"My 24 hours with a Brain Tumor"
There are haunting moments in life, minutes of time that we cannot unsee or unfeel or simply store in some unretrievable bank of our minds.
The memory of calling my mother from the parking lot of Lonesome Pine Hospital, crying, no wailing, trying to form the words to say that Josh had a brain tumor will never leave me. I can hear her voice, a gasping confusion. I can feel the chill of November air - and the world seemingly stand still.
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And then, a couple of weeks ago, I listened to my voicemail, a nurse calmly relaying my need to come into the office to discuss CT scan results. I can still see the doctor’s face, a resolute, unblinking stare, trying hard to form the words to say that I had a brain tumor.
For twenty-four hours, almost to the minute, I lived with what I believed to be a brain mass, a measurable, 8mm lesion near my pituitary gland.
Sometimes we hear things with an inability to grasp their significance, but I know brain tumors. I know blood vessels that can pool blood into raspberry-like masses. I know craniotomies and cavernous angiomas and the bitter taste of those words on my tongue and on my heart. I know waiting rooms and waiting for news and heads shaved and stitched. I know fear.
Driving home with swirling thoughts and remembrances, I was no longer the watcher and the waiter, but this time the owner of this thing -this 8mm matter that could challenge, could change, could claim, my life.
Inside the house my babies played piano and guitar, laughter floated down the long hall and into the car where I sat, quieted, so unlike me. After blog posts and updated statuses and questions and praises and verses written on notepads and sticky notes and index cards, my voice was silent.
Perhaps HE knew that I needed to listen before I could open the door and tell that man -the one who listened to my past and knew how painful things had been before, how miscarriages and divorce and loneliness and fear had left me raw and grasping. The one who slept alone his first few months of marriage so I could hold a little boy with a stitched up skull whose blond hair the doctor gave to me in a plastic bag just in case I would need something to smell and to touch. The one who counted his son’s nine toes and told me it would be okay and has driven too many eight hour trips to Baltimore to count. The one who stood outside an operating room when my uterus tore during the delivery of his only little girl --and held my hand when I understood that no more babies would be birthed. The one who didn’t leave when anxiety took me under and fear became my mantra.
In those moments- on the way to the office, driving home, in the driveway, if I know me, I was afraid, questioning, shouting unfairness, wondering how many more things needed to be added to my list -my long list of trials and storms.
BUT, I underestimated the JESUS in me.
I cried leaving the doctor’s office, lost my keys and found them in the men’s restroom where I had entered by mistake. I imagined my husband and children’s lives lived without me. I was shaken. But I was not undone.
Something different came to me, something that straightened my shoulders and strengthened my resolve. Something that I couldn’t quite name because I had never quite seen it before. In forty-one years, I’m not sure I’ve rested, settled, quieted as much as I did in those moments.
This thing that came to me was so different from the fear that came in that waiting room in Knoxville, watching for the doctor who said that if I saw him come through the operating room door, he would be bearing bad news -news his nurses couldn’t carry to a young mother. Or the thoughts that came, after only seven months married and eight weeks pregnant, waiting to hear that Freddie’s brain surgery had resulted in no residual damage. So different from the crying times when I let the little ones spend a night away from home, questioning yet another decision made. Or times wanting so badly to simply be accepted -to feel I was good enough. Good enough wife and mother and daughter and sister and friend and teacher and housekeeper and decorator and money saver.
Christ named this thing for me -called it HIS STRENGTH, whispered that I’m not who I was. HE showed me my list from HIS perspective-those powerful storms designed, dealt, given to me -and the name at the top of the page was my name: Highly Favored.
I could see HIS hand working through this stream of difficulties, turning my reliance from myself to HIM, turning my faith from myself to HIM, turning my life from myself to HIM. I could see the JOY shifting from my plan to HIS.
I could feel this letting go that felt like being held.
Mary, she was first proclaimed Highly Favored, dealt a list that included unwed, pregnant teen, worried mother, lonely widower, only family member at the cross. HE took her list and through it, blessed her life -and yours and mine.
On the pages of my list he crossed through each dark moment, each fear, each doubt and wrote above the words in an ink of blood: MY GRACE IS SUFFICIENT.
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I sat in the car still settled, still silent and fully believing that HIS plan was greater-that whatever HE wrote next, whatever HE added to my story would be written for my good, my transformation and for HIS glorification.
I walked into the house to Freddie- and later that night drove to my Momma and Daddy’s house to them and my brother -and to Kelly’s house to her-each time through tears telling the news that I had been diagnosed with a brain tumor.
These five especially, they know me -my insecurities, my fears, my anxieties, but that night they heard the JESUS in me -as I allayed their fears and reminded them that HE was always good even when we could not understand.
And that I was NOT afraid.
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The next day, I had an MRI and prayed in that white tunnel until I eventually fell asleep. On the way home, the same nurse called again-this time to simply say that there was no tumor.
My mom is a firm believer that God removed those 8mm of tissue and others believe that the CT was simply misread. I believe that God, in HIS divine Sovereignty, revealed HIMSELF to me through the sufficiency of HIS STRENGTH.
Christ first revealed HIS resurrected body-the TRUTH of the gospel - to Mary Magdalene -and commissioned her to go and tell the brethren. When Christ transforms something within us, HE expects praise!
Glory with me in HIM tonight -and pray with me that HE would continue to perfect that which concerneth you and me -until we see HIM face to face!
And, if you belong to HIM, you are highly favored, too! HE is crafting your list to mold you into HIS likeness!
