Help, Thanks, Wow

I’ve been scrummaging around for days now, trying to figure out how to write a retrospective on this most exceptional of years.  I am way overdue, but felt at a loss.  Then, just when I was about to give up the whole ordeal, I saw that one of my spiritual gurus, Anne Lamott, had come out with her latest book Help, Thanks, WOW, The Three Essential Prayers, and it says everything.  Everything.

Anne is in love with Jesus, but not reverent, and certainly not theological.   She helps me see things refreshingly.  This book, which I devoured the day it arrived on my Kindle, was a “Yes! Exactly”  kind of read. 

Anne says, “Prayer is taking a chance that against all odds and past history, we are loved and chosen, and do not have to get it together before we show up.”   She divides prayer into three categories, Help, Thanks and WOW.  And that has been our year.  It has been a help, thanks and wow kind of year. 

Help

On Valentines Day we discovered there was a problem; a lump.  The doctor in Kenya  confirmed a serious and aggressive tumor moving to the margins of my right breast.  CANCER.   The rapid-fire series of choices and decisions  that followed resulted in a mastectomy at the University of Michigan Cancer Center and  months of healing and reconstruction.  Mark was uprooted from his leadership at AIU’s Center for World Christianity, and I literally left a tour group of 18 women eating breakfast omelets at the university guest house.   Anne says, “There’s a freedom in hitting bottom, . . . in admitting you’ve reached the place of great unknowing.  This is where restoration can begin. . . “

Help included things like, no place to live, we will need a car, who will assume our responsibilities, how do you pay when you have cancer treatment?   Where do you go?  How does it all work?

Thanks

On November 5, I was declared cancer-free and surgery complete.  Thank you!   A course at Harvard teaches that thanks and gratitude actually make you feel better.  The secret to a happy and healthy life is saying “thanks” and being grateful.   We are grateful for our kids and spouses who welcomed us into their homes for months on end, and somehow managed to convince us it was their privilege.  We are thankful for a car to use all year, and for friends and family who traveled from far and wide to see us.   We are thankful for colleagues who picked up our responsibilities at AIU and did them so well.    Anne says, “Gratitude begins in our hearts and then dovetails into behavior.  It almost always makes you willing to be of service, which is where the joy resides.”

Strangely, this “help” year, has had more thanks in it than we ever expected.

WOW

“Wow is offered with a gasp, a sharp intake of breath, when we can’t  think of another way to capture a sudden unbidden insight or an unexpected flash of grace.” WOW means we are not dulled to wonder.   When new wonder cannot get into our lives and cause light, then, well that is the beginning of death.    So, WOW is life-giving, it truly is.     WOW is William Shaw White, who was born in June, and we were there to see his birth.  Having cancer made that possible.  WOW is Christmas with four grandsons under four years old, and feeling the awareness of being alive in the middle of the gifts and child-wonder. 

WOW, is that little choke that holds back tears when you are smiling, and think, “It could have all been so very different this year.”

So, this has been our Help,Thanks and WOW year, and on January 4^th we head back to Kenya.  We hope we will live a help,thanks, WOW lifestyle this year.  My prayer is that I will remember to journal more days than not – and that each day will have some help, thanks and WOW.  Should be a great year.

Love,

Lois for the both of us

The Angels of Norumbega (a short story by Mark Shaw)

There is a legend in the quiet coastal town of Norumbega, Maine, that every Christmas two angels stand on the mountain overlooking the village and continue a debate that has raged through the centuries. One angel recounts the losses of the year that have hit each family.  The other angel counts the blessings.  Some tell the story favoring the Dark Angel and the fact that life is a tragedy.  Others, the eternal optimists, favor the Other Angel, insisting that life is comedy and that somehow things will work out.  Most people in the town were somewhere in between.

   On this one particular Christmas Eve, the Dark Angel pointed its long, skeletal finger at a small cottage on the edge of town and uttered the words that it repeated each year:  "All that begins, must end." The Other Angel said nothing but looked down upon the cottage framed by the falling snow.

Margaret Makepeace swore as she burned her finger on the tea kettle screaming on the stove. She ran the finger under the cold water and thought about the Christmas Day that faced her the next morning

It would be her first Christmas without Harold. They had been married 45 years. It had not been an easy marriage but it had been a good one. Grief had brought them together at the halfway point of their union. Their only child, Richard, had been a troubled young man, with substance abuse problems. He had enlisted for Desert Storm and was killed days before he was due to return. People talk about what the death of a child does to a marriage. Lots of couples, she had read, split up after a tragedy like that. Harold and Margaret had grown closer. When Harold had passed away in March from a brain aneurism, her world had come to an end. She was going through the motions of the holidays but felt like an empty ornament.

There really was no one else to fill the void, no family at least. She had church friends.  They were great. Her only surviving relative, her older sister, was in a home in California.  She no longer remembered who Margaret was. For all extents and purposes, as far as family was concerned, Margaret Makepeace was alone in the world. She poured her tea and sat in her living room, next to her undecorated tree, looking out   at the drifting snow.

     Back on the mountain, the Dark Angel lowered his arm and then turned to the Other Angel , his shadowed face solemn with the conviciton of a case closed.  The Other Angel turned back towards the Makepeace cottage, lifted his arm and said: "And all that is lost shall be found again."

    A brown UPS truck drove up to Margaret's front door. The driver tucked a large thin envelope under his arm, walked up the walkway and rang the bell.

   Margaret opened the door. She  smiled at the driver and took the envelope from him. She put it on the table beside her tea. What was this about? Could it be something related to Harold's estate? She looked at the return address. It simply said L. Andrews, Worcester, MA. She opened the envelope and pulled out the contents.

Dear Mrs. Makepeace,

My name is Lisa Andrews. I was born in 1991 to Vicky Marcello and Richard Makepeace. My mother Vicky knew my father only briefly before he left for the gulf war in 1991 and had me after my father died in that war. She put me up for adoption just before she herself died of an overdose. I was raised by a wonderful family who loved me and helped me get a good education. I graduated from university this past May with a degree in social work. I now work with young moms in the Worcester area who are coping with the challenges of being single parents. I have met a wonderful man and we are engaged to be married in the spring.

Over the last few years I have been curious about my birth mother and father. With my adopted family's blessing and help I decided to find out about my past. I was able to discover my parents’ names but could not find any trace of my mother’s family. I did find out about you and your husband, however, and wondered if we could talk on the phone. I realize you might think this is some kind of scam. I assure you, however, it is not. I was so overjoyed to find out that I have family, particularly grandparents,  that I just had to try and make contact. Please call my number below if you would like to talk and I can help allay any fears you may have about whether this is genuine or not.  If you decide not to follow up on this, I will respect your decision and not bother you again.

 Your loving Granddaughter,

 Lisa

    Margaret looked at the attached picture.  Lisa was a beautiful girl.  She looked exactly like Richard.  What if it was true? Is it possible that something of him had survived? That she had Family? She sat in silence for what seemed like a glacial age, glanced at the letter once again and picked up the phone.

     Back on the mountain, the Other Angel lowered his hand and looked at the Dark Angel. Point and Counterpoint.  They stared at each other in silence. They would go through this exercise for another several hours.  They would point at each house in Norumbega and follow the script that had just played out. For it was Christmas, a time when the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy had inaugurated a new age.  A time when the great argument about whether life was a tragedy or a comedy had entered its final round. A time when the  world of loss and death was itself dying and a world of  new surprises and never ending stories was being born.