When Your Bucket List Overflows

It’s cancer.  Malignant. Stage 4.  Angry and aggressive.  Rare.  Incurable.

The oncologist is speaking, and she is saying words that surely I must have heard before.  But never have I realized what ugly, vile words they are.  These words?  Describing me?  Unbelievable!

The oncologist goes on, almost apologetically, explaining that medical science doesn’t know what could have caused this terrible disease, especially since I do not have any of the usual risk factors. I am young-ish, not overweight, non-smoker, no family history.  Not even any genetic mutations or elevated tumor markers.  Well, medical science may not have clinical evidence to prove it, but secretly, I suspect the real cause.  In fact, I have suspected it for years.

I mean, the human body can only endure so much anxiety and trauma and grief and heartache, before something has got to give. Honestly, during our 20+ years of caring for some of our community’s most broken and most fragile and most needy children in our home, I have given my finite body an Olympic-worthy workout. I have demanded of my little adrenal glands, day after day, year after year that they keep producing an almost constant stream of adrenaline and cortisol, those hormones that the body needs during times of extreme stress.  How can that not eventually have an adverse effect?

Those thousands of nights when I should have been sleeping, that vital time when the body’s cells restore and rejuvenate, but instead I was keeping vigil at a child’s bedside, wondering if he or she would survive until morning.  The thousands of nights when I cried into my pillow, wondered if I  would survive until morning.  Managing countless moments of destructive behaviors, calming violent outbursts and tantrums, trying desperately to understand the hidden fears and hurts behind the rage.  Grabbing a quick granola bar or skipping meals altogether on my way out the door to yet another appointment or meeting or visit or court hearing.  The frequent worry and desperate prayers for a child’s uncertain and precarious future.  The dozens and dozens of times that I was overcome by grief, weeping for days when a flawed court system suddenly decided that a precious child who had been a part of my heart and a beloved member of our family for months or years, would not be able to stay, and I knew that life would never again be the same.

How could many years of, quite literally, laying down my life (John 15:13) for the least of these (Matthew 25:45) not eventually have an impact?  How could a lifetime of “being poured out as a drink offering” (2 Timothy 4:6) not eventually take its toll?  

An Unexpected Party

(A foster mother's version of "The Hobbit" by J.R.R. Tolkien)

There I was, an average, unremarkable woman, living in a little home in a quiet suburban neighborhood.   It was a quiet home that meant comfort and solitude.  The days were predictable.  Nights were filled with peaceful, uninterrupted slumber.  I certainly wasn’t looking for an adventure.  I happened to like my life the way it was, thank you very much.

I had come from a long line of middle class families, and people considered us very respectable, not only because most of us were hard-working, upstanding citizens, but because we had never had any adventures or did anything unexpected.  This is my story:  the story of how an average, unremarkable woman had an adventure, and found herself doing and saying things altogether unexpected.

Fostering His Potential

The toy figures are all carefully lined up in formation on the coffee table, as if they are waiting in anticipation for what will they will be asked to do next.  The young boy in front of them holds a stick in his chubby hand, the expression on his face every bit as serious as an orchestra conductor at the start of a complicated musical masterpiece.   Evidently, the symphony is about to begin.  Over the next few minutes, his little voice sings perfectly on key the tune to Beethoven’s Fifth:  “Dun dun dun duuuuuun. Dun dun dun duuuuuun,” while the stick alternates between being a conductor’s baton and a violin bow.   I watch and listen with admiration, wondering,  “Will this three-year old boy grow up to be a famous musician?”

Unfortunately, I may never know the answer to that question.  In spite of the fact that he has been my son for 2 ½ years, I don’t know how much longer he is going to live with me, how many more days that I will have the privilege of being his mother.  I only know that I have this one day to make an impact on his life, to teach him the things that truly matter, to foster his potential.