Meditation on my left eyebrow

I have half an eyebrow over my left eye. It is never going to grow back.  My eyelashes are returning, as is the hair inside a temporarily bare triangle right in the center of my head.  My skin has regained its normal color, the swelling in my face has gone down considerably and may resolve completely.  I can't breathe through my left nostril - it has fused shut as a result of the radiation - but that can probably be fixed by surgery, not easily or painlessly, but it is possible to make my nose as good as new. My eyebrows, however, will never be the same.

Every day when I look in the mirror I will remember that I had cancer growing in my face - "head and neck cancer" is how it is inelegantly described in the literature. I will perpetually be reminded that my face was irradiated with the maximum allowable dose of proton beams in an attempt to kill the tumor cells that had silently proliferated in my sinus and my orbit. I may be heartened by the fact that the cancer seems to be under control, but whenever I catch a glimpse of that assymetrical brow I will remember that some things can never be fixed. 

We can fix a lot of things - medically, physically, relationally, emotionally, but a sad fact of life is that there are things much more significant than eyebrows that can never be fixed, that will always be broken, marred, shattered or scarred. We don't like to admit anything is inexorably damaged.  We all have the urge to fix what is broken, to heal what is hurt.  It feels so hopeless to say something has been destroyed, that nothing can be done, but sometimes that's the truth.  We can apologize, but we may never be forgiven. We can make restitution, but we may never be considered trustworthy again. We can try to take back our words - swear we never meant them, but they may continue to hang in the air, forever clouding the atmosphere between us and another person.

The writer of Ecclesiastes mourns that "what is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is not there cannot be counted."  He's right. For  many things there is no easy fix - for some there is just no fix under heaven. Thank God there is still Heaven.

My youngest daughters are finally learning to play pretend.  When they first came home from Ethiopia they did not know how to play.  They knew several games like jacks and tag, but they did not know what to do with blocks, dolls, playdough or dress-up clothes.  Nearly two years later they are figuring it out.  Their favorite make believe scenario is school, since that is what they know best.  Perhaps they will graduate to being princesses or astronauts before R is too old for such games, but for now they take turns being teacher and pupil.

Yesterday L was the teacher.  She got her classroom ready and then called R to come to class.  Apparently something was amiss about the teacher's appearance since I heard this interchange from the next room:

R:  What, are you getting pragnant??

L: (hesitates) Well, someday I will.

R: No! It's a question!  Answer yes or no!

L: (cornered) Well, yes.

And then class began.

a mystery to me

My mind is full of cancer these days.  My inbox is full of messages from others who have the same cancer I do, and I actually look forward to reading them.  I sometimes go off by myself to read them in private, because they are not for everyone in my family, they are only pertinent to me and they may contain a message, a chip of information, that could save my life.  You never know. I am disappointed if a day goes by without finding at least one message with the adress ACCOI - Adenoid Cystic Carcinoma Organization International.  If people knew this they would think I was obsessed with my cancer.  Which I might be.

I am not especially anxious these days - I have moved through the initial terror of the diagnosis, the stark realization that I will actually die, perhaps much sooner than I had expected - or not expected, to be more precise.  I am far beyond the days when I hated pressing the elevator button for the 7th floor of the outpatient building because I believed that was tantamount to announcing loudly, "I have head and neck cancer."  I don't hide my patient ID card in the back of my wallet anymore so I won't accidentally see it when I am looking for something else and be reminded of the insidious tumor growing just beneath my unsuspecting eye.  I am in a different place now. 

Now I read about Adenoid Cystic Carcinoma every chance I get.  I take my Ipad everywhere with me and look up a scholarly article or two while the pasta is cooking, or I reread (again) the FAQ's on the ACCRF site during the commercials.  Although I am no longer spooked by my hospital ID card, I notice I am careful to bookmark those articles which say hopeful things and avoid returning to the ones that use terms like "dismal outcome" and "relentless course."  I prefer the ones which emphasize the prognosticatory value of histologic grade, (mine is not so bad) rather than the ones that discuss outcome based upon tumor stage (mine is not so good.)  For someone who does not believe in the power of positive thinking, I go pretty far out of my way not to encounter negative information. 

And I am not sure why I am always reading about, thinking about, having to ration how much I talk about this disease.  What exactly is its hold on me?  Why does my obsession with it seem almost like a fascination, an infatuation sometimes?  I am not sure. Perhaps it is just because it was such a huge part of the past year's experience, because it is now part of who I am.  Perhaps it is because it has the quality of a public secret -  everyone knows about it, but no one  really shares the experience with me.  Secrets always have a certain power.  Maybe I can't forget it because not one day has gone by in 10 months that I have not touched the place near my eye and felt something alien there. Would I miss it if it were gone?

I don't know.  Maybe I am like a grieving person - not able to forget the source of my grief until enough time has gone by.  Maybe I am actually more anxious than I think I am and I am constantly trying to assuage my fears.  Maybe I am just intensely curious - I have always read immoderately about any new subject which has captured my attention.  Two years ago I bought every adoption book on the market, devoured them and then let them gather dust on the shelf.   So perhaps it's nothing more than a new interest.  Who can say?  Not me.

I read in Romans chapter 4 the other day about the faith of our father Abraham who is remarkable, and remarked upon, as much for what he did not do as for what he did.  What he did was believe God - Romans 4:3 asserts positively that Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness.  But Paul goes on to consider Abraham's thoughts and actions in more detail, carefully dissecting his belief, showing it to be a far more complex action than it may seem at first.

Few if any human choices work in only one direction.  One "yes" often implies many "no"'s.  Choosing one course means not choosing at least one other course. Any positive choice is also a negation of alternative choices.  That is why so many events in life seem bittersweet, and also why choosing can be so difficult. Choosing to forgive necessarily means choosing not to think about the wrongs we have suffered, not to wish evil upon those who have hurt us.  Choosing to love often means not having things our own way, not tallying offenses.  The apostle Paul's poetic definition of love in I Corinthians 13 contains as many  negative descriptors as positive ones. So it is with Abraham. What he did was believe God, what he did not do was grow weak in faith, consider his own body, stagger at the promises of God.

This dissection of Abraham's belief appeals to me - probably because I have a natural affinity for contrariety- but also because it touches upon the purely physical, earthly realities which provided the context for his faith.  God's promises were not supported by any secondary causes, they were in direct contradiction to what Abraham knew to be true about his body.  He was too old, he was not getting any younger, there were no technologies available to circumvent the problems of old age and impotence.  So he ignored what was right in front of him, he declined to consider it, he did not dwell upon it, he did not consider it an impediment.

Having chosen to affirm God's trustworthiness and deny everything he knew from experience, he then did not stagger at the promises. I love that image. Staggering implies weakness, exhaustion, infirmity, sometimes intoxicxation.  The sheer improbablity of God's promise might have caused Abraham to hesitate, to teeter, to topple, to totter.  He might have lurched, careened, dithered or pitched right off the path. He did not reel, he did not sway, he did not vacillate, he did not waver.  He proceeded calmly and firmly in his belief that God was able to do what He had promised, all evidence to the contrary. By an act of the will his step was unshakable and true; he did not stagger.

In my own faith journey I have spent a lot of time staggering about.  I have bumped up against or stumbled over phenomena which appear to be obstacles to the promises of God.  I have stopped to consider at length the kind of  things which Abraham refused to consider - my human weakness, the frailty of my flesh, my tiredness, my diseases. I have often not known whether I actually believed God or not.

Belief has always been something rather nebulous to me.  I am never sure where I fall on the belief/unbelief scale.  Do I believe? Do I really believe? (Clap your hands if you believe in fairies!) Some days I feel buoyed up by belief, while other days I feel faithless and despairing.  I just don't know what belief looks like, what it feels like.  So it is helpful to me to have a few "do nots" to check off.  I know if I am spending time and energy considering the reasons why God's promises might fail.  I know if I am filling my mind with human probabilities rather than divine prognoses.  I can pull myself up short and say, "Whatever you do, don't do that," and hope that by not doing the things Abraham did not do, I may end up doing what he did do - believing God.