So of course, we ran away, Dreamer & I & Vinny the dog.
For a whole week.
To escape the diagnosis.
To relish each other and lakeside walks, books and sunsets and daylong fires in a rented cabin.
No phones or WiFi. No laptop.
No clue the heavens would download epic hail . . .
. . . pummeling us, pelting the dog.
Afterward, curled into dry clothes again, I glanced out the window.
Foregrounding the far island,
as if levitating
off Priest Lake, the tail end
of a rainbow’s arc
hovered — curtailed,
yet luminous,
timeless and true as a small ark
of runaway light,
for maybe a minute: Dreamer saw it too.
Heaven bridging earth? Friends, it felt personal. You know what I mean: the future looms, relentless as death. Then one day we glimpse a bright strand or two of God’s handiwork, brief as a tail light’s wink in the dark, already moving beyond our sight.
“Jesus is going ahead of you. Tell others.” So said the angel to women clustered beside the tomb.
Here is a Paschal mystery. How on earth do we endure as well as emulate Christ in our own sorrowful hours . . . for the joy set before us?
Or, as a fellow pilgrim prayerfully put it, after her diagnosis, “Ohhh, I see. This is what we’re doing now: You, Lord, & my love & I.”
The most daunting aspect? Perhaps it was God’s confidence in their whispered assent.
Or so it feels to me sometimes.
There is always a reckoning.
And a beckoning.
In the garden on Easter Mary Magdalene would have clung to the man she cherished — had he allowed it. She thought she’d lost him. Perhaps she had, but only in the ways she had always known him.
“Mary,” he said. “Don’t cling to me. I must ascend to my Father.”
With dementia on our horizon, that could apply to Dreamer and me.
Or possibly you and someone you love.
Dare we taste even a molecule of the cup Jesus drank?
Can we imagine the toxic gradually honeyed? Even effervescent?
Change comes. “Do not cling to the old,” Ronald Rolheiser writes. Instead, “Let it ascend and give you its blessing.”
Here’s part of his poem “Mary Magdala’s Easter Prayer”:
“… if I cling
you cannot ascend and
I will be left clinging to your former self
. . . unable to receive your present spirit.”
For Dreamer and me, home again now, there are moments our runaway minds clamor. It’s tiring. And scary. Even though the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead dwells in us, loves us.
Ah, don’t I sound wise? I can string words together; I can’t make them live.
For now, I am a woman learning to love
the tail end of a rainbow — incomplete
and evanescent, yes — still
trying to stay safe, or is it open . . .
Friends, how might you allow what is changing your life to ascend . . . and give you its blessing?
Friends, how might you allow what is changing your life to ascend . . . and give you its blessing?Ronald Rolheiser, The Holy Longing
Photo by Harry Quan on Unsplash
This…
Dare we taste even a molecule of the cup Jesus drank?
Can we imagine the toxic gradually honeyed?
Even effervescent?
And this…
But I know that…if I cling
you cannot ascend and
I will be left clinging to your former self
…unable to receive your present spirit.
Thank you for including us in this journey.
Thank you, Rick, for mentioning thoughts that stood our for you. And for companioning me, from afar, on the Way.
I’m sorry to hear about Bill. I am listening to a book that I know you would like, read by the author. “Still Life at Eighty, the next interesting thing”. The author is Abigail Thomas. She has an easy-going, humorous style. She’s easy to listen to and so stress-relieving as relates to aging and forgetting. Blessings to you and Bill as you face this new chapter of the story God is writing in your lives.
Love,
Pam Burns
Dear Pam, thank you for your kind words. And for the book recommendation! I’m on my way to our library website to order it and will look forward to listening!
Happy Easter to you and your loved ones!
Let me know how you like the book!
Pam, I am greatly enjoying the book! Thank you so much for the recommendation!
Pam, the book is daily delighting me. Thanks for the recommendation!!
I’m glad you like it!
Laurie,
May you cling to Him as he carries you.
Hugs & Prayers,
Katie
Happy Easter, Katie, and thank you so much for your warmth and caring and wise words. <3
Oh Laurie, my heart weeps for you and Dreamer. Dementia is a difficult diagnosis (and this exists in our family) with a younger member. Mother has short-term difficulties in remembering, but I’m referring to another beloved. And we saw this in a neighbor, with dementia form calledy called Sundowners Syndrome, after he lost his wife. We wish we’d known sooner, or we would have befriended him.
Dreamer is so fortunate to have you, and you, him, as you journey through life together. And you need God, and He showed up with a hope and a promise. Rainbows are always emblematic of hope and life and not destruction. God says so.
I recall once in a dark season, when God gave me a promise emblazoned across the skies in unexpected glory—not just one rainbow, but *three*, glory piled atop glory piled atop glory! Michael literally came and got me and took me by the hand to lead me to the street: “Lynni, you must see this! It’s incredible!”
There is a scientific name for this phenomenon: a tertiary rainbow, and they are exceedingly rare. This was before the iPhone camera, and the best way I had of recording it, was in my journal with crayons. I colored it, times three across a pristine 8 ½ x 11 page! And I also praised God in prayer in my journal for His promise, in triplicate, to be with me in my dark days: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
And He, this Holy Triumvirate, is with you and Dreamer, coloring your world with hope and promise, dear Laurie.
And you know what (with all due respect to my lilting, metaphoric, creative poetess friend!), there is no tail end of a rainbow. All rainbows are in reality complete circles, symbolic, to me, of the reality of eternity, where ultimately all promises are fulfilled. Your tail end (forgive my ineloquence—and I promise that I’m not picturing this!!) is really only the beginning of God’s forever of hope and dreams (Dreamer-sized dreams!) and beauty and joy. Rainbows can only appear when the sun is behind you and the rain is in front of you. Rainbows happen when sunlight hits tiny raindrops in the air. The light bends (refracts) as it enters the raindrop, then splits into its seven colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. So Sonlight is entering your every tear and bending them all into beauty, grace, hope, and joy. I see such a beautiful arc of color in each and every, single thing you write. You, dear dreaming companion, always give me hope (and I need it). And I know Dreamer feels the same way. I see the two of you lifting each other up, embracing each other in a full-love, full-orbed, complete rainbow circle embrace!
Love you, dearest one, so much. And may the Lord richly bless you and Dreamer (Vinny, too!) a very joyous Easter. Christ is risen. He is risen, indeed! Allelulia!
xo
Lynn
Dear Lynn, Happy Resurrection Day to you and Michael and all your loved ones!
My prayers for you and your brother continue. Thank you for writing with such beauty and grace and wisdom amid all you’re enduring. I am grateful to read your triune-rainbow story. I’ve not read about the tertiary rainbow before. How glorious! You color my Easter-day world with a smile just to imagine such wonder.
The odd thing about our truncated view that day was that only a small piece of the rainbow was visible. Thanks to you, I’m now imagining the full circle — hidden from our sight at the time, yet present, encompassing, full-orbed. I shall hold that thought of hidden completion in mind and heart in the coming days.
I sure look forward to meeting you one day — on the other side!
Much love, Laurie
Oh thank you. And I’m taking that truth along to bed tonight: Hidden Completion. God’s hiddenness is yet another topic for exploration, interpretation, and exultation.
Love you and Happy Easter this side of the rainbow!
xo
L
Sleep sweet, my friend. Deep and restorative rest be yours!
Oh Laurie, your words always pierce me and find me agreeing with yes, yes and yes!
I am so sorry to hear the diagnosis that you and Dreamer must bear together. I will be praying for many precious moments of clarity between you and for the health protocols to do their good work.
Doing the NNT (next necessary thing!) is something I learned during my last cancer treatment in 2018.
Now I must practice it anew; I received a triple negative breast cancer diagnosis in February. I had a lumpectomy and am now receiving chemotherapy and after that, radiation. The hardest part has been having to miss being present and acting as doula for the birth of my granddaughter and caring for my daughter and her family in the weeks following.
I fretted about timing – perhaps I could travel between treatments? My oncologist did her best to humor me, but in the end it just wasn’t going to work out.
It took more time than it should have to listen to Jesus saying to me: “Girl, sit down and shut up. Submit to what is before you. I will be with you and with Abbie and all the rest.”
Abbie delivered Laramie Beth Engel on Tuesday, April 15 in a home birth. My hair is falling out. I can talk to Laramie Beth over FaceTime.
I have my second chemo in 5 days. Dyer is in Phoenix to help in my stead. (He will be back for chemo.) My granddaughter shares a name (Beth) with five generations of women in our family. Only 3 chemo treatments and one month of radiation to go before I can hold her.
Jesus holds all of that, along with my cynical, fretting heart, by allowing cancer to wake me up (again)!
For my benefit. For His glory.
Looking for evanescent rainbows with you,
Beth
Dear Beth, thank you for your compassion and beautiful prayer!
I am distressed you must again endure chemo and radiation and the aftermath that accompanies treatment. So hard. And then, beautiful doula, you couldn’t be present with Abbie for your namesake Laramie Beth’s blessed arrival. Harder and harder.
Yet here you are, writing about relinquishment with humor and trust and self-knowledge.
Congratulations on this little one’s entry into your lives. Your clan. A resurrection grand, yes? And such a meaningful tradition, your name extending in two directions. That is beautiful.
May you and Dyer weather the upcoming schedule with grit and grace and wit.
And blessed Easter to you. May you (and I as well) go forward in the love and strength of what’s already accomplished . . .
P.S. I am adopting your acronym (NNT)!
So good momma!
Thank you for reading. And being you. Love you forever, Sugar Bear.
See you soon for The Egg Hunt . . . <3
Always, always, always friend you draw our eyes up to the hills from whence comes our help. And to weave Mary of Magdala’s wondering and worrying into this reflection is remarkable.
Your words are a gift and an inspiration in the midst of all the hard. Thank you.
Dear Jody, thank you for both comments here, as well as the beautiful card you sent with the worded, watercolor remnant from one of your paintings. How truly even a scrap of human handiwork can reflect the wisdom and manifold grace of the Maker.
I may have said it before, but it breaks my heart that you and Dreamer must face this diagnosis. How I pray that time to enjoy one another will be extended, time to celebrate all things true, noble, and right, all things pure, lovely, and admirable, all things excellent and praiseworthy (Philippians 4:8). That’s what I try to do when my heart needs uplifting. Your circumstance is especially challenging–much more so than anything I’ve faced. But I am trusting our promise-keeping God that joyful praise and gratitude will provide strength (Nehemiah 8:10)–even when adversity assaults us! You are in my prayers, Laurie.
Dear Nancy, thank you for that precious visionary prayer of extension over us, that we might truly let our minds dwell on these things you list from Philippians. Thank you, too, for the Nehemiah verse. So grateful for you and your faith and your prayers. Happiest Ever Easter to you and yours!
Dearest Laurie,
As always your words inspire, challenge, and bless. May our God bless you and Dreamer during this time. I pray that the measures taken to hopefully cure Dreamer will be effective. In any event, as someone who lost her dearly beloved, I love the reminder that to cling to the loved one on earth deters us from meeting their resurrected spirit. Thank you for this and for all your beautiful words.
Judith, we are so grateful for your prayers. Happy Easter to you and yours, my friend and sister-poet. And yes, let us stay open, always, as we are able, to meeting “their resurrected spirit.” Beautifully said, friend. And so deeply good to read on this Easter morn.
Yes and amen to your words bearing witness to this part of life. Doing the next thing, that’s what I do when confronted with what my flesh will call “too much for me” or “too hard to bear.” I do the next small thing next to me, even if it feels like a dodge or running away…sometimes living this way, without long term goals, has led me to a place where God let the horrors pass by and then showed me exactly what I can bear–his back.
Ah there it is, what we long for–the presence of God.
Susan, your friendship gifts me yet again. I’m so grateful for the example you’ve set in in doing the next thing. It’s good for me to be reminded there is a season for “living this way, without long term goals,” being. Just being. And being drawn into the healing quiet of God’s presence anew.