deep, because that was the only true escape from this hell. I would, as he says, "Work the Room". Angels, these people were all angels. All different shapes and sizes, all different colors and ages. All suffering, all afraid. Coming home from treatment always meant one thing, crashing into bed--Tracy because of the physical chemo tidal wave that was starting to hit, me because my emotions were so strung out talking to other patients, hearing their stories, crying, laughing, soberly sharing for hours left me raw and exhausted. I don't know what my children thought. Their parents were emotionally fried and physically spent.

How long will it take for my zucchini plant to produce? Time is measured differently now in my head. One more clean blood test with no evidence of new tumor growth...by the next cat scan we will be in full zucchini harvest. Every day with cancer still asleep is endless possibility, every month of cancer-free cat scan is another anniversary party planned in my head. Will we make it to that 25th in two more summers, I don't know. Will we celebrate our 50th twenty-five years from then? I know one thing and one thing only--it's not about the years, it's about the process and the learning. So far we've built a strong house to stand against the wind. Give us another few zucchini harvests to come and we will have created a mansion that will stand through any storm and be our refuge in Eternity.

Savior's Plea

"Father, forgive them for they know not what they do..."
I've never understood that--
Ten words uttered in absolute agony
Hanging from a cross
Struggling for breath
Mere moments left in His mortality.

I'm not alone in my bafflement
Pilot was amazed
And apparently disgusted
Physically and symbolically washed his hands
As if that could ever be enough
While they, the ones our Jesus would ask Father to forgive, screamed
"Crucify him! Crucify him!"
How could He think they didn't know what they were doing
When they had demanded it be done?

And when I ask the Father
Since He has promised to respond
I am staggered by the answer I receive
The Spirit tells me
It wasn't what they did
But Whom they did it to
That would cause Him
The Greatest of All
To plead for their behalf

The Creator of the Universe
Alpha and Omega
The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
The very God of the Old Testament--
Was Him they spat upon, stripped, scourged, and mocked.
And when He comes in glory, and every knee shall bow
They will strangle forth the words,
"We knew not, Father. Forgive us. Please forgive us!"

"Father, forgive her, for she knows not what she does..."
I take the Sacrament each week and my mind wanders
A sacred ordinance performed with His disciples in the Upper Room
Repeated for me each week of my life
So simple, and yet, so hard for me to comprehend
An opportunity for me to fully repent and be clean.
Fretting in my mind about the busy week ahead
I miss my opportunity to feel His forgiving love

"Father, forgive her, for she knows not what she does..."
I'm so exhausted that I fall into bed
Remembering my prayers as I'm drifting off to sleep
I try to concentrate on the words
It comes out trite and insincere.
I have approached the Royal Throne of God
Addressed the Father by name, mumbled words that even I don't understand
Then closed the feeble attempt in my Savior's name.

"Father, forgive her, for she knows not what she does..."
My thoughts have carried me into darkness
I feel like there is no hope
I'm not worthy of the Savior's love
I've messed up too much
There is no way back for me.
Denying Christ's power
Believing I'm unsavable
I turn to the Gods of this world
To escape my pain.

My Jesus suffered for me
Yet I turn away
It's too hard to believe what He says.
And Satan smiles.
Another victory for the one who wants to destroy me
Trusting the Master of Lies,
I turn away from the Master of the Universe.

And when I ask the Father
Since He has promised to respond
I am staggered by the answer I receive
The Spirit tells me
It wasn't what I did
But Whom I did it to
That would cause Him
The Greatest of All
To plead for my behalf.

The Creator of the Universe
Alpha and Omega
The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
The very God of the Old Testament--
It is His gift that I disregard, disobey, ignore and doubt.
And when He comes in glory, and every knee shall bow
I will strangle forth the words,
"I knew not, Father. Forgive me. Please forgive me!"
And in His infinite mercy, it will be done.

Defined In a Moment of Time

Pack is my middle name. But I had to give it to myself. When I got married and went to register my new identity at the Social Security offices they asked for my full name. My new full name was Kelly Pack Beck. You may not think it is flashy but not everybody's name can fit comfortably into a folk song. Mine does. Try it out: Sing "Kelly Pack Beck and I don't care..." repeated three times for a substitute lyric in "Jimmy Crack Corn". It fits perfectly. To finish the song with great pizazz choose your own favorite name with three syllables (Anderson is popular in my neighborhood). Now sing the previous lyric three times and finish the third line with "...I don't care...my name's not Anderson!" I'm famous for this song. Mostly in California, with young women now adults who are finishing college. Young Women Sunday lessons and Girl's Camp Fireside chats tend to carry from them embarrassing stories that are repeated with every reunion of girls-become-women and their once-upon-a-time leaders. These girls-who-loved-me-when enjoy introducing me to people I have never met by singing this song. Where is a seer-stone for average people when they need one? I never would have started this tradition, had I known!

But the raw and painful truth is that my middle name should have been Drama. I owe the credit for my acquisition of dramatic flair to my mother. I'm confident that she owes the credit to her's. My grandmama could turn on the drama like no other. Although to be accurate, I don't remember her drama ever being turned off. Raised an only girl among three brothers and their friends, she must have carried it like a weapon, used it like the fish that blow themselves up to a threatening size when they sense that they are too vulnerable and about to become prey.

The most dramatic moment I can remember as a child, the one that defines the roles we chose as children best, occurred one night at dinner when my mother stood up from the table and declared, "I am going to divorce your father!" Only half the children in my family still lived at home. My older sister, me, and my younger brother. At this shocking outburst my sister laughed, my brother cried and I politely requested, "Pass the mashed potatoes." Always my savior, food blocked me from pain. And frozen in those few seconds in time is the picture of my trauma, my drama, and my greatest mortal challenge in life--allowing myself to feel the hurt that mortal relationships bring.