In a little book of morning readings a couple of days ago, on the very morning that my younger daughter’s two little girls prepared to fly back to Kuala Lumpur with their dad, her husband, I read a message printed in a stranger’s book, one that is meant for millions. It’s a popular devotional that is based on scripture, a book I try to read each day. Each entry is always meaningful, but that day it was as though it was meant especially for my family, more especially for those of us with a part in the activities surrounding the departure of those children from their mother. Funny that in an ironic way often the messages in that book seem to be speaking directly to me. No doubt many people who read it each morning feel the same way. And yet, I choose to believe that different days resonate with different ones of us depending on the events of our lives. That morning was my turn.

The words in the book that morning spoke of being in the midst of a maelstrom, and were we ever in one that day. Have we not all been there? Is there a person among us that has known only peace, only laughter, only health, only joy? Is there such a person that has yet to experience troubles, tears, illness, sorrow?  Is there a person who has not at some point ever asked why?

That morning as my daughter hurriedly packed the very last of the bags that the girls and her husband would carry home, as she checked and doubled-checked her children’s carry ons for the plane, making sure favorite snacks were visible and handy, that the personal electronics, loaded with favorite game occupied the assigned pockets, art books and colored pencils were stowed properly, their security blanket animals that soothe them to sleep nestled within a short reach (a task she’s done countless times for a flight that lasts 16 plus hours), I knew her heart was heavy. At the same time I was rushing to put the finishing touches on a photo album for each girl, a tradition that started with their first trip home after their move to Malaysia. This year I’ll also make little brother’s first one when he leaves.  They hold precious pictures to mark our time together, to help remember their trip. I wonder if those books are as much for me as for them, even though I don’t make one for myself. After all, it’s crucial to me they never forget. The weight of my heart matched my daughter’s, with one exception. She had never sent them home. She had always accompanied them. That day was a new challenge for her, for my girl who needed no new challenges after learning of the cancer that kept her in the states while sending her two older children, still young, home to start school, to find comfort and distraction in routine, surrounded by the familiar. The cancer kept her on the ground while they took to the skies.

Even before we had feasted our eyes upon them long enough one last time or hugged them half enough times to satisfy our need to hold them close (is that even possible with grandchildren?), the girls and their daddy were off for the Houston airport where their mommy, my sweet daughter, would drop them, those most precious to her, save for their little brother, and stay the night to meet one last doctor on Monday at MD Anderson. One last time she would hear what is to happen on September 9 when she trusts her health, her life, to those who are said to be experts at saving it. One last time to hear how her body will be forever changed. It is her life we want. Everything else will be lagniappe. She would meet with the plastic surgeon, and that doctor plays a vital part in this process we now talk about with regularity, something ingrained into our lives, but that until three weeks ago, we’d never had to consider. Yes, that doctor is important, but life……life, to see her children become adults and have their own families, to grow old and content with her husband….that is paramount.

So I was left to seek God in the midst of this maelstrom, to speak His name, almost the only word I could mutter, when other words choked in my throat, when instead of watching my daughter’s car leave my driveway, I wanted to run and stop it. Could stopping it stop the future, the plane, the surgery?  I will not waste my time wishing for a different set of circumstances. Not true – I will TRY not to waste my time wishing for something over which I have no control. Control, that illusion that I’ve sometimes believed I had. I have already been taught that I have no control over our lives. It appears I am to be taught once more.  In truth, if I’m painfully honest, would I really want it?

On the day that my daughter drove her precious cargo to the airport, the first time in many that we have not done the driving because she, too, was always leaving, we were – and are – indeed in the midst of a maelstrom. Today, typing these words, we are in that raging storm that God sometimes allows around His children. Still, with one utterance of His name, the seas calm, the wind slows. It may only be for a moment. I need to utter it often. While I battle the pain of the day, the day of departures, the day that meant the disease we’d met is real, while thoughts whirled all around me, I remembered the name that has the power to bring peace to the chaos, the name of the one who holds us all, who can use this circumstance, this storm, for His purpose. I remember that He holds my daughter and her children just as He has held all of us who need Him and ask. I pray the serenity prayer again. God grant me, please grant me.  For one special moment I have that peace that we find so hard to understand.

This peace I wish for my daughter. This peace she deserves. This peace she will have.

Praying the serenity prayer this morning.  Over and over again.

Yesterday evening my daughter and her husband, who had been in Houston for doctor’s appointments pertaining to her newly-discovered breast cancer, returned to us.   We were in touch the five days while she was gone, a quick text here, a hurried phone call there, telling me what the last doctor had said, what the last test had revealed, which results we were to wait on.  It’s hard to follow those kinds of conversations.  I felt I had a general understanding of what was happening, but I knew I only had information enough to understand the very tip of the iceberg that is to be her(our) journey from here, on this side of breast surgery and the unknown of treatment, to the almighty there, her final recovery.

It took a few hours after their return, with the everyday business of feeding children over,  before I could actually sit down privately with my daughter and hear what needed to heard.  What I so badly wanted to hear, but what I so badly was afraid to know.  Funny how we both have husbands, and hers had even been with her through each appointment and exam, but when it came time for mother and daughter to address the latest developments, the absolute vital information of the breast cancer, mother and daughter wanted complete privacy.  Only her older sister would have been included had she been with us.

It took going out to her car, parked in my driveway, to get that privacy.  Her husband taped each conversation with the doctors, and so because we couldn’t get the one I needed to hear to play inside on my speakers, we took to the car.  We escaped to the car where we could listen, and where there would be no interruptions.  There, in the dark of her parked car, the security light above my carport  shining shadows around us,  there is where I heard the voice of my daughter recorded on her phone speaking with the man who would remove her left breast.

In that conversation, taped during the second visit to the surgeon/oncologist at MD Anderson, the one where he marked on her breast exactly where the cancer was (most of the breast) and marked what the plastic surgeon would need in order to take pictures for both of them, I could hear my daughter’s voice asking questions. I could hear the doctor providing answers.  I could hear him offer information she hadn’t yet asked for, the way any seasoned doctor can.  I could hear her stress and his professional calm.

There, in the shadows of her car, we listened.  There, in the shadows of that car, we were a unit.  The two of us.  Mother and daughter hearing that a part of my daughter, a physical part of the child I’d given birth to, was to be surgically removed in order to save her life.  I could see her silhouette in the shadows.  I could see her sitting straight, her natural posture, as though we were listening to someone else’s conversation with the surgeon.  As though the percentages and statistics he was quoting were for someone else.  In truth, the numbers are good.  We are encouraged.  Still, listening to those disembodied voices discussing a killer disease inside her body was hard.  Shortly after the conversation started, and I could hear their voices, I took her hand.   I took her hand thinking I wanted to reassure her, as we sat there in the shadows, that all would be fine in the end….on the other side of this journey.  I held it a long time.  At that moment it was important to me that she feel the love coursing through me to her.   I wonder this morning if I may have needed the feel of her hand in mine, needed to touch of my child, as much as I thought she needed to feel my reassurance.  Oh, the things we tell ourselves.  Is there anything more precious than our children?

Now it is Saturday morning.  Two of my daughter’s three children sleep upstairs, my two precious granddaughters who live half a world away most of the year.  I learned yesterday, when I learned the date of their mother’s surgery, that they will leave us on Sunday evening, tomorrow,  and return to their home in Malaysia.  Their dad will fly with them so that they will start their school year, though a few days late, reunite with their friends, and settle into the routine of their lives while we wait for the September date of their mother’s surgery.  Their little brother will stay here, too young to be gone from his mother that long.  His sisters, thought to be old enough to handle it, have no choice.  They will go, whether they are old enough to handle it or not.  When their dad returns alone for the actual operation at MDA, the girls will stay behind to be shuffled between their live-in housekeeper and their closest friends and those parents.  They will be half a world away with no relative anywhere near them.  I pray for serenity.  How I pray for it over and over again.  Each time they make the trip here to visit, the leaving is heart-wrenching.  Each time.  This time I fear their leaving in a way I haven’t needed to before.  This time they leave without their mother.  Routine is good, yes, but there will be no routine until she returns to them.  They are returning home to an illusion, and it is not of their choosing.  She is the sun in their universe.  She is what warms their little lives.  They will enjoy their friends, yes.  They will start school and have the fun that school children have starting a new year, yes.  But it will all be done against a backdrop of loneliness and uncertainty and even fear.  It will all be done with an ache somewhere inside their hearts.  An ache with their mother’s name on it.  Children can feel fear, can sense tension.   It comes in all sorts of ways to them.  One is insecurity.  I, as their grandmother, know all that, of course.  Blessedly, they don’t yet.  I am powerless to change the scenario, so I pray for serenity.  Oh, how I pray.  Separation from these children each time is enough of a heartache for me that bearing it is a trial, a loss that takes a toll and takes time to scab.  This time, with the worry about their mother and the worry about their well-being without her, knowing they are leaving without the sun that warms their little lives, the uncertainty clutching my heart is indescribable.  They will have their dad, true, and yet most of us know that dads are support for Mom, not the center of a child’s universe.  Their days will be cloudy and overcast until their mother returns to them.

Grandmother that I am, I must admit I was for a moment tempted to fly to them when their dad flies here for the surgery.  We all know grandmothers, at least certain grandmothers, can provide the warmth of their mother easily.  My little girls and I have that connection, that bond, that love.  I would be bringing some of the sun with me were I to fly around the globe to be with them.  It was a fleeting thought.  I know my daughter needs me here, but I confess I actually did consider it.

Dread of their leaving has already crept into my heart and taken its place right next to the dread of their mother’s surgery.

Meanwhile, cancer sits in the breast of my younger daughter.  Cancer sits in the breast of the baby I carried and the woman I love.  Cancer sits in the breast of my grandchildren’s mother, who means so much to them, who is the warmth in their world half a globe away from us.  I will take care of her for all of us, and they will once again feel the sun on their faces and in their hearts.  One day.

Again I type while the rest of my house sleeps, nudged awake early even though it was very late when my head met my pillow last night.  I would like to believe it is God nudging me.  I want to think He is nudging me awake to remind me that He has all this (as I know somewhere, somewhere in my conscious mind), and that I can let it go.  He’ll take care of it.  Let go and let God.  How many times have I said those words?  How many times have I meant them for myself or said them to friends?  Oh, how I need to say them and mean them now.  Oh, how hard it is for someone like me to fully let go.

Time to do my morning readings, my daily meditations, and to pray for serenity more powerfully than I have since my mother’s illness and death, or since my grandson left for Basic Training, but those stories are both for other posts.

Maybe even more importantly, it is time to remind myself that eucharisteo precedes the miracle.  Time to give thanks for all we’ve been given, for all the times God has pulled us through other trials.