The Coming of Winter

We took a drive up our road to look for some leaves for an art project this week. The aspens are glowing like they have an alternate light source. 

Fall is such a beautiful time of year. And right outside my window up here in the mountains I watch the leaves change from green to golden. And I love it.

When we traveled full-time, we spent some pretty spectacular months out East. We just so happened to meet the peak of fall in the remote mountains of West Virginia and I must say those were some quite exceptional days. We had some sweet pumpkin patch experiences in Virginia where I could actually wear flannels and boots instead of tank tops and flip flops- the standard Arizona fall wear. We camped on the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina and hiked while cool breezes literally made the colored leaves swirl around us. It was truly magical. 

The secret to so many of the places we visited was the time of year we experienced them. Not so sure I’d love the U.P. of Michigan in the winter or the Florida Keys in the summer. 

And those amazing mountains of western North Carolina? Pretty sure I wouldn’t want to visit them in the winter either. Why? Because everything will feel dead. All those vibrant colors will give way to endless miles of gray, lonely-looking trees. 

I think I often forget what follows fall. I’m all in for the colors and the beauty and the cool crisp air. But then, the leaves fall. And everything dies. And things look a bit sad.

All this fall splendor is temporary. And the temporal feels much more real to me these days. 

Anthony had his surgery a couple weeks ago. The surgery itself was “textbook” in the words of the doctor. The recovery on the other hand was “pure torture” in the words of me. The pain was basically impossible to manage for several days and it was a long and weary stay in the hospital. But we made it home and Anthony is back to himself.

The pathology report showed the cancer has spread to several lymph nodes and the radial margin of the colon is still positive for cancer. This basically means they removed all they could of the colon and the tumor. But it has spread beyond the colon lining. So his official diagnosis is stage 3B colon cancer. This week we meet with the oncologist and find out what kind of chemo to anticipate.

Is this good news? Well, of course not. 

Could it be worse? Yes. 

But it could also be a whole lot better. When you talk about your husband and cancer in the same sentence, it’s never good news. It’s quite surreal actually. Like, wait, cancer? Isn’t this supposed to happen to old people? Grandparents whose children are all grown up and married and established? Not people who still coach soccer and build lego sets with their 6 year-old while watching college football on a Saturday afternoon?

But alas, we don’t get to pick out our lives of ease. (Sorry, spoiler alert.)

So I guess the thing is about this current trial… it doesn’t surprise me. I’ve learned life is hard. And sad. And suffering is unavoidable, really. 

But also, the Lord’s goodness never wavers.

My friend sent me a quote this week. My friend who has been through the depths of grief with me and doesn’t try to fix anything or Bible verse it away. A friend who knows truth but also knows pain. And is ok with the fact these two realities co-exist. 

“Both the children were looking up into the Lion’s face as he spoke these words. And all at once (they never knew exactly how it happened) the face seemed to be a sea of tossing gold in which they were floating, and such a sweetness and power rolled about them and over them and entered them that they felt they had never really been happy or wise or good or even alive and awake, before. And the memory of that moment stayed with them always, so that as long as they both lived, if ever they were sad or afraid or angry, the thought of all that golden goodness and the feeling that it was still there, quite close, just around some corner or just behind some door, would come back and make them sure, deep down inside, that all was well.”

The Magician’s Nephew, C.S. Lewis

And really, this reminder was what I needed. 

The reminder that I’ve been here before, in the unknown and the painful and the never-asked-for. And it was in the depths of that dark pit that I experienced the goodness of God like I never had before. That when I was grasping for a thread to hang onto, to somehow survive the loss of my child, the Lord didn’t just throw me a rope. He reached down and pulled me up and held me in the strength of his arms and showed me that nothing is alright on this earth. And that is ok. Because everything is right in eternity. And that is the hope I hold onto. Not a flimsy thread deceiving me that this life will be ok, but that EVERYTHING will be right in the life to come. 

This is the hope I cling to now. Not healing this side of heaven (although that would be super, Lord.) But that everything is redeemed. 

My hope is in greater things. Not that the trial will end but that in the midst of the trial the presence of the Lord is such a sweet essence of perfection I don’t need to long for any other thing. 

So yeah, fall… and all those dead leaves. Sometimes we live in a dead leaf season. And we endure the dead trees and the frigid bite in the air. And the light dims sooner than we are ready and the chill hangs on longer than we want. And we desperately hope for the green of summer and for the aching cold to stop penetrating down to our very bones. 

But I have experienced God the most not in the warmth of carefree summer days, but in the howl of winter’s darkness. And that experience has taught me that ultimately there is nowhere I would rather be than in his presence. So if he is found at the oncologist and the chemo treatments. In the helplessness and the weariness. In the unknowns and the suffering, then I don’t want to be anywhere else. Because I know, deep down inside, that with Him, all is well.