Thank you for all the prayers and support!

I’m through with another 4 months of chemo and I’ve decided to take a break. Ding a ling! While in the chemo room at my last transfusion, someone rang the bell hanging on the wall near the hallway as you exit the room. It is tradition for a person getting through with their treatment to enthusiastically ring the bell, and then everyone applauds, longing to ring the bell themselves. The ding a ling is a nice gesture.

I’m on the road returning from a quick trip to California to visit with family and friends. It’s hard to type while I drive, but the Lord is close. It has been a delightful trip. I enjoy listening to audiobooks and music while jockeying through traffic, all the while, imagining I’m the best driver of all. I was able to complete a pretty heady audiobook in an attempt to sort out some mental and emotional jousting I’ve been going through. It’s hard to know which thoughts win. Sometimes the more academic reads feel like my mind is a pair of stretchy pants, a size or two too small for what’s going in. I wouldn’t know personally, but that’s what it seems like. The main theme was “Suffering and the Formation of Hope”. 

Over the years I’ve learned that it can be therapeutic to discuss with others the trauma we have gone through, and/or may be experiencing in the present. Myself included. All of us have mental journals of personal trauma. Like antiquated  roladex’s of things we’ve been through and don’t know what to do with. We tend to treat them like toxic waste, rather than important memories to unpack and cherish and learn from. I am confident it all has purpose and meaning. 

I am especially thankful for Jesus!

 … “ and through whom we live.”

Jeanne was really good at packing for our many travels. Mom power like no other. It’s incredibly challenging to travel without her. We had so much fun traveling together. My family, and quite a few missions teams, pushed her through packing challenges that most would back away from. Not Jeanne! Lots of gifts, clothing, and equipment, required to be packed for our travels. She would carefully layout everything in front of her to determine where items could be placed and smashed into bags. And sometimes she’d have to pull everything out for a do over, because it wouldn’t fit, and then weighing them and shuffling things to accommodate the exact allowable weight in each bag. Of course, I miss much more than her packing prowess. I miss her mothering us. I’ve been answering the “how ya doing” question with, I’m disoriented . This also happens to be my Mother’s Day condition.

Since 2010 I’ve gleefully rung the ding a ling bell at more radiation and chemo rooms than I care to remember, or perhaps I simply choose not to remember, or honestly I really don’t remember.

Please allow me to unpack some thoughts. Ok never mind the ask, I’m going to anyway ;-)

 My kidneys failed while on a pre-missions info gathering trip in Stockholm, Sweden. Feb 2020. Jeanne came and mothered me back home. Carefully packing our stuff for the trip home. Once we got home to our new house, she nursed me and mother me all the more. All the while unpacking and setting up our new home. In the meantime I was told my cancer was back and it’d be awhile before I would ring the bell again. Keep in mind,  I was still traumatized from the Stockholm incident. Because of Covid, no one was allowed to accompany me to all the Dr appointments and procedures. I tried to make friends with masked medical personnel and share my faith like a guy looking over the fence in a sitcom. Those were lonely days and I often missed the Mom’s in my life. Kind of like “where is my mommy!” moments.

In  April of 2020 my own incredible mother went home to be with Jesus. It was a difficult first Mothers Day that year without a living mother, to say the least. Oh yeah, and then Covid. I’m so thankful my Mother escaped through Jesus and was sheltered from Covid. Her caring heart would have struggled greatly. Deeper into 2020 Jeanne packed our stuff and we went to Iowa for my mom’s funeral. I was honored to share a few thoughts, by my Moms request, at her service. It was at her Catholic Church in my hometown. I have memories of being an altar boy at the same building. Seems ironic. Only 8 people total were allowed in the building. Hundreds watched online. She was loved by all of us and many in her community. At the funeral my kids, grandkids, and nephews were in their cars in the parking lot, watching the service on their phones. She would have invited them in to play games with her if she could have. I’d love to give her a call right now, and she’d be expecting it, because I was rarely home over the many years and Mother’s Days after I left Iowa. Our phone conversations were precious for both of us. My siblings and I (some of us lived out of state) surprised her one year with a perfectly executed one by one entrance through her front door on Mother’s Day. She shrilled like the many birds in her backyard might have if they were caught and squeezed tightly. My memories of her are packed carefully as if Jeanne were to have done the job. She loved Jeanne and mothered Jeanne especially after Jeanne’s own mother went home to Jesus. Oh my, all the mothering I’ve received, even from Jeanne’s mom. A Jesus loving gem! 

Jeanne mothered me, our kids, my grandkids, and a large portion of our church through Covid in 2020 and 2021. In the Spring of 2022 Jeanne began going through her own health challenges, yet, she even mothered us through that, by drawing her strength from the Lord. It was horrifyingly beautiful, I’m unable to unpack all of that season just yet, it’s too intimate for me, and I’m not sure it was meant for anyone but me anyways. 

I have two mother’s beautifully placed in my world right now and I’m eternally grateful for them. I can’t wait to get home and hug them, and to the grandkids so I can ring their bells. 

Through all of it, especially the suffering, I can imagine Jesus lovingly looking at me. Not with eyes of pity, disdain, or with angry arms crossed, but rather through arms wide open on a cross, announcing, I love you, it is finished. I died so you could live. 

Happy Mothers Day to all of you beautiful Mothers out there! Thank you! Keep your eyes on Jesus! Everything you do matters! 

With all our love Mac (aka Steve ) and family!