Flight Talk

It was an early morning flight from Atlanta to Cleveland today for my cousin's funeral. Being last minute, our seats weren't together. As we approached our place in the plane, Rick asked the man in the seat next to mine if he wouldn't mind switching with him and moving back one row so we could sit together. The man quickly and nicely obliged.

Friendly chit chat went on for awhile between our two rows. We established that between the four of us we had one Steeler, one Eagles and two Browns fans. We joked about football and then the plane settled in for our take off. 

After a few minutes of quiet, the obliging man and his new seat mate struck up their own conversation. 

I tried not to eaves drop, but my seat was directly in front of them and I couldn't help but overhear a good portion. 

Two men sitting together. Different football teams. Different skin colors. But they began talking. They might have started with football, but quickly moved on to the topic of politics and, yes, even race. They shared their opinions and seemed to agree on most everything. 

From there they waded pretty fast into the waters of religion. No, that's not right. Not religion, but their faith. They talked about Jesus. They talked about what it looks like to follow Him. They talked about their fathers and their upbringings and their families. They shared details of their lives and what led them each to a relationship with Him. They discussed God's word and they encouraged one another as brothers in Christ. 

I really wasn't trying to listen, but at some point, I just resigned myself to the fact that I didn't have much a choice.

I listened. 

Because, sometimes, we should.

These two men talked for the entire two hour flight.  They talked and they laughed. They might have shed a few tears. And it blessed me. It blessed me immensely. It was the very best of what can happen when two people begin talking. When two people begin sharing what's similar and listening to what might potentially be different. One question I heard asked by both of them several times was, "what do you think about this?" 

I loved that. What if we all sat closer to strangers and asked that kind of question. And then listened. Really listened and let that other person talk. What might this world look like if we had more positive airplane conversations?

Because we know flight talk can sometimes be pretty weird. You have this time where you are kind of stuck with someone you typically don't know. A forced proximity for a set amount of time. The question always is: Do you engage and invite an opportunity to connect with another human being or do you put on the headphones and hide in your own stuff.

I realize sometimes we all need to put on the headphones and hide out a little. I get that. But not maybe as much as we think we do. 

I'm just saying that today two men on a plane from Atlanta to Cleveland connected in a powerful and meaningful way. 

And it was beautiful. 

We are heading to the funeral of my cousin, Marc, today. A diehard Steelers fan, yes, but more importantly, he was a man who loved to converse and connect and debate and discuss. He loved people and he loved to engage with them. 

He would have really loved listening to these two men today on the airplane.

Every Reason

This afternoon I have my next PET/CT scan. It's been 6 months since the last one. I had been doing them every 3 months, but my doctor--in the hope to give me a break--pushed this scan a little further since things looked stable.  In the interim, we've monitored in other ways. I have every reason to believe this scan will again show my cancer as stable.

Every reason to believe it, but of course anxiety still knocks at the door.

Every reason to believe my doctor knows what she's doing, but I still wrestle with the what ifs. 

Every reason to trust Jesus holds my future, but still fear rises and takes my breath away. 

Every reason ... and, yet, that doesn't mean I don't feel the weight of this disease and it's daily burden of never ending treatment and consuming thought.

So, as is often the case, this morning's devotional passage met me right in this very place of struggle --desiring to hope + trust God, but still feeling anxious and unsure. 

Psalm 42

"My tears have been my food day and night, while men say to me all day long, 'Where is your God?'

"Why are you downcast, o my soul? 

Who so disturbed within me?

Put your hope in God,

For I will YET praise Him, my Savior and my God."

"My soul is downcast within me;

Therefore I will remember you ...

Deep calls to deep 

In the roar of your waterfalls;

All your waves and breakers have swept over me."

"I say to God my Rock, why have you forgotten me?

Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy? My bones suffer mortal agony as my foes taunt me saying 'where is your God?'"

"Put your hope in God for I will YET praise Him."

Can you just hear and see the wrestling of David as he writes this Psalm? Tears. Downcast and disturbed, even feeling forgotten ... but I will YET praise you. I will remember you, God. I will remember your character and who you are and what you've promised. 

Following Jesus doesn't mean all the human emotions just easily fall away and all is okay. No, it means we have a place to be held when we fall and things aren't okay. A place to go to when we are anxious, unsure, afraid, and yes, even angry. 

Jesus can give us a peace which passes all understanding, but He can also allow us to wrestle and wrangle with some very hard things in this life. Nowhere in His word does he promise an easy existence on this earth. In fact, He is pretty clear, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” John 16:33

And so today I'll scan at 2pm and then we will wait for the results in these next couple of days. 

As always, I would sure love your prayers. 

How can you specifically pray?

For clear and stable scans.

For my eyes to be on Jesus.

For my family. This is about all of us. 

For some tough side effects from current meds.

For a supernatural strengthening of heart + spirit as I am on this road for the rest of my life. 

And to "Take heart!" Because Jesus has surely "overcome the world!"

Grateful, Jody 🩷

The Eleventh

November 11th. Remembrance Day. Armistice Day. Veterans Day. Whatever we call it, it was on this day at 5:45 in the morning the Allied Forces and Germany signed an armistice agreement bringing World War I to an end. Fighting officially ceased later that morning at the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month. 

Something in my wiring really loves that tidy “11th” kind of agreement. How precise and clean and controlled. The stuff of storybooks. Strange that it should be the way war came to a close. Feels almost a complete paradox.  As if we can ever gloss over something so grueling, so gruesome, and then quickly give it a nice name and a pretty package. 

But that’s exactly what we do. All the time.

When we make up. When we fix up. When we tidy up. In our relationships and in our real life.

I wonder about those people living through the first world war years only to be hit so soon with the second world war. Just a couple of decades later. Did they not want to stand up and shout out and shake a fist — “Wait just a minute here! We all agreed to get along.” Didn’t they remember that eleventh hour on that eleventh day in that eleventh month? That agreement?

How quickly we forget. 

We are war forgetters.

We, even more so, are peace forgetters. 

There is little remembrance in fighting or in trying not to fight. Not when the lines have been crossed and the crosses lined up. We forget.

We move on after our troubles and our trials and our tiffs. We claim willingness to work hard and harder and harder still.  We sign armistice agreements all the day long with our children and our spouses and our colleagues and our neighbors … and then back to war we go. We are warring people. In our countries and in our cul-de-sacs. In our nation and in our nature. 

Like we cannot help ourselves.

We claim to be progressive and improved, more enlightened and less entitled, and yet war on we do. Conflict and chaos bedmates to our broken world. We’d like to think we have a measure of control with our policies and positions, but like that tidy 11th-ish package on that November day in 1918, we can call it anything we want, it won’t change the challenges of our humanity.

We are like dogs who return to their vomit. Even more instinctual than our tidying up, is our throwing up. Throwing it down. Down. Down. Down.

And there is little remembrance at that moment of rage and rift. 

When Jesus gathered his disciples in the upper room for the last supper and the first communion, he offered bread and wine saying “do this in remembrance of me.” 

And when he had given thanks, He broke it and said, “Take, eat; this is my body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of me. In the same manner he also took the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 1 Corinthians 11:24-25

His body broken. His blood shed. For us. For you. For me. 

Knowing the brutal hours ahead of Him. Knowing the spiritual and physical war surrounding Him. Surrounding us. And yet he offered a most perfect agreement. A New Covenant. A chance for all those who believe to truly have peace. True peace. Lasting peace. Eternal peace. 

He took our place on the cross. 

He died the death we deserve. 

He surrendered His body for the sins we commit. 

Because He knew there’d be no way for us to keep an armistice agreement or any agreement on our own. No matter how tidy. No matter how hard we try. 

We are way past the eleventh hour of everything and if nothing else shows us our need for a Savior this day of remembrance surely does.  

So today we give abundant thanks for those who served and sacrificed. But let this day lead us to remembering the ultimate sacrifice of the One "who did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." Mark 10:45

A Biker Brawl & My Birth Story

When my dad was in town a couple of weeks ago he told me a story about the day I was born. It was only vaguely familiar. But such an outlandish tale I was surprised I hadn’t heard more about it in the course of my life.

On November 8,1968—the night I was to be born at St. Alexis Hospital in Cleveland Ohio—there was a massive biker-gang fight nearby between the Hells Angels and a group called The Breed (what a name!). Apparently these two cycle gangs had been at war all year and it came to a head that evening at a Motorcycle Trade Show in the Hall of the Association of Polish Women. 

The NY Times said it was “a long-smoldering grudge.” The melee began just after 10pm when the hall was filled with over 800 people. Someone yelled, “Now!” And the brutality began. Knives, chains and clubs were the weapons of choice. The police were quick to the scene with tear gas and rifles, but not before hundreds were injured and many killed. 

A few miles away, while my mom’s OB was getting ready to deliver me in the maternity ward upstairs at St. Alexis, hundreds of badly sliced bikers were being carted in the doors below. My dad said it was a brutal scene. All these big, burly men with massive wounds filling the space. Every room occupied. Hallways filled and overflowing. Many died that night. The headline in the Cleveland Plain Dealer described it as the  “worst gang battle in US, say police.” 

I can’t help but think about my dad in that situation. Can you imagine? Your baby girl is about to be born any minute upstairs and that kind of craziness is taking place down below? 

Did he keep that information from my mom as she was in the throes of childbirth? I suppose that wasn't difficult as men in the 1960s didn't step foot in a delivery room. But I think of how today we set the stage for childbirth and make elaborate plans focusing on calm lighting and soft music and meditative breathing and support people. And it makes me almost chuckle thinking about that night in the late 60's when I was to be born. No one decides to give birth in the middle of a biker bloodbath.

The scene was so bad it demanded all hands on deck. Needless to say, the obstetrician had to leave my birth and go stitch up the sliced and slaughtered bikers in the hallways below. I guess some lowly assistant was left to deliver me. I wonder how my deliverer felt. Perhaps thankful they were called only to welcome into the world a newborn baby instead of being forced to tend to the war wounds of highly aggravated gang members. Or maybe not. Maybe they were disappointed to be tasked with something so mundane as a baby born. Maybe they would have preferred the action downstairs. Who really can say? 

Reading through the articles, I found many choice pieces of writing. One of my favorites was a comment made by a character named "Sex." That's what the motorcycle world knew him as, his real name being Arthur Zaccone. Sex, well--perhaps we should call him by his given name, Arthur--told the reporter covering the story, "I knew something was going to happen when we saw some Breed from New York and New Jersey and none of them had their old ladies with them." The newspaperman went on to explain that "Motorcycle outlaws always call their wives or girlfriends "old ladies." 

Another paragraph offered this description of a couple of neighborhood bystanders, "Two old men came out of their houses, and stood in shirtsleeves in the falling snow, staring at the Cleveland Pneumatic Tool & Co parking lot at E. 77th Street and Marble Avenue." Can't you just imagine those men standing out on their driveways (in shirtsleeves) with snow falling gently around them and a gang fight heating up violently before them. "Old Men Shake Heads Sadly," was the article's poignant title. 

After hearing my dad tell this unbelievable story, I continued to think a lot about it. Coincidentally, the following week I was scheduled to share my life’s story in my Bible study group. In the desire to know each other better, we have been taking time to do so this month. My dad's telling of this crazy birth tale seemed perfect timing. It would be a tremendous opening to what I was planning share with my group. So jotting down a few notes, I decided to research it a bit further. It took no time to pull up the article from a digital copy of The Cleveland Plain Dealer. There it was in black and white and plain as day … the gang war did happen just as my dad said. All the gory details were included in these digital pages and, mesmerized, I poured over them in disbelief. 

But the most amazing thing I learned in my research was that it wasn’t actually my story. 

As much as I wanted it to be, it wasn’t my start to life. When I finally looked closer at the article, the date jumped off the page ... March 8, 1971. That was the day after my younger sister, Jess, was born. Oh my gosh, it was HER story!  

That dramatic entrance to the world didn’t belong to me, it belonged to my younger sister. Of course it did! I was at first disappointed and then couldn't stop laughing. As parents are so apt to do, my dad had gotten our stories confused. The event had happened. And it had happened to my parents, but it was my sister being born on that chaos-filled night, not me. 

And though I do love a good story, I must, unfortunately, relinquish this one to her. 

But doesn’t that fact make this good story even a little bit better? I feel like the mistake of it makes it in someways even more interesting. Maybe it's because that is so often how life works. Our stories blend and combine and, sometimes, get confused.  

Has that ever happened to you? It happens to me all the time. I’ll be trying to remember something and I can’t quite get all the details correct. I can’t quite picture who was there or where we were or what exactly happened. I have to be careful of embellishment. I have to be careful to correctly report. I have to be careful of the narrative I am allowing myself to believe. In full disclosure here, I sometimes can be prone to making bad things worse and good things even better. 

It could have something to do with growing up in a good size family. We all blended together. We knew to answer to any sibling name when our parents called for us. “You know who I mean!” We knew we had to speak up to be heard. We knew we had to forge our own way and make our own plans and take charge of our own stories. There can be a lot of good in that kind of growing up. 

I'm pretty sure my kids kind of feel the same way. I’ve heard them too many times say, “No, mom. It didn’t happen quite like that.”  And then they have to remind me of the correct details. I don’t always have a digital newspaper article to pull up, but I do have kids who help keep me on track. 

Kind of like that Progressive Insurance "replay” commercial that’s been airing on television so often. So funny, by the way.

This "old lady" can tell you that the 55 years of my life have been filled with stories. Stories which I do own and can confidently claim. I might not have a dramatic birth story which includes a biker-gang brawl, but I have a story which God is clearly writing. And as I sit here this morning after my birthday, I am overwhelmed with the many, many sweet pages God has written all over my life. Yes, there have been some painful ones as well, and I don’t know exactly what the next chapter brings, but I know my God is the Perfect Author and He uses my story (and your stories too) to tell the much greater story of His. 

And for that I am thankful. 

We've Raised Awareness, Now it's Time to Raise the Bar

As "PINKtober" begins its final week, I’d like to share why this isn't necessarily an easy month for some women with stage 4 breast cancer--this month where we see the breast cancer pink ribbon on everything from tennis apparel to trash cans ... from police cars to every form of packaging. 

I've always been on board with raising awareness and heaven knows I love a good event. But friends, I've been struggling in the past weeks as everywhere I turn I see pink. I would really love a chance to help others see, maybe not red, but just a little more clearly. 

It's hard to explain--I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it--but allow me a minute to at least attempt what it feels like to sit on the other side of this not so rosy line. I’m still processing, but I’ve spent a few weeks learning about why women with stage 4 breast cancer aren’t exactly excited about all aspects of the PINKtober campaign. It’s not just the constant pink reminders of our incurable disease, but it's, more so, for many, some misleading messaging and, unfortunately, maybe even the misallocation and misrepresentation of funds raised. 

Yes, the pink ribbon campaign has done amazing things to raise awareness and dollars, but most people do not realize how little of that includes stage 4 breast cancer. The percentage is in debate--Some say less than 2% ... others claim it's now risen closer to 7%--But, regardless, 2% or 7% going toward research for stage 4 breast cancer is simply not enough. 

Metastatic Breast Cancer (MBC), also called stage 4, is the ONLY breast cancer which kills and yet only a tiny percentage is allocated for this research. 

Read that again.

Furthermore, 1/3 of women who "beat" early stage breast cancer will at some point in their life become stage 4/metastatic. Yes, you read that correctly, ONE-THIRD. 

Like me.

No one really likes to hear my story because it doesn't fit any of the things we know or like to believe. 12 years ago I was "early detected" and “barely stage one." I had pretty minor cancer and, yet, chose aggressive treatment. Did all the things. Fought like a warrior. Was told I was "cured" and had "beaten it."  Was called a "star patient" and assured because of my early detection and fighter mentality I WAS "the poster girl for beating breast cancer.” I remember my oncologist saying early on, “Jody, you’ll be just fine. You’ve nothing to worry about.” 

His words sometimes haunt me. 

I had less than 1% chance for this beast to reoccur. 

But, against all the odds, it did. It reocurred.

Now as a woman with MBC (stage 4) I will never "be cured" or "ring the bell" or "kick cancer's ass." Nope. Never. And so all that warrior and battle and victory talk is tricky for women like me. The messaging in this month makes it sound like if we (only) fight hard enough we can achieve victory. The problem with this is that the opposite then also feels true when we lose--and those of us with stage 4 will lose. “According to the American Cancer Society (ACS), the 5-year survival rate after diagnosis for people with stage 4 breast cancer is 28%.” Another not so gentle way of saying that is 72% of women diagnosed stage 4 will not live past five years. 

So what does that mean in the face of all this pink? We didn't fight hard enough? I don’t know. At best, it's confusing. I do know our main hope (now) is not going to be curing cancer or kicking its ass, no, it’s going to be buying time and praying for more treatment options to give us more years. That takes research. That research takes dollars. 

In the meantime we hope to prolong life.

And that is exactly why I don’t “look” like a stage 4 patient. That’s a topic for another post, but I know this confuses some people. "Well, gosh, Jody’s busy planning events and posting photos of her chickens and she has all of her hair. Seems like she’s doing great. She looks good. Surely she can’t be THAT sick." Well, it’s because, for women like me, it is no longer a sprint to be healed, it’s a marathon to stay alive. It’s the long game. We strategically are given medicine and treatments to keep the cancer at bay and keep us living life. At some point cancer will outsmart my current treatment and those meds will fail me. And at some point, I’m sure you’ll see me looking a whole lot more like a stage 4 patient. I know that’s a lot to process. I’ve had conversations with many of you. It doesn’t make sense. It’s easy to forget (for you maybe, not for me). But trust me on this, I know what I’m talking about. There isn't a silver bullet when it comes to stage 4. MY PLAN is for the treatments available to work well for me and give me LOTS and LOTS of years, but I have learned too much, I know if that's what happens, I will not be the statistic, I will be the outlier.

Sometimes learning things is hard.

I am also learning to understand why PINKtober isn’t an easy thing for women with MBC. As this has, unfortunately, become a big part of my life now, I spend a good amount of time connecting with others walking this same walk.

I'm in several (Facebook) groups with thousands of women with MBC. I read their stories and struggles every day.  I cannot explain to you the pain and sadness. Women who are alone and unable to work. Women who can't pay for treatment and have to fight with insurance companies. Women who bounce from one brutal treatment to another knowing it will never end. They will always be in treatment. Forever. Women, literally, at the end of their rope. Heartbreaking doesn't begin to explain it. There is nothing festive or celebratory or rosy-pink about it. I don’t really put myself in this category because I AM still living a pretty normal life. Yes, lots of side-effects and, yes, lots of mental/emotional/anxiety battles, but also lots of wonderful stuff too. I’m grateful. And lucky.

But, I don't have to tell you how hard it is for the women who struggle to see companies using the pink ribbon as a marketing ploy to tug at heart strings and increase sales. And, yet, we know that's exactly what happens in some cases. Certainly not all cases, but in some. It feels like gross commercialization. At times it’s hard to see some of the flippant, casual, and sometimes crude, comments made and posted. Those can hit differently when you're fighting for your life. It’s also agonizing to see all the hype and excitement over pink bows and pink socks and pink tennis skirts for a fun-feel-good-event. I once wore the pink tennis skirt and played in the pink tennis tournaments. Now, as stage 4, I am having so much joint pain and fatigue I can’t imagine I’ll be out on the tennis courts ever again. Instead, I brush by my tennis bag every single day when I walk through my garage and have to wonder.

I’m not saying it’s all wrong. Like I stated earlier, there are some great things which have been achieved in raising awareness. We are certainly ALL AWARE.  I’m just saying there’s more to the story. We need to be more aware of asking the question-- WHY aren’t more of these funds raised going toward the breast cancer which kills women? Especially knowing that 1/3 of all women who have "beaten" it, will progress to stage 4 --even the very best case scenarios, like me.

Early detection and awareness are great, but, I was both early detected and (more than) aware and there is not one single doctor who can explain why my breast cancer returned. Not one. Two of my three oncologists didn’t believe it. One of them told me to “go home and not worry about it,” even after the scans showed lesions. Crazy, I know.

Last week, out of my own wrestling, I asked the question to the specific Metastatic/Stage 4 groups of women I am in on Facebook. I simply asked this --

"Why is PINKtober hard for so many of you?"

I received an unbelievable amount of stories and responses to that question. Hundreds, in fact. Most all of them explaining that they "dreaded" this month and felt "assaulted" by the misrepresentation and “gross commercialization” of the pink ribbon. These are women who are in the darkest, deepest trenches of breast cancer. Women fighting for a few extra years of life and dealing with one awful treatment after another knowing there won't be an end ... until there is.

I think their voices need to be heard. 

One woman in this group shared an article she had written on why more stage 4 research MUST be the goal: 

“While the pink ribbon is well-known for representing the fight against early-stage breast cancer, it is not inclusive of stage IV.

It’s a sad fact that today, nearly everyone knows someone who’s had breast cancer. Yet there’s one fact not everyone knows: 

30% of people with “cured” early-stage breast cancer who’ve “beaten” the disease will eventually see it return as stage IV, also known as advanced or metastatic breast cancer (MBC). 

That means the disease has spread to other parts of the body, a diagnosis that carries an average life expectancy of around 36 months. While the average survival rate of a breast cancer diagnosis is 90% over five years, that statistic tumbles for metastatic breast cancer, dipping to 29% over five years.

Many women with metastatic breast cancer will live only a handful of years. But about one-third will live at least five years after their diagnosis. And there are outliers who live for 10-15 years after such a diagnosis.

MBC is the only form of breast cancer that kills. 

Yet while MBC claims the lives of 115 people in the U.S. daily, less than 7% of US breast cancer funds raised go toward researching new treatments for it. 

Worldwide, more than 685,000 people die of MBC annually. 

Those shocking statistics explain why more and more people are embracing a reimagined breast-cancer-awareness ribbon that goes beyond pink — there’s no surviving or “beating” MBC, just buying time via treatment. 

The pink ribbon has done a lot of good. It has reminded people to get screened, and it has helped to raise a huge amount of funds. But at the same time, it has been used to raise money for purely corporate pockets, including the pockets of several prominent breast cancer charities. 

It has become a symbol of the idea that everything will be OK, breast cancer is only an annoyance, just a year out of your life, and you'll go on happily from there. The pink ribbon as a brand is a misrepresentation of the truth of breast cancer. 

And, most importantly, it is not a cure.

What the ribbon should represent is the need to fund medical research in order to save lives.”

Pink is not a cure.

Research can and has saved lives.

With more and more new treatment options, patients like me have a better chance to live longer.

Thus a tricolor ribbon, for metastatic breast cancer, aims to raise awareness for the need to direct funding toward the development of life-extending treatments. 

In it, green represents the triumph of spring over winter, life over death; teal symbolizes healing and spirituality; and a thin pink-ribbon overlay signifies metastatic cancer that originated in the breast.”

Dear friends, please don’t view this post as sour grapes. Sure, I have some pretty sour moments, but mostly, I do have a lot to be very thankful for. I spend most of my days really trying to focus on the beautiful and the blessings of each day. Those of you who know me, know that my life is truly in God's hands. I trust Him with it. Completely. But I also have felt a prompting to go ahead and share some of my newly gained perspective. I wish I didn't know so much. I wish this wasn't my story. But it is and I believe that our stories and our journeys and our lessons learned are meant to be shared.

 We've raised awareness, now it is time to raise the bar. 

One last thing--there's an organization which does use its dollars raised for MBC research and funding. 

Please check out the METAvivor organization. METAVIVOR.ORG

Thank Heaven for Little Girls

In the past few weeks I got to spend--not nearly enough--but a good amount of time caring for my new granddaughter, my daughter, and my son-in-law. 

I didn't do anything all that ground shaking. Didn't close a big deal. Didn't publish a novel. Didn't get my name in the newspaper. Didn't rescue a puppy. 

Didn't even hardly get all the laundry finished. 

But I did this little thing called caring for family, and, for me, it wasn't a little thing in the least. For me it was probably more like the thrill of my year. 

Maybe my decade. 

You think I exaggerate? 

Though prone to an occasional exaggeration every now and then, in this case, no.

I assure you, a thrill. 

Being there for my first girl as she became a mom to her first girl, and then to watch her tenderly (if not a bit tiredly) navigate these first sacred days of motherhood ... I mean, seriously. No words for the way it all made my heart swell and swoon and simmer and melt.

Truly good. 

A gift. 

A grace.

Thank heaven for little girls. 

And big girls. 

And the beautiful mother~daughter relationship that God saw fit to give us here on earth to make life a little bit sweeter, hard things a bit more tolerable, heavy things a little bit lighter, wonderful things a little more wonderful. 

Hanging on Mimi's nursery door is a little door hanging pillow (yes, that's a thing) declaring this very sentiment--Thank Heaven For Little Girls. I found it at a baby boutique (this is also a thing) and gave it to Emily as a shower gift. 

About 28 years ago I had hung almost the very same pillow on Emily's nursery door. I had saved hers all these years. Why? I don't know, I guess I'm a saver of door hanging things. 

But last week, while visiting them, I knew I had tucked it away so that one day I could put it on my adult daughter's bedroom door as she slept. (Well, sort of slept). 

While staying in their home, I took a special grandma kind of delight walking past both of their doors draped with tiny pillows declaring thanks to God for their lives. 

Door hanging pillows or no door hanging pillows, doesn't much matter, but giving thanks to Him in heaven is a gift most holy. 

Truly, thank Heaven for little girls.

Mimi Grace

It is our absolute joy to introduce to you our granddaughter, Mimi Grace! 

She made her grand entrance early Saturday morning and we haven't stopped smiling.

We are absolutely smitten with this precious little lady. 

And, of course, so very proud of our Emily and Austin. They are going to be just amazing parents. 

The grandchild thing is something marvelous. First, because we marvel at this new life and next generation. But secondly, because, in addition to her new life, we are also marveling at the chance to watch our own children do something so good, so wonderful. 

It's like this double blessing of goodness I wasn't prepared for. 

Rick and I are overwhelmed with the beauty of this next season. 

Thank you Lord Jesus for this indescribable gift. 

               "Every good and perfect gift is from above, 

             coming down from the Father of lights." James 1:17 

Birdy and Grampa Bear love you, Mimi girl!

This Song Is About You (And Me)

You’re so vain

I bet you think this song is about you. 

Don’t you? Don’t you?  ~ Carly Simon

My family made fun of me when I hung this mirror in my coop. Yes, shame on them, they did. I tried to convince my scoffers that chickens really do love to look at themselves. Even roosters! Like handsome Basil here. He stares and stares. It’s quite funny. Perhaps a tad weird.

But it’s good for us to take a long, hard look at ourselves every now and again. Actually, every day. Funny enough, as flawed humans we tend to not see very clearly our own flaws. The lens blurs a bit when we look at our own stuff. It is just so much easier (and possibly more fun) to see the issues of others.

“Why do you look at the speck of DUST in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the LOG in your own?” Matthew 7:3

Speck versus log. You get the idea. 

Why is it so easy to see the mistakes and missteps of our brothers—and sisters and parents and children and friends and neighbors—and, yet, quickly gloss over our own? I am so guilty of this.

We can effortlessly justify and minimize and explain away our own choices all day every day, but then, oh that speck of dust in someone else’s eye, man, that gets us! That gets under our skin. That gets us all hot and bothered. That gets us up on our high horse. How dare they?

Honestly, I think this is one of the devil’s favorite tactics. He loves to distract us from
working on ourselves. If he gets us focused on someone else’s mess, he knows we won’t have much time to address that pretty messy person in the mirror.  

He doesn’t want us to focus on fixing ourselves. He wants us to keep minimizing and justifying and explaining so we go on living complacent and comfortable in our own stench. Our sin. He does this to keep us from God’s goodness and His best for us.

But God has more for us. Better for us. His best. 

“I ask that the eyes of your (my) heart may be enlightened, so that you may know the hope of His calling, the riches of His glorious inheritance …” ~ Ephesians 1:18

Another version says,

“I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so you can understand the confident hope He has given.” 

Eyes flooded with light! I love that. 

Of course the evil one wants to keep us in the dark. To keep us afraid. To keep us from looking at ourselves. To keep us from Truth. The very last thing he wants us to know is that beautiful confident hope and the riches of our glorious inheritance we have in Jesus. 

Sometimes, we just don’t want to see. Or hear. Or feel. Or "go there." We choose, instead, to numb and dull and deflect. We harden our hearts and we hide in our dark.

Matthew 13:15 might make it most clear —

“For this people’s heart has become calloused; 

they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. 

Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, 

understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.’”

Don’t be afraid of that mirror. Don’t be a chicken. Or maybe, DO be a chicken — like Basil. Take a good look. Take an honest look. 

Ask Jesus to flood your eyes with His light.  

That is where truth and beauty become clear. 

That is where hope and healing become ours. 

Dirty Jobs: Car Rides, Kids and Colonoscopies

these dirty boys clean up pretty well!

Last week, beach bound, Rick and I used a free Audible credit and listened to Mike Rowe read his book, The Way I Heard It. 

The deep timber of his gravely voice immediately took me back to the days of raising young kids. His Dirty Jobs show was a weekly classic in the McNatt home. I can still see my boys and husband sprawled out on the sofas in rapt attention to whatever dirty job Mike Rowe was piping into our family room that week. Hanging on his every gross word, like a train wreck from which they couldn’t look away, I marveled at their focus. The more grotesque, the more rapt.

I’m pretty sure they never missed an episode. If memory serves me correctly, we owned the DVD set of all 532 episodes. Okay, I just fact checked —179 episodes. I’m sure we watched them all. More than once. 

I mean is there anything better than a couple of boys and their dad being grossed out together while stuffing faces with popcorn and chips and soda? That was how we rolled back then. After a few days at the beach with my family, I’m happy to report, it’s still how we kind of roll. 

Being grossed out together is real family bonding. 

So as Rick and I traveled alone listening to this iconic voice, I’m sure he had to be thinking the same thing as me: this man, Mike Rowe, and his filthy offerings, were woven right into the fabric of our many years of early parenting. I will never not hear the deep bass of Mike’s voice and not think of my boys. Even if the topic was something absolutely awful, there’s something really wonderful about that memory of them all together sprawled out in our family room. 

I’m not going lie, in our travels this past week, it was nice being able to listen to an Audible uninterrupted. That’s what we get these days with older children—The ability to hear. The oldest kids traveled from their own states and the other three drove together in a separate car.  But as lovely as uninterrupted listening and quiet driving can be, it will always feel strange to be vacation bound without a backseat full of a bunch of hooting and hollering hooligans.

Talk about dirty jobs. Those were the days. Cleaning out our backseat after a long family trip was most certainly an adventure into the world of gross. There was always some kind of something sticky or smooshed or crumbled or crushed. Always something borderline horrifying to pull out from behind us. I easily conjure up the image of my young mothering self staring at an odd item unearthed from between the seats and wondering who and what and, mostly, why in heaven’s name?

Dirty Jobs wasn't just a show, but was also such a big part of raising kids. Sometimes we talk about some of the gross things from those years. We actually laughed about a few even this past week at the beach. Classic stories. Stories which were terrible to live through, but hilarious to remember.  Like the time the youngest brother leaned over the side of his bunk bed and threw up into the mouth of the oldest brother reclining innocently below. Perfect aim, perhaps, but no one forgets the moment when they receive another’s vomit— beloved brother or not. 

I could go on and on with stories. You need only come sit at one of our family gatherings and I promise you won’t be disappointed. We truly could have our own Family Dirty Jobs show--at least 179 episodes.

Because that’s how most families roll. 

Because that’s how most of life rolls. 

It’s a dirty business this living, is it not? I know we don’t like to talk about the dirt. Pictures have a way of hiding it. I’m guilty of that trick. Angles are everything. But most of us with a few decades under our belts know that there’s no such thing as squeaky clean and picture-perfect living. 

Speaking of a dirty job, this week I had a colonoscopy. I know that’s not something most people share publicly, but, it fits this blog topic, so, I’m sharing. Besides, please use this as your friendly reminder to cross that off your list. The night before my procedure I was explaining the process to Bella who, horrified, exclaimed, “But mom, WHO does that??? WHO wants to do THAT job?” 

The next morning as I entered the OR and was getting all “set up” by the team, I shared my daughter’s comments with them. We all had a good laugh over her teenage disbelief. My gastroenterologist raised her hand and laughing, said, “Me! I do that job!” I wished, for Bella, I had taken a selfie with Dr. Julia who looked more like a movie star in front of the camera as opposed to, well, you know …

I know it’s unpleasant. And perhaps not polite dinner table conversation, but it’s something necessary and pretty important. I’m happy to report that procedure went well and at first glance all looks good. Grateful after these past couple of years of not so favorable results. 

But Dirty Jobs, it’s how life is lived. I’ve kind of enjoyed watching my children grow up and have to learn how to do the not so pleasant. I don’t think it’s so bad for us, on occasion, to get dirty. Not just recline on our sofas and marvel at others getting dirty, but to dig in and do it ourselves.

We don’t live pristine lives. And the sooner we realize how messy living is, the sooner we can mature and move on. 

You want a cuddly, cute puppy? 

You’ll have to take care of all things potty training.

  

You want your shower to drain quickly?

You’ll have to learn how to snake out the gobs of gross hair. 

(Or call your dad).

You want to leave your lunchbox contents in your backpack all summer?

You’ll have to deal with that little lovely come back-to-school time.

You (Jody) want to have chickens in a pretty chicken coop?

You'll need to scoop chicken #$%@ every single day of your life!

We have learned a little this year about hard jobs .. rough places … unpleasant things. This dirty cancer diagnosis has, in some ways, taken from us our much preferred rose-colored glasses. We don’t spend too much time dwelling on the ugly, but instead, do what needs to be done and we move on. Have the test or procedure, take the medicine and the side effects, do the next hard thing. And then humble ourselves before the Lord and ask His mercy and strength in all of it. 

But of course, like you, we sometimes wonder:

Why can’t life be easier? More lovely? Better? CLEANER?

The story of Adam and Eve in Genesis 3 gives us a pretty good theological understanding of what sin did when it entered the picture. How it muddied the beautiful garden. How it corrupted the perfect.  How it shattered the pristine.  After Adam and Eve’s sin there’s a lot in those next verses about DIRT —The serpent crawling on his belly in the dust and grit, the man working the ground, the woman in pains of labor. None of it pleasant. And all of it true to the suffering in our lives today. Very real and very filthy stuff.

But, then, Jesus. 

Jesus who came, and carrying our gross sin on His shoulders, agreed to the hardest, most dirty job ever — dying on the cross in our place, for our sin. For us. You. Me.

A dirty, grotesque death, but necessary to bring our only hope for salvation. Our only hope to be fully restored to that which each one of us craves — Holiness. Wholeness, Redemption and Glory.

So, yes, in the meantime, we live pretty dirty lives. Whether it be our job or our chore or our difficulty or our diagnosis. We are pretty much most days groveling in some kind of dirt. 

But, oh how wonderful that, on occasion, we get to be alone with the audible voice of our Father in heaven and the car ride grows quiet and we get to hear His deep voice reminding us that, dirty as this life is, there is so much more to our story … because of the cleansing blood of His Perfect Son, Jesus.

And, that is exactly the way I hear it. I hope you do too.

“Behold, I am making all things NEW.” Revelation 21:5

“He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; He set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear the Lord and put their trust in Him.” Psalm 40:1-3

(a few photos from our beach trip last week. because there really is beauty even in the dirty)! =)