We’re on Day 8 of home care for Mom after discharge from the hospital. Things have settled into somewhat of a routine. One of the things I’ve realized in this season of surgery recovery is that most of my time and energy as caregiver are devoted to keeping Mom’s meds, feedings, and wound care on schedule, and communicating with the various members of her care team (surgery, PT, OT, to name a few). I have very little time to process any feelings of my own. When people ask how I’m doing, the most honest answer I have right now is “I don’t know.” And if I do try to start figuring out how I am, it feels like opening the door to a floodgate of feelings that don’t have names yet, and I don’t have the energy to feel them and name them.

Mom needs food, water, or meds around the clock currently: 1am, 7am, 10am, 11:30am, 1pm, 3:30pm, 7pm, and 9pm. She’s working on building up her strength post-hospital stay in order to be able to shower, dress, walk safely, and eventually feed herself through her PEG tube. It reminds me of the time in ICU: the changes seem very small and unremarkable, then before you know it, you’re out of ICU and on the regular floor talking about discharge. Time appears to move slowly and more quickly.

We have a mother-in-law apartment in our home, which is where Mom and I are living currently until she’s able to be self-sufficient. It’s one of the reasons we bought the house we did: we wanted it to be a place where we could house people who needed it, mother and mother-in-law in mind. Obviously we didn’t realize when this would happen or that we would need it so soon. I was imagining empty teenage rooms and sweet, gray-haired women who needed their children to care for them. Instead it’s my youthful, 63-year-old mother who gets mistaken as my sister (obviously I don’t age as well as she does!), because cancer is attacking her. While this isn’t how I pictured it, this is what Greg and I wanted to do. And thanks to God and all the people helping, we’re doing it.

There are a few moments I’m able to get away and do some self-care. As so many people have told me: taking care of myself is taking care of Mom. I go for walks in our neighborhood for exercise, I take showers, I sleep when I can, and yesterday I got to connect with Greg for a few minutes. The kids come down and say hello every so often, have a movie night with Grandma or play card games. Greg brings me my meals and comes down often to wash syringes and cups for me (I go through many of those each day). We’ve had multiple people offering their time to come hang out with our kids during their homeschool hours during the mornings, along with meals, rides for Grace to and from ballet, housecleaning, volunteer caregivers to give me breaks, grocery shoppers, and probably so many other things I’m forgetting. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

After Mom recovers from surgery, it sounds like her oncologist is recommending chemo and radiation. So this season right now is temporary. I’m learning to be grateful for every minute I get with her, and working on the guilty feelings I have when I leave her or take time for myself. My cancer caregiver support group has been a tremendous help already. They live in this world which I have trouble describing, and the freedom to be honest with others who get it is a gift. It’s also scary. Today in group, we were talking about the “cave of death”, looking at what many of us and our person are facing. This really is a valley of death. One member who came on today just lost his wife. Another has a spouse who has terminal brain cancer and knows the end is coming at some point, just don’t know when. Others have people in treatment or in remission. I’m the new kid on the block, as Mom got diagnosed so recently compared with others who have been here for years.

While scary to face the possibility you never want to see happen, we also talked about how weirdly helpful it is. Being able to know death isn’t the end. Suffering doesn’t get the last word. I read Habakkuk this morning, and wow, did it ever speak to me. Especially 3:16. I don’t have time to get into it (I think I wrote a whole post in my journal on Habakkuk), but this part is what God spoke to me.

I hear, and my body trembles;
    my lips quiver at the sound;
rottenness enters into my bones;
    my legs tremble beneath me.
Yet I will quietly wait for the day of trouble
    to come upon people who invade us.

From that I heard I’m in good company with the prophet. It’s okay that my body trembles when I see my mom suffer. It’s okay that my lips quiver when I think that she might never get to see her grandchildren grow up. It’s okay that rottenness enters my bones when I watch cancer ravage her body. It’s okay that my legs tremble beneath me when I wonder how I can do another day. Yet. Yet, one day cancer will be irradicated. Yet, one day, my mom’s body will be fully renewed. Yet, one day, Jesus will come and will finally cast out all sin and sickness and death and struggle, and the glory waiting for us isn’t worth comparing to the suffering we’re going through. Habakkuk was told that the righteous will live by faith. That point, “yet”, is where my faith comes into play. It takes faith to go through the valley, believing the valley isn’t the end. Habakkuk needed to watch an evil people come ravage the Israelites. And in the previous verses, God told Habakkuk that this valley of his wasn’t the end. The Chaldeans would eventually see God’s judgment for their evil. Would God take away the evil day coming for his people? No. Yet the valley isn’t the end. Habakkuk put his faith in God while experiencing the gap suffering creates between who God says he is and the evil we experience. We see his faith in action as he says he will wait quietly for the day when the most awful wrongs will be made right. The book ends with this song:

Though the fig tree should not blossom,
    nor fruit be on the vines,
the produce of the olive fail
    and the fields yield no food,
the flock be cut off from the fold
    and there be no herd in the stalls,
 yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
    I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
 God, the Lord, is my strength;
    he makes my feet like the deer’s;
    he makes me tread on my high places.

To the choirmaster: with stringed^[d] instruments.

God the Lord is my strength in this valley. God the Lord will give me what I need. And because he is my shepherd, I shall not want. Even if my worst nightmares come true. Even if my mom dies a horrible, painful death. It won’t be the end. Death doesn’t have the final say, because Jesus conquered death. My mom’s life is tied to his. Since he rose, she will. That’s our final hope. And this is worth repeating: having this hope does not take away the pain of the valley. Jesus didn’t cry out on the cross as he experienced the intense pain of death by torture and separation from God: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me!” Or “God is for me!” Or “Hallelujah!”. He cried out a psalm of lament, Psalm 22. In his suffering, he cried out why. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Don’t take that away from us grieving people. Let us grieve like our Savior did. Let us cry out while we bear our cross. It doesn’t mean we don’t believe in our final hope of resurrection life. It means we’re grieving. And our suffering Savior is so near to those in the valley.

And so we begin. On the edge of two seasons: almost done waiting and almost ready for surgery. I’ve handed off and prepared everything I could in order to be fully present with Mom through the next phase of surgery and recovery. I’m humbled and grateful for the dozens of people who have picked up various parts in order to support our family so I’m free to do this, and for the community supporting Mom.

There are further seasons to this cancer journey, but I can’t see past the one step ahead of me. The ironic thing is that we often fool ourselves into thinking we can indeed see many steps ahead, yet we can’t. Nothing is guaranteed. I have a new understanding that I don’t know what tomorrow holds. But I do know the One who holds all things together. So I may wail, but I won’t despair. I may be struck down, but I’m not destroyed. I may be sorrowful, and I will hopefully learn to rejoice. As Christians, our bodies hold the death and life of Jesus simultaneously. It seems counterintuitive, or flat out impossible at first, but it matches where we are in God’s story. Sealed with the Holy Spirit, yet waiting for final salvation from God’s wrath. Adopted, yet waiting for the arrival to our new home. Made fully, positionally righteous, yet struggle with sin daily, waiting for our righteousness to be made perfect. Seeing in a mirror dimly now, and one day seeing fully.

My strong emotions don’t mean I don’t trust God. They mean I do. I trust him enough to feel them and to bring them to him. I used to live very shut off from my feelings. God has continually called me out of that numbness because it was self-protecting, and in so doing, self-harming. I was living as if I knew best, and distancing myself from God, thinking how terrible he was at protecting me from pain. Yet I was keeping myself from the very One I needed most in my pain. You see, I didn’t realize the truth of being a Christian that Jesus reminded us of often in Scripture. You need to take up your cross and follow him (Luke 14). Provided we suffer with him in order that we might be glorified with him (Romans 8). Through many tribulations we will enter the kingdom of God (Acts 14).

There are moments I feel God’s word to be true. And there are moments His promises feel very hollow, as a friend so aptly put it. If my faith were based on my feelings, I’d have stopped believing in Jesus a long time ago. No, he’s the anchor when my feelings toss me around. I need God himself, and I need a God who is great, wise, powerful, just, good, steadfast, loving, and holy, to name a few, more than me or any other human or created thing is able to be.

I’m in a storm, and I’m going to cry out. Jesus isn’t asking me to just grit my teeth and bear it. He isn’t asking me to recite Bible verses about how good he is. He isn’t asking me to put a smile on and fake it til I make it. If he’s really God, Creator of the Universe, Savior of all who trust in him, dead and risen again, Lord of everything, holding the universe together with the word of his power, King of kings and God of gods, and if he really is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit, if he really is for me and has engraved my name on the palm of his hands, if he really will walk with me through the fire and flood, then I will be brokenhearted. Then I will be crushed in spirit. Then I will enter the fire and flood. Then I will cry out. Let’s see if he really is, and really will. I’ll keep you posted.