With any big diagnosis,, or maybe it’s just life, there are bumps along the way. I always hope the bumps smooth out, that they are not too serious, and that reasonable solutions are found. I personally am looking for grace when I hit a bump, but it is not always in large supply.

Upon our glorious, if brief, return to Middle Street, it became clear that the lumen on my PICC line were not cooperating. This PICC is a life line to easy access for blood tests, and a direct route to deliver non-oral chemo, so I need not become a proverbial pin cushion! We head to our local ER for help. Of course, this is not an emergency and there are plenty of other emergency patients ahead of me. Some astounding TEN hours after we arrive, we are on our way home, the 3 lumens released with the help of local TPN clot buster. Think here “roto-rooter.”  The whole elongated time-warped day kept bringing me to the word: SURRENDER.

I think of other times of surrender in my life, like one winter when we had three consecutive cases of chicken pox and we were homebound for weeks. Or the happy, full surrender into a project, like our mammoth peach harvest,  washing, canning, baking, drying, freezing for weeks, the house filled with peach smells, my fingers wrinkled from peach juice, and really no way out of the kitchen. More recently, surrender came in the shape of writing a book, where once I started, I could not stop. In the best ways, surrender is touched with a magical presence, focus, and joy.

But sometimes surrender is sheer tedium that brings me to a narrow ledge. Like yesterday, making miniscule laps in my postage-stamp exam room because I felt like a caged bird. I worked to surrender to the tedious waiting, to smooth the stress of being trapped. I listened to music, meditated, deep breathed my way into “I can do hard things.” I prayed for successful clot-clearing, shed a few cathartic tears with Paul, who wins the patient, loving and devoted husband of the year award once again. I texted a bit, all while at the mercy of others. I am learning to let go my never-taken-for-granted self-agency and deeply self-actualized self, this entire process of surrender is my new learning edge. May we all know the power of surrender in both the hard moments and the sweet times, while we enrich our capacity to be in the moment, just this one moment, full-hearted, without judgement or fear.

Sometime during my ER odyssey, my daughter sent a family text that ended with “#overachiever.” Going with that!

With Love and Light from Middle Street!