A Place for your Heart...August 6, 2021

On Monday I will have surgery. My leg will be taken from me.

First Corinthians tells us that faith, hope and love remain, and the greatest of these is love.

Last summer, I wrote of a lake in Wisconsin. I wrote that I hope you knew of such a place. For this place had embraced my famil

y during difficult times like the Great Recession and Covid lockdown...I wrote that it had loved us well.

In January I received my diagnosis of a malignant tumor. It was cold and icy and dark outside. As I began chemo, Peter put drawings and paint colors and window choices in front of me. He would urge me to look at it all, to focus on it, when my attention could be drawn to desperate, fearful scenarios.

He pulled us into a future, building a bridge to something new, a new cabin on the site of the old one. Love remains.

I am heartbroken that this tumor couldn't leave by itself...that it has to take such a big and precious part of me with it. Yet when my surgeon asked if I would give my leg for my life, I said yes. That yes continues to ring in my heart, what must surely be a celebration of gratefulness for my life.

And yet and yet, I had never been asked before what I would give for my life, for the sure blessing of breath. What has come as some answer is to see the beautiful urgency of life, that we strive to not delay, to live our moments. To say yes more often, to try our best to love others and to let their love in.

There is also a sure sense that redemption is oh so possible...that I and we can take the scraps, the most terrifying parts of our lives...and build something, small or large, the size doesn't matter. To move forward with whatever determination we can muster on a particular day, saying yes.

Tomorrow Peter, Evan, Ben and I will go to see our new cabin for the first time, we will walk around and in it together. We will smile to imagine the merry, happy, joyful times, with family and friends and campfires and boats and twinkly laughter...and that, my friends, will be in my heart during surgery, along with your sweet, sweet, sweet messages these past months.

So let's be brave and be kind...and yes, love remains.