Pilgrimages and Such…

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A ton has been going on in the past couple of weeks! My Wheaton grad school finals finished up last week, my mom came up to Chicago and helped me pack up plus drive 14 hours home, and this week I frantically unpacked my stuff in Texas only to run around North Dallas getting ready for my Wheaton in the Holy Lands trip. I’m currently at the Philadelphia airport on an 8 hour layover between DFW and Tel Aviv (so excited!). I’m spending the next 6 weeks with Wheaton in the Holy Lands (WIHL from here on out, cause I’m lazy…): 3 weeks in Israel, then 3 weeks combined in Turkey, Greece, and Rome studying the land of Paul and the early church.

I’m exhausted from the year in grad school and trying to finish up all of my pre-course reading and assignments for WIHL, but I’m so excited about this trip! I never studied abroad in undergrad because I was busy with volleyball and a ministry I helped get going, and in the summers I worked at Kanakuk. So, consider this my “study abroad” experience…even though I’m the only grad student going with around 40 undergrads… So basically, I’m the big sister on this trip. The study part ends in Rome, and my mom is flying over to meet me there. From Rome, we’re planning to get in as much of Europe as we can in two weeks. I plan to come home in 8 weeks, thoroughly exhausted but hopefully having seen some amazing things!

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Why “Getting Over” Cancer Isn’t a Thing

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First of all, it’s been a few weeks, but in that time, I got to write a guest blog post for PearlPoint, a cancer support organization. If you haven’t seen it, check out the post here, and also check out the resources PearlPoint has—from helpful blog posts to information on nutrition, diagnoses, clinical trials, and finding support.

Secondly: I submit to you that “getting over” cancer (or other trials) isn’t really a thing.

A few weeks ago, I hung out in downtown Chicago with a friend who was here for a conference. We went to elementary and middle school together as well as high school youth group at church. Through our church, we went on a couple of mission so trips together—one actually to Chicago (we stayed at Wheaton, even more coincidentally).

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Confession: I Am Still Vulnerable to Loss

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I’ve been talking about the necessity of being present with others in posts three weeks ago and additionally two weeks ago, and I also shared Nouwen’s idea that God-with-us gives us the ultimate example of being present with another in struggle. I want to continue with the idea of presence this week but in a confession about my hesitance to join in with others in their suffering.

I had to read the book A Grace Disguised by Jerry Sittser, a professor of religion at Whitworth, a couple of weeks ago for class. I think I highlighted half of the book, added stars next to really important highlighted sections, and dog-eared the corners of the most important highlighted sections. Basically, I wish I had read this after cancer, or even before writing my book because it touched on so many things that I felt and went through during and after the diagnosis. (Although actually, I’m glad I didn’t read it before I wrote my book because Sittser discusses things that I discussed, but he does it so well and eloquently that, had I read A Grace Disguised earlier, I don’t think I would have written my book because I could never say it as well as him.)

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Present in the Struggle, Part 2

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I wrote last week about the Woodiwiss family and the idea of being present with others in their struggles. I realize that the idea of “being present” seems a bit amorphous, without clearly defined steps one can take to actually be present…but I think that’s the point: in struggle, there’s not a list of steps for how to help another person or ways to fix the problem.

I read Henri Nouwen’s Compassion for one of my classes, and he writes so much on this idea of presence (among other topics in this book), so I’d recommend the book, but I’ll pass on a few of his words that struck me:

“…what really counts is that in moments of pain and suffering someone stays with us. More important than any particular action or word of advice is the simple presence of someone who cares. When someone says to us in the midst of a crisis, ‘I do not know what to say or what to do, but I want you to realize that I am with you, that I will not leave you alone,’ we have a friend through whom we can find consolation and comfort….we have lost the simple but difficult gift of being present to each other. We have lost this gift because we have been led to believe that presence must be useful.”

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Present in the Struggle, Part 1

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As promised in my last post about some of the more unhelpful (though semi-entertaining) things people said to me during cancer, this week I wanted to share what was conversely very helpful, but as I started writing and compiling everything, the post was becoming too long. So, this is the first in a short installment of posts on being present in the struggle.

The idea of “presence,” of people simply being with others in the struggle and alongside the struggle, has come up in many of the readings for my graduate courses both last semester and this spring semester. (Sidenote: by “presence,” I don’t mean “presents”…although the chemo day care packages my aunts sent me were pretty great alternatives to people tritely saying the wrong thing!) 

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Medal Round: Top 3 (un)Helpful Things People Said

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In honor of the Winter Olympics, I thought I’d share with you my top  three favorite things people told me when I was going through cancer…and by that, I mean these are the three statements that were meant comfortingly but probably should have just been replaced by a hug and silence. 

Lest this sound too cynical, know that I understand these words were spoken from sincerity and out of a loss for the right words to say, so I’m not bitter at all. However, there are times when, if you don’t know what to say, sometimes it’s just best to admit that and give someone a hug (but more on that in my next post!).

So, here we go with the bronze, silver, and gold of my favorite things people said followed by my (sarcastic and internal) response.

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Why I Wrote a Book

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I started graduate school in August and have been meeting many new people as a result. Just as I moved to Hawaii a couple months after I finished chemotherapy and found myself having to explain a lot of my back-story to the new faces I encountered, so now I find myself having to give a lot of context as to why things have been a bit busy…because I happened to write a book that also just happened to come out in the fall. People frequently ask me why I decided to write a book, and though I often doubted my reasons along the way—thinking there was a good chance I was legitimately going crazy—I’ve had two main reasons.

I was reminded of the first reason when I read something by Parker Palmer for one of my grad school classes. In his book Let Your Life Speak, Palmer explains his reasons for writing about his experience with depression, and I resonated with his words. Here’s what he says:

“…my depression was largely situational. I will tell the truth about it as far as I am able. But what is true for me is not necessarily true for others. I am not writing a prescription—I am simply telling my story. If it illumines your story, or the story of someone you care about, I will be grateful. If it helps you or someone you care about turn suffering into guidance for vocation, I will be more grateful still.”

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Kickstarter Update #10: Some Rewards Are on Their Way!

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Exciting news: some rewards are on their way!!! I was home in Dallas over fall break from graduate school last week which afforded me the time to sort through my first shipment of books, sign some, write thank you notes, and get out the first shipment! I sent about 20 packages, so almost half of you should be getting your books by the start of next week (and some should be there today or Friday!).

Unfortunately, all of the rewards aren’t out yet. I’m waiting for the rest of my books to get in from my publisher in order to send out the rest of the hardcover and paperback books, but once those are in, I can get those out very quickly, so I estimate that those will be out in the next week and a half to two weeks.

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Kickstarter Update #9: Drumroll Please…

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Well, today I held in my hands my very own copy of What in the World Are You Doing with Cancer?!!! I’ve been waiting to do (and say) that for a good part of the past three years! The print quality came out great–no missing pages or cover printed upside down or anything! So, I gave my publisher the go-ahead to send on my initial shipment of books and it should arrive next week!

Some of you may have seen that my book is available on Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com right now, and a couple of my friends said their orders should arrive tomorrow. Today I asked my sales rep at my publisher how that was possible if I hadn’t finished signing off on the print quality yet since I just got my own copy today. He said that each of those companies uses different printers, so my publisher WestBow has me okay the print quality as a courtesy that other companies don’t. So hopefully the copies people bought from Amazon and B&N turn out okay, but if not, that’s a problem for the individual printers those companies use.

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Kickstarter Update #8: The Long Awaited (and Long Overdue!) End Is Finally in Sight!

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Wow. I never imagined it would be October of 2013 when I finally knew that I’d be holding my book within a week. And yet, here we are.

I posted back in April that this had been a patience-testing journey, and since then, the fun hasn’t stopped. I paid the deposit for Wheaton graduate school on the first Friday in May, and later that day, the song licensing for my book finally came through after five months of my persistent phone calls and emails. I’m not saying the two are necessarily linked, but I had been feeling like I was supposed to attend graduate school this fall but couldn’t bring myself to commit and leave Hawaii again, so I do think the timing of my actually paying the online deposit and hours later receiving word that my licensing was in order was poetic. Maybe I should have been obedient with grad school sooner…

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