From a Fellow Traveler
Today marks the start of Week 4 in the chemoradiation phase of my wife’s cancer treatment. It’s getting hard.
The physical pain is difficult, of course; but it’s also emotionally tough for my wife to leave our kids each week. The cancer center where she receives treatment is out of state, so she spends the work week living in Cleveland, Ohio, at a gracious place appropriately called the Hope Lodge. And separated from our two young daughters.
After we parted ways today, our girls went to a Christmas festival downtown with their grandparents. (I’m making the Cleveland pilgrimage with my wife this week.) Staying busy makes for a good distraction, so no one dwells too long in a house that feels empty.
While downtown, my youngest (2nd grade) wanted to go see Santa, so the girls stood in line together, my oldest (5th grade) being a good sport and waiting with her sister.
They finally got up to the front, and the youngest didn’t hesitate when Santa asked if she had been a good girl, and what was she hoping for this Christmas: “I have been very good, and I would like some ballerina toe shoes.”
(As a parent you gotta love these totally out-of-left-field Santa list items. Ballerina toe shoes??)
Then Santa turned to her older sister asked what she was hoping for this Christmas. My mom said our eldest looked at Santa and said, “I just want my mom to be well.”
As the girls were leaving, Santa reached out and touched her arm with his soft white glove and said, “I will be praying for your mom.”
What are you hoping for this Advent and Christmas?
We use often use the word “hope” in a positive light, and then it is linked to a sense of joy or wonderment. But “hope” can also be connected to feelings of anxiety and worry.
We are hoping for healing.
What are you hoping for?
Maybe a job? Stronger marriage? Deeper bonds with family?
If you’re watching the news at all, how many throughout our world must simply be hoping for true peace and quiet, for bombs to stop falling, for shelter, for lost family members, for a sense of security?
A Season of Hope, wrapped around a world struggling with anxiety and worry: that seems like an appropriate view of Advent.
I have been drawn lately to those struggling in the duality of wonder and worry. As Advent begins, I find myself focusing more on Mary and Joseph than I have in the past.
Talk about worry.
Unexpected life changes, long journeys, no shelter, a partner thrust into upheaval.
It all connects in a way that it hasn’t in the past.
Even with the Hope that Mary was literally carrying, and the promise/command to “be not afraid!”, I got to believe she and Joseph had many nights wondering how any of this would work out.
Perhaps that is just me projecting my story back into their story. I mean, I have that same Hope promised to me, and I still find myself wondering how any of this is possibly going to work out.
Hearing the story of my daughter’s concerned prayer request was sweet; but it also cut like a knife. I hate thinking of her wrestling with worry and anxiety to such an extent that cancer invaded her Christmas list. One of the hardest things to watch in this whole process has been the slight dimming of my daughter’s carefree childhood.
I am also encouraged that she is the type of loving big sister who isn’t going to spoil the magic of Santa. And also the kind of sister who can model that some Christmas wishes go far beyond simple toys and trinkets. So next to worry and anxiety, there is real wonderment and even joy.
And across the distance, way out here in Cleveland, Ohio, I am grateful for her brief encounter this year with a Santa who knows that some Christmas wishes are too much even for the North Pole workshop and a dedicated crew of elves; and is carrying her secret Christmas wish, on our behalf, to our one eternal Hope.