"What now?"

A while back, a friend shared this comic with me.

Emotion by xkcd

Substitute a few of the pre-cancer "causes" and shift the arrival of cancer a year forward and it could be my emotions.

As my daughter's chemo treatments wrapped up early in 2012 the white area with the ?? began to grow.  Life pre-cancer was just life, it wasn't perfect, but it was. Life post-cancer is different, time feels more precious. (She's doing great, by the way.)

The white space has been filled with a fuzzy attempt to discern where my energies should be spent, what should be my focus, what is worthy of my time now that it feels more precious.  

But it's been too much thinking, not enough living.  I believe that something new, something amazing, something creative will come out of our family's experience.  Yet I'm having a difficult time waiting to see what that something is...

Random stories have appeared out of nowhere to encourage me to just move on, to live, to do.

I recently learned an adventure photographer whose work I've admired for years experienced cancer at a young age and was touched by the way his view of community changed.

A colleague shared how his career path changed following a family tragedy.

Yesterday it was Rob Bell's Drops Like Stars that jumped off the bookstore shelf and resonated in my soul as I read:

Others with far more wisdom and experience than me have tackled the "why" questions of suffering.

Here, in these pages, I'm more interested in another question...

Not "why this?"
But "what now?"

He goes on to write: "[Suffering] compels us to eliminate the unnecessary, the trivial, the superficial."

I can see that in our family's life, in the way that we've reordered our priorities and the new ways we use our resources of time, energy, and money.

Rob continues with this observation:

Sometimes what happens to us when we suffer is that we become open to the mercy and grace and gratitude and gift and appreciation and joy that are always around us all the time...

While I wait to see "what now?" I'd be content if I could be open to what is, and always has been, all around me.

Prayer & Inspiration

"How are you guys doing it?"

I can't tell you how many times my wife and I have been asked that question in the months since Chloe's diagnosis.  The answer is simple.  You get up, you get going, you get the family going, and just live the day.  You don't have a choice.

Actually, I've found there are two things that are making days manageable.  Prayer and inspiration.

Prayer is the obvious one.  However, I've found there are so many days when it is difficult to quiet my mind and heart and allow the Spirit to enter the moment.  Yet it is on those days that others tell me, from seemingly out of nowhere, that they are praying for Chloe and our family.  Today is was a colleague during my plan time, over the weekend a parent of one of my students told me that my student prayed for Chloe during Sunday School. Wow.

The inspiration piece is something that evolved as I was trying to expand my circle again.  In an effort to get back into my PLN, I began to give myself five minutes a day to explore Flipboard containing my Twitter and Google Reader feeds.  Not only did I begin to feel inspired again, I began to want to share that inspiration either through a tweet, an email, or a conversation.  A daily ritual had begun.  Now each day, without planning or forethought, I carve out a few minutes to be inspired or inspire someone else.

And that, possibly poorly written, is how I do it each day.

Prayers for Chloe

Chloe, my four year old daughter, was admitted to DeVos Children's Hospital yesterday and had surgery this afternoon to remove a her left kidney containing a large mass.

Details can be found at our family blog: http://blog.hollandanderson.net

Prayers are appreciated!