Hello Caring Bridge Circle,

Usually, this week would have been my next round of chemo. Three weeks goes by in a blink. However, this is the first week of a big move to an every four-week cycle of chemo. Friends, I cannot describe the difference; it's a full seven days of feeling like my current best self. I didn't expect that it would be possible to extend this rhythm until the fall, but here we are. It is glorious.

Deeply carved woman is a turn of phrase that I have not been able to let go. It was gifted to me by a friend. We had known each other a few years back through the friendship of our kids, but it had been years since we had connected. When she heard of my diagnosis, she reached out. She has been on a cancer journey of her own these past couple years, and she was the one who described us as "deeply carved." When I asked her about it, she said it came from a magnet on her mom's fridge, and she, too, has not been able to let it go. It captures something true about the ways life can shape us. As she wisely put it, "we are not broken, or distorted, but, I think, polished, worn, carved into more dimensional beings." Deeply carved. 

I have always loved Christian metaphors that image God/Spirit as a potter with hands shaping this soft fragile world and precious fleshy creature bodies. However, since cancer and possibly just with age and peri/menopause, there is a stiffness in my bones and hard tumors in my flesh. These images of wood or soap carving feel very much closer to my pulse.   I'm reluctant to name the Spirit's hand as the one directly doing the carving.  That gets a little too close to some of my least favorite things that well-meaning people say to someone who is in a season of being "deeply carved." 

Things like, "everything happens for a reason" or "God doesn't give you more than you can handle." Kate Bowler takes these on beautifully (and she's recently added "choose joy"). I'm totally with her on this, and I'm considering adding another: "Take it one day at a time." 

This one has been a lifeline in my family's survival toolkit. It has served me well for almost 5 decades; and, some days, even one day is too much! But... there is an implicit message that the future is to be feared. Stay focused on today because tomorrow is scary, uncertain, and overwhelming.  Ironically, when I tell myself to "take it one day at a time," usually I'm doing so while looking ahead to tomorrow to see what's trying to sneak up on me. 

Sure, sure. There is real value in being grounded and fully present in today. Like all these well-intentioned sayings, there may be a nugget of truth and helpfulness within, but is the future just scary, uncertain, and overwhelming?  This is one of the many things that Playdates with Death™ is teaching me.  We truly can hold fear, uncertainty, and overwhelm alongside beauty, joy, and play, especially when we are held in love and in community. 

So, my deeply carved self is giving, "take it one day at a time" a rest and trying out questions like:

How can I be open to the fullness of now?

Where can I ask for help?

What can I offer today?

What small thing can I do right now that builds the future my heart hopes for?

They are each an invitation to a deeper intimacy with the now but without the vigilance of fearing tomorrow. It's taking it one now at a time and holding the now in all its deeply carved wonder.