As I fight this battle with cancer, I am connecting with other women, younger and older, who comprise this unique breast cancer sisterhood. Marion, Amanda, Debbi, Nancy, Wendy, Jenny, and Rebecca – thank you for sharing your journeys with me.

I love our conversations.  There is freedom to say certain things with these friends because they get it. Having to face and fight the thief themselves, their empathy is deep, wide, and tangible.  The specific comfort God has given them flows to me in the course of our conversations, and my heart drinks their words.

In fact, I’ve realized that sharing our hearts through any hardship is often ripe with help and hope.  It’s a refreshing drink of savory lemonade on a warm summer day.

The Psalms have long been my soul’s lemonade, and even more so these days.  Sweet with hope, refreshing in honesty, rejuvenating with truth, the Psalms give me words to express my raw fears.  They sing of God’s sovereign care and mighty strength.  They fill in the blanks and surprise me along the way with word pictures that express far more than any technical description of suffering.  And they reorient my wayward heart from its dark, hopeless wanderings to the stalwart hope of Christ, anchoring me to Him, not my shifting circumstances.

My circumstances are not offering much refreshment these days.  While there are certainly joys and even belly laughs every day, (I am married to Van, after all), this is a tiring, long road.

Weary.  I’ve used that word a lot more the past two weeks.  It’s different than hopeless.  Weariness is the tattered sails of a soul that inevitably come after long-lasting, intense storms.  Deep sigh.  It’s only been 13 weeks.  Fodder for you as you pray for me.

My drink of lemonade this morning was Psalm 63…

“My soul thirsts for you…as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.”

There is no reprimand in this Psalm for feeling weary.  There is no correction for having a tired soul.  There is, instead, an invitation to be refreshed in God’s love.

“Because your steadfast love is better than life…My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food, and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips.”  

Lemonade AND bacon! (Van would stick an “amen!” right here)  God’s love, the yummiest of fare, better than life itself.

Psalm 63 is the song Jesus sang with His life, perfectly embodying and fulfilling its every word.  He knows weary.  He even knows what it is to be weary and have the refreshment He alone deserved intentionally withheld by his Heavenly Father.  Why?  So that I – undeserving of comfort and rest because of my sin – can be freely refreshed by the love of God.  Jesus Himself knows the specifics of my suffering.  He can read between the lines of my heart as I cry out to him, reviving me with his comfort and peace, his strength and help.  Jesus is divine lemonade.

Round 5 begins next Tuesday.  Pray I will be refreshed and satisfied in God’s love as the rockiest parts of this treatment road approach.  I’m beginning to see the finish line of ninja warfare in the distance.  I will feast and dance across that line!

The kids started school this past Monday, demarcating what I call the “unofficial end of summer” (despite there being 33 days left before its official exit). A happy occasion for our school-loving Jack (4^th), Luke (2^nd) and Sarah (K), the transition to uniforms, homework and carpool caught me off-guard more than I anticipated. As I quipped in one of my Facebook posts, of the four seasons, summer seems to speed by the fastest. Much too quickly, in fact.

So I’ve been thinking about our summer. Most importantly, how it was for the kids in light of Mommy’s chemotherapy treatment (aka “ninja medicine” to K.C.A.).

A few trail runs and chats-with-Anne later, I came to the following conclusion: the Fletcher kiddos had a great summer. Not an easy summer. Not a normal summer. Not a summer without tears, new fears, and fitful nights. But a summer that was joyful, and rich in blessings that only Anne’s suffering could have unlocked for our family.

Those blessings arrived in the form of you. That’s right. You made my children’s summer special. You are our village of loving, thoughtful, intentional and generous friends.

“Village” perfectly captures how we’ve experienced your love and care. One of the villagers has fallen ill, so the village organically steps in to provide communal care, not only for the sick villager but her entire family.

Connecting dots…

Ever since Anne was diagnosed back on May 25^th, you have faithfully provided us with delicious meals, tailored to our family’s dietary needs. More than simply filling our bellies, your prepared dinners have freed Anne to rest and invest her limited energy in the children, freed Suzanne (Anne’s mom) to keep the house running and care for the kids, and freed me to focus on work and allowed me more time with Anne and the Phletcha trifecta. In other words, you have helped us preserve the one thing that the Thief so adeptly steals: time.

The other significant way in which you made my children’s summer memorable was by whisking them away for play dates, outings, and sleepovers. Just last week, some dear friends took Friday off from work, snagged the kids that morning, and had a big time going to the museum, the pool and other adventures. Amazing gift. What’s more, on their own initiative several of Jack, Luke, and Sarah’s teachers at St. David’s took the kids for entire afternoons this summer, treating them to neat opportunities for fun and learning that neither Anne nor I could have provided.

Friends, you have blessed us this summer. The evidence is written all over my children. Anne and I are humbled and brimming with gratitude for the ways in which you have so specifically loved our family.

You are our Village, without whom we could not face and fight this cancer battle with the same resolve, energy, joy, and hope your torrent of love has infused in us.

Thank you. A million times over.

With heartfelt gratitude,
Van

Van whisked me away for a surprise getaway this past weekend.  It marked the halfway point in our chemotherapy marathon, a perfect time to pause, catch our breath, and consider the terrain we have journeyed so far…especially the terrain of our hearts.  I love that Van has been planning this 13.1 mile marker respite for weeks.  One thing is certain: in a culture that inundates us with voices screaming that we are valued for our physical appearance – which we know diminishes daily- I have experienced in a fresh way what it is to be cherished otherwise.  Especially as my body is unraveling.

Yep, unraveling.  Hair is gone.  Eyebrows included.  (First time I have ever wished I was a contemporary of Cleopatra, when painted-on eyebrows and lashes were all the rage.) Medicine has made me puffy and gain weight.  Surgery will alter my body even more.  Van has walked with me throughout these losses and tended most carefully to my heart.  I feel cherished.

This unraveling is the cost of healing.  And it is absolutely worth it.  After a mammogram yesterday, the radiologist came in the room beaming with great news.  My tumor is now a quarter of its original size! Hooray!

This news makes losing my eyebrows feel like a worthy sacrifice.  But I’m still bummed about the disappearance of these hallmark facial features. Baldness I can hide with a nice wig. Eyebrows? All I’ve got are fancy crayons.  My thinning eyebrows have had me thinking about what to do with the “little sorrows” that accompany cancer.  I’ve tried confessing vanity (of course there is vanity.)  I’ve tried to tell myself to pull it together and stop the crying as the last remnants of eyebrow hair vanish.  But none of this has been very helpful.  There is sadness in this journey.  Things are not as they should be, and life in a broken world is sad.  I tend to put my happy face on and try positive thinking to ward off the sadness, but there is no growth or lasting hope that comes through those efforts. They’re only temporary band-aids.

God cares about ALL of it. From the shattering, rug-pulled-out-from-under-you cancer diagnosis to my eyebrows falling out, He cares. I tend to use a measuring device of my own invention to decide if the severity of my suffering matters to Jesus. The hard stuff – death, the kids growing up without a mommy, cancer coming back – I more easily cast on Jesus. The smaller stuff – like my disappearing eyebrows or inability to taste food – I filter out of my prayer life because it feels trivial.  But that isn’t what I see our Lord inviting us to do in his Word.  It is filled with invitation after invitation to pour our hearts out to him because He cares.  No matter the size of the crosses we bear, they are still crosses in need of His grace to endure. There’s no criteria, no checklist, no minimum requirement to bring our burdens to our Heavenly Father. I’d be remiss if I kept myself from more comfort and hope by trying to deal with my eyebrows and other “little sorrows” apart from the help and hope of Jesus.  His love is that deep and that wide.

The next 13.1 miles of the chemotherapy marathon will be the harder half.  Chemo’s cumulative effects are mounting (mainly, fatigue and nausea).  More unraveling is ahead.  But, knowing these ninjas entering my bloodstream are kicking cancer’s hindquarters,  I say “bring it!”.  I have seen God’s faithfulness the first leg, and He will be faithful again.  Pray that I will have a new default setting in my heart to cast all my cares upon my Savior, because He cares about every single one.

Back to the weekend getaway for a fun story.  Van had concocted an elaborate surprise for me.  Saturday evening, Van surprised me with tickets to see my favorite music artist, Sara Groves, in concert to support the work of World Relief.  (Check out the amazing work WR is doing just down the road in the Triad to bring about the abolition of human trafficking.)  Since she first started recording 18 years ago, Sara has ministered to me through her music; her beautiful, rich, and redemptive lyrics always encourage my heart and usher me into deeper fellowship with Jesus. What a treat to see and hear her live.

After the concert, I was able to chat with Sara for a few minutes.  As I expected, she’s warm, vivacious, and so sincere.  I floated away from the concert on such a high.  Sunday morning we stopped for breakfast on our way back to Raleigh.  We walked into a nearly empty Panera Bread, and low and behold there sat Sara sweetly waiting for me.  That coffee date with Sara in heaven I have long talked about? (see my post “Something Else”)  Van made it come true a little bit earlier.

What an absolute joy it was to spend time with Sara, swapping stories, hearing about each others’ families, and encouraging each other in our callings.  Her new album, Floodplain, comes out this fall.  Treat yourself to an early Christmas present.  Then, do yourself a favor and buy all of her other albums.  You will want to write yourself a thank you note 100 times over. And speaking of thank you’s…

Thank you, Van, for how you have so intentionally cherished me.  Thank you Allison, Sara’s manager, for so graciously arranging this secret surprise with Van.  Thank you, Sara, for your lavish gift of time and openness with me.  I am ever grateful for your faithfulness in your calling to beautifully sing of the hidden wonders, the surprising joys, the redemptive work of the gospel in this messy, broken world.

Silver linings in the darkness and they are beautiful reminders of “I AM with you.”  Good start to the next 13.1 miles.

Gratefully,

Anne