Skiff of snow on the ground here today and flakes falling softly. Looking out the window this morning, white slowly falling on green, I'm taken back to a year ago tomorrow, to this post from Nov. 12, 2007. Addendum at the end....
Outside this house of windows, flakes fly.
The first snow of the year whirls through the air. I can see the children now leaping with open hands, capturing frigid white lace, wildly celebrating as they head in from the barn. They twirl about, waving their arms, their hands, making invisible snow angels in the air as they run down the lane.
Shalom presses her nose against the cool windowpane, watching too. Her blueberry eyes turn, reflecting light and life. “Snow, Mama? Snow?”
Yes, Shalom. You are two and this is your first snow to talk about, to ask for mittens and hat and scarf. Your first snow to really know.
And I feel cold. Deep down. Chilled. A few hours from this farm near Lake Huron, down by Lake Ontario, a Mama too watches the snow, thinking of her children, of these days, and what comes down from heaven.
She does not want this winter to be her last snow.
She is young, vibrant, with a riant smile, radiant eyes, and an irresistible, unpredictable sense of humor. I have never met her, we have never corresponded. I only know her from words on a screen, from pixels of color, memories downloaded and posted. Each night, as the lights go off, I check in on her too, prayers in lantern light.
Eleven months ago, December 20th, 2007, she tucks in her three blonde headed little ones, with ocean blue eyes like her husband and her endearing smile, then she squares off, digs deep, and hunkers down. She will outgun, outwit, outrun this thing called breast cancer. She has too much living to do, too many years ahead with these just sprouted kids, with this man who calls her “hero.”
Her husband prints up and wears a T-shirt that reads, “If you’ve got Cancer, I’ve got Cancer. ~Jesus.” Jesus tenaciously holds the line with Marisa. Time and again this beast stalks close in the night, and lunges, tearing up their world. Marisa calls it “another punch to the face.” She takes it again and again over the course of this year. Hanging on the edge of a chair in some colorless doctor’s office, the beast rips into their dreams: chemo fails, cancers spread. Tumors found on her liver. Spots materializing on her lungs. No traditional treatments or options left. Incurable metasticized cancer.
Hollowed out and bruised, she whispers to her husband after another negative test result, after the shards of shattered hopes scatter across their future, “I know God is here. I just can’t find Him.” This man looks her in the eye. “People are saying they see God in this. In you.”
Last Thursday, Marisa celebrated her 33rd birthday. Jacoba Ann, Zion and baby Zekijah, Marisa's children, circled the birthday cake and sing loudly too. I think I know what wish swelled in Marisa’s heart before she blew those candles out.
Snow flies. I stand at the window, watching too. There will not be enough for snowmen today. Can we hope for enough for snow angels?
On this snowglobe morning, I think of Marisa, her downy soft hair growing in, sitting in the Juravinski Cancer Centre. She looked into the eyes of Doctor Tozer, nodded towards her husband and said clearly, “Yes. We are still holding out hope for a miracle.”
I read her words, her plea, on the screen and something catches, hurts. I howl, pounding on that door. “Father! Do you not hear your children? We are crying out for a miracle. Have you not heard us praying early, during, and late? Where are You? Wake up! We’ve crawled out of bed in the lightless pre-dawn, and cried out to you for the healing of this mother. Hear us!”
And He catches me up, me all in whirl of flailing and scratching and beating this air, this time, this world. He catches me up to Himself. I am surprised at how quickly He comes, soothing, assuring with unexpected words, words of a poet. He hushes this aching angst with this:
“Here dies another day
During which I have had eyes, ears, hands
And the great world around me;
And with tomorrow begins another.
Why am I allowed two?”
Does the God of the Psalms speak still now in poetry?
He did this morning, wrapping me up and swaddling me close with these words, this truth. I have been blind. I have howled and begged, prayed and twisted at His hem. A very small part of me, a part I don't really even want to acknowledge, think about, has thought Him deaf, dumb, locked away in the deepest of sleep. I was wrong. Dead wrong. He has been here answering all along. Again and again. Without fail.
We miracle beggars have wept, and so He has heard, bestowed. Has He not given another day? And yet another. Why, indeed, are we graced with one, allowed even two? Why lavished with three? A whole string of days? Is each one not miracle enough?
I want to yell, “NO!” No. No, it is not. I want to take both fists and splinter that door with a demanding for more, for a necklace of days with no end. No end at all. Why can’t we be allowed days indefinitely? How can He ever expect us to say good-bye to this great and glorious world around us? To the eyes, ears, hands of those we cherish more than our own?
Because His eyes, ears, hands, heart await us at Home. Open, ready, longing.
Because if we don’t say good-bye here when will we say hello there? Because it is true: Precious in His eyes is the homecoming of the saints.
In a fractured, diseased world of cancerous bodies, broken marriages, dying babies, illness, starvation, poverty, we are a people, en masse, holding out for a miracle. His ear is low, His heart attuned. We need but whisper and He swings open the door and graciously, abundantly gives.
The miracle falls softly, imperceptibly.
We are allowed two.
And then, heaven. We are allowed to cross that threshold into our forever Home and rest right next to the beating song of His forever heart.
I pull Shalom close and the snow falls on the spruce. No, today, there is not enough snow for men, not enough for the men of this world to gather and make things well, right, whole. But I warm anyways, this little chest pressed close to mine.
For always there is enough for angels. And for the miracle of now.
Thank you, Father, we are allowed two. And with Your ministering angels close, there is always enough for good. So we bow down and say the only two words we can: Thank you.
Origen of Alexandria wrote, "So, when the saints are assembled, there will be a double Church, one of men and one of angels." With God, there is always enough: always angels, a double gathering.
Addendum: Marisa and I did correspond after the posting of this entry a year ago. I still go back to read those notes. The ministering angels took Marisa home three weeks after this post last November. There were only a few more snows. And no Christmas. But she was allowed a diamond string of days and we do not take our now miracle for granted.
Her husband continues their story in raw eloquence at "Life" ....
