Why I Haven't Blogged in a Couple of Days

It's been over a week since my last posting. I've walked. I've taken photos for postings. I just haven't done it. I haven't done it because my heart is too heavy, and I don't know how to put words to it.

Last Tuesday, my Aunt Linda found out that her lung cancer has spread to her brain. Her doctors are treating her immediately and aggressively, as it is very serious. Last Thursday, she began 14 whole brain radiology treatments, one per day. She will have some short term memory loss and will lose her hair again. She cannot drive for a year, and she will need to stop working in 2-3 months. The good news is that her lung cancer responded well to radiology, and so her doctors have hope that her brain cancer will as well.

I cried for the first 24 hours after hearing about Aunt Linda. Even though I know that the Lord can heal her, even though I know she's beaten cancer once before, I cried. I love her. I can't bear the thought of life without her. I don't know life without her, nor do I want to. She was always there as I grew up, a second mom, always just a few blocks away.

My Aunt Linda had triplets when I was seven years old. She already had one son, Bradley, who was two at the time. My family moved from the farm in Illinois to Houston where Uncle Ray and Aunt Linda lived, and that was the beginning of years of living only a few blocks apart. There was always a baby at our house, it seemed like. I remember taking walks at night after dinner, all ten of us. Their children are siblings to me. It seems like I hardly have a memory from my elementary years without one of them in it.

Now Brad and the triplets are all grown up and off living their own lives. Now I'm the one with multiples, outnumbered by very small, very quick, very loud little people. Now I'm the one looking back at my Aunt Linda, thinking, 'Ohhhhh. I get it.' As an adult and a mother myself, I see all that she willingly, loving sacrificed. I see/know how utterly exhausting and overwhelming it must have been to have so many little ones. I see how she did the best she could and how that best really and truly was incredible. I see how well she mothered. I look at her and have hope that maybe someone will look at me one day and say that I did it well too.

So I cried. Darn that rainy weather, I walked in the mall on that Wednesday and cried in front of strangers and did not care. Did. Not. Care. Let them stare. My heart was breaking. I was crying for Aunt Linda, for my Uncle Ray, for my cousins, for myself. I was crying because it took me back to those days with Caleb and myself, and how none of life is guaranteed. I cried as I listened to a Hillsong CD on repeat, trying to nestle myself deep inside Jesus' love, trying to remember what I know, know, know is true - He is faithful. He is trustworthy. He is, even so, worthy to be praised.   

So tonight I do not make my customary plea for Avon donations. Tonight I beg of you to pray for my dear Aunt Linda, that the Lord would work another miracle in her life and in her body, and thereby once again bring glory to Himself. Please, please pray.