Message from the Mainland

What Happened After the Fire Swamp?

2011-05-11T14:53:00.003-05:00

Hello All.

I bet I know what you are thinking... "What a place to leave off!" This big thing happens in her life and then she doesn't say anything about it!

Well, that's not really true. I have a lot to say about it, but nothing comes out logically or in order. Any one thing I may say is not representative of what is happening. It's a big tangled mess. Who am I to say that I understand what has happened? Am I a theologian? Not a chance. The only word that comes to my mouth is Jesus. I have actually been writing like mad in the last while. Lots of things are spilling out of me, faster than I can type. But at this point it is not sensical, and wouldn't make sense to the outside reader. All of my emotions are spilling out. If I am away from home, I get to a computer and write myself an email. If I am not near a computer, I jot it down on paper. If I don't have time to write it out, I make a mental note to myself.

All these events remind me of an interview that I read with Brad Pitt after the filming of Seven Years in Tibet. The interviewer was anxious to know what Brad's opinion was on the political situation in Tibet. After all, he is a big Hollywood star, and after filming a controversial movie about the Dalai Lama and Tibet, he must have some deep thoughts about the whole issue. I thought his response was very clever. He basically said, "Why would you ask me about such a loaded topic? I'm just an actor, I don't know anything about this situation, except what happened in the movie." For the record, that is the first time that I have ever quoted Brad Pitt as being profound! (I don't dislike him, but I have never really thought of him as wise! After all, he is just an actor.)

I think his words sum up my own. I may have received healing in my body, but other than saying "to God be the Glory", I'm not sure what to do from here or what to say about it. I won't be diving into healing debates any time soon. Remember the man who was blind from birth? When people asked him for details of what had happened, all he could say was this. "I don't know what happened. All I know is this: I used to be blind, but now I see."

And truthfully, my thoughts lie predominantly with the rest of my comrades who are still in the thick of their struggles. My heart goes out to them as they hear about my story. If I have a testimony, it is this. Jesus' words are true. Whether we are sick or healthy, he is there with us.

I had no special recipe for the way I approached God in this. All I wanted was his will and his blessing. I wanted him to be glorified in my body, be it through Death or through Life. If I was going into the Valley of the Shadow of Death, then I wanted the guided tour. Frankly, I'm a little terrified that healthy people will take my story to those who are sick and say, "Look, God healed her!" My message is about healing, yes, but it is primarily that he heals our sinfulness and brings us back to God, sick and healthy alike. My message is that God is good, whether he heals or doesn't heal. My message is that God is not afraid to walk with us through illness and hard times... but we need to let him.

I'm also afraid that some people will accuse me of not giving God glory for the healing work he has done in my life. But I beg to differ. I want to give God glory for Who He Is, not only for what he has done. He has not given me a reason to praise him... He was already worthy of all my praise, and I would have died praising him if that was his will.

We may tell stories of healing, but we rarely think about what happens to the people after they have received healing. We just assume that after it happened, everything was fine and dandy. But here are a few thoughts for you. What did the man who was healed from paralysis think the first time his legs fell asleep? Imagine what he thought during the first sensation of pins and needles traveling up and down his legs! Imagine his amazement that muscles can ache and that stubbing your toe hurts like the dickens. Or again, this man who was blind from birth. Was he afraid that if he closed his eyes to go to sleep, he would never see again? What did he think the first time he personally witnessed injustice done to other people, a starving human body, or when his eyes ached in direct sunlight?

I bet the once-blind-now-seeing man noticed every blind person he saw after that. I bet the once-lame-now-walking-and-leaping man took special note of every lame person he walked past. Because they understood where those people were at.

My heart remains with those who are sick, and I want them to know that it is not their fault that they are sick. I want them to know that God can be glorified in their life, regardless of their circumstances, and in fact, that God can be glorified even if they are never healed. When Jesus was asked who was at fault for the man being born blind, this is how he answered. "It was not because of his sin or his parents' sin. This happened so that the power of God could be seen in him."

God's power is shown through our lives when we submit to him. Whether or not outward healing occurs, it is the inward healing that matters the most. Followers of Jesus get sick like everyone else. The difference between a follower of Jesus and a non-follower is this: followers of Jesus continue to have hope in their lives, regardless of the desperateness of their outward situation. That hope means that we are not afraid of Death, even though we approach it with alarming speed. 1 Peter 1:3 says "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead"

Healing is only a small measure of God's goodness. But his conquering of Death and guidance in our lives is the hope that sustains us and the unlimited source of power that backs us. If God is for us, who can be against us?

My message is this: As Followers of Jesus, we have the hope and the power not merely to survive hard times, but to actually thrive in the midst of them. Think about the popular movie, The Princess Bride. The brave Wesley leads Princess Buttercup through the Fire Swamp. As they journey together through the swamp he saves her and protects her from the three fears: the fire spurts, the quicksand and the giant rats. My question is this. When Buttercup told the story afterward, what do you think she would emphasize? Would she sigh with relief and never want to think about it again? Or would she tell all of her friends about the Wesley's daring bravery and how he saved her again and again? I think the latter. She did not just survive in the Fire Swamp, she actually fell in love in the Fire Swamp. I would call that thriving. Jesus is my Wesley.

In Psalm 23 (The Lord is my Shepherd...), there is a line that says "He prepares a table before me, in the presence of my enemies. My cup overflows". Here is my version: "He prepares a table before me, in the presence of a brain tumor, of Death, of chemotherapy, of disappointments, and of loss. My cup overflows."

If I get diagnosed with another Krang tomorrow, this will remain unchanged. Because I have a Wesley and I am in love with him.

New Frontiers: Shell shocked and very emotional

2011-04-29T22:34:00.006-05:00

I went to see my doctor yesterday with James to get the results of my MRI from Wednesday evening. What the doctor had to say took us by surprise to say the least!

Evidence of the tumor is gone. There are no visible signs of it, except for the hole in my head.

They don't seem too surprised by this. This is a very good sign, but apparently I am not out of the woods yet. The tumor itself is sort of like the tip of the iceberg, so there are still cells there that could grow back (statistically speaking). I will be continuing treatments until November. My doctor said that something will probably grow back over time, but that it would likely happen over many years.

I don't really care about the details. Whether we realize it or not, all of us have a "Will Die" label tattooed on our foreheads. On my label it looked like the date was about to expire. I still have the label. I will die at some point in some form or fashion. That threat has not been removed from my life. But for whatever reason, Jesus has touched me and said, "Not now".

Many thoughts, many emotions. I'll try to describe them for you.

I will not merely proclaim the healing powers of Jesus Christ. What I will proclaim is the He is God over this world and over the heavens. I will proclaim that he is always Great and Good and that even in my suffering, He was Great and Good. He is no more worthy of praise now that my tumor is gone than he was while it caused uncontrollable twitching in my body. He is no more my friend and my advocate now than he was two days ago. He didn't need to prove himself to me. I already believed that his goodness extends beyond my circumstances. But for some reason he has.

Its a little bit as though James had given me a huge piece of valuable jewelry to show me that had loved me. Almost inevitably I would hear myself say to him, "Oh, James you didn't have to do that. I already know you love me". This is of course a hypothetical scenario. James has never given me a huge expensive piece of jewelry (okay, a wedding ring!). But I know he loves me because he is sharing his life with me. He comforts me, he gives himself to me when we are going through hard times.

To me, this healing is a piece of jewelry. It's big. It's incredible. It's a sign of love. But without the constant presence of Jesus in my life through thick and thin, I wouldn't know what to do with it. Am I happy about the jewelry? Will I show it off to people? Yes! But just as the tumor was the "tip of the iceberg," so this sign of healing (or perhaps, reprieve from illness) is just the tip of the enormity of his love for me!

Christians like to quote 1 Corinthians 13 a lot. "If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but have not love, I am but a resounding gong or a clanging symbol. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and hand over my body to the flames so that I may boast, but have not love, I gain nothing."

Without the love and the presence of Jesus in my life, this healing would mean nothing. The greatest thing he has done is to redeem me from my sin with his death and restore me to relationship with him, giving me access to the most awesome power and love in this world and beyond.

I will tell of the kindnesses of the LORD,
the deeds for which he is to be praised,
according to all the LORD has done for us—
yes, the many good things
he has done for Israel,
according to his compassion and many kindnesses.
He said, “Surely they are my people,
children who will be true to me”;
and so he became their Savior.
In all their distress he too was distressed,
and the angel of his presence saved them.
In his love and mercy he redeemed them;
he lifted them up and carried them
all the days of old.
Yet they rebelled
and grieved his Holy Spirit.
So he turned and became their enemy
and he himself fought against them.

From the beginning, I have felt the assurance that however my story might end, I would pass through Death to Life. Either I would physically die and find life in the hereafter, or my "life" as I now know it would die and I would be given a new physical life. Either way I win.

But now that I have "won" (at least for this particular battle), I feel weak and shell shocked. It's like I've come home from the war. I've survived. I am alive, and life can now continue. But I've seen so much death in the past 10 months. I've seen my comrades fall dead (my dreams and ambitions), I've seen myself disabled from well aimed shots. I may be "home" and I may be alive, but I can't just fall back into my life. I don't recognize it. I have been living on autopilot. Yesterday I had to let myself cry and weep and scream for all that has been lost. Like honoring all the soldiers who have died. I recognize the awesomeness of what has happened, but only yesterday did it really hit me how terrible and bloody this battle has been on my life and on my emotions. I can't go into detail about what has been lost - there is much more than I've talked about on here. It is raw and it is personal and it doesn't even make sense. But as I sat there mourning, I could feel God's presence beside me, comforting me and acknowledging with me all that has been lost. I need emotional healing too.

That's all for now.

In Which Being Able to Laugh at Oneself Pays Off Tremendously

2011-02-13T09:47:00.005-06:00

I've been informed by an old acquaintance that I am overdue for a blog entry. The mid-winter stretch is upon us and this of course makes daily life seem rather uneventful. I recently looked back at some of our blog entries living in China and re-realized how many "abnormal" things happened there on a daily basis. At the time it seemed normal enough, and blogging about it seemed very natural. I remember that one of my close friends remarked that either we had a very interesting life or we were just really good story tellers. I'm now of the opinion that it was the former. With the cancer thing slowing down and living back in North America, it seems like there is not much to write about.

This was never intended to be a Cancer Blog. It began primarily as a way for us to relate our lives in China to our faraway friends and family. I really disliked the idea of writing group emails or of having to explain the same things over and over again to different people.

Cancer blog is not a bad thing. In fact I think our readership probably multiplied by a factor of ten or so. It was a little overwhelming when I suddenly realized that we had acquaintances of acquaintances reading, or people that James or I not seen for ten years or so reading it. For a while I was receiving emails almost daily from people that I didn't even know saying that they were reading and praying. I wondered then, as I occasionally still wonder now, what it was about my story that made it more interesting than the thousands (dare I say millions) of other cancer victims out there. Or better put, what is there interesting to read about cancer? What person whose life is untouched by cancer really wants to read about another person's life that is (and a stranger at that)?

Nonetheless, this blog fell into its new role as Cancer Blog. As in China, there was plenty to write about... changing emotions, thoughts about the future, new treatment plans etc, etc. These things have not ceased, but they have markedly slowed down, and they have also had a decreasing impact on our lives. With the continued and growing knowledge that God continues to be God, despite my physical health, the fact that I have a brain tumor has slowly lost its power in our lives. Its not something we spend hours thinking about anymore, even though its medical prognosis over our lives has not changed. Theoretically, I'm still dying. But I do spend hours basking in the Truth that I have in God; that I am not afraid of Death, nor am I afraid of Life.

So now what to write about? Do I write just for the sake of writing? That sounds boring.

James and I have fallen back into a very precious niche of ours, one we've had since we started dating. That is, dreaming about our future. I have mentioned before that this kind of dreaming is not an attempt to escape the present, it is merely an manifestation of the level of excitement we have for our lives. While I live, we intend to LIVE, not limit. Our most recent dreams have included: James doing an internship with the FAO in a few years (which would require us living in Rome), me in Med School (as you already know), or me doing an dietetic internship with the Dietitians of Canada.

Dreaming is just so darn fun! So many of the fun things we have already done started with the seed of a dream. Dreaming is often stigmatized as not being realistic. In our case especially, I think that some people would accuse us of being escapists. Recently, I asked the Dean of my university department to refer me for a dietetic internship. He agreed, but first he sat and talked with me in his office for close to an hour about my health condition and how I was doing emotionally. I suspect that he wanted to determine for himself if my optimism was a carefully crafted front, and if the peace that I display was genuine before referring me. What resulted was an extremely open discussion where both of us walked away feeling encouraged. I viewed it as an unexpected blessing. How many people walk away from a hour meeting with a University dean feeling spiritually encouraged?

In both Christian and non-Christian circles, there is a lot of discussion about the power of positive thinking. I agree, certainly, but my version of it is just to keep on living. We can talk about being positive, or we can just live positively. However, I don't think that positive thinking means rejecting the negative or rejecting Death. That would just be denial. Rather, I think that keeping a view of Death in our lives lends a certain sharpness and acuity to the way we live. In all of our dreams now, James and I always leave room for death. But this does not make us sad.

So we live by dreaming, and we also live in the day to day. There is a lot in the day to day that is also makes us feel very ALIVE. For example, two days ago, I had to go from the University of Manitoba to Victoria Hospital to get some routine blood work done. These two institutions are practically side by side, but in order to get to the hospital, you have to walk all the way to Pembina Highway, which then travels by the longest route possible back to the hospital( at least a 20 minute walk). As I walked the route, I couldn't help but noticing how close the hospital looked just across the field of snow. Impulsively, I took the road less travelled by (aka, there was no road, only a field of untouched hip deep snow).

It started out okay, it seems that one person had travelled part of the way through the field (but then wisely stopped), so I followed in their tracks. When I came to the unbroken snow, it looked hard enough to walk on top, so I gingerly tried to lift myself above the snowy depths. But then I started breaking through the snow up to my hips! We're talking Peter trying to walk on water here. Try as I might, I could not get back onto the surface of the snow, so I treaded through the snow, giggling to myself at how ridiculous I must look! Then my Canadian breeding kicked in, "If only I can increase my surface area, I can stay on top of the snow!". Half the field left to go and the hospital looked closer than ever! Perseverance Jessica! I spread myself out on my stomach and crawled commando style across the snow (still breaking through), clearly visible from two major roads, the hospital windows towering above the field and to the construction workers just across the... fence (oh no!).

At this point I was laughing out loud hysterically at myself and pouring with sweat. A grown adult, mother, nutritionist, and cancer patient unsuccessfully commando crawling over an open field and covered in snow, just for the sake of saving a few minutes! Finally I made it to the last impediment... the chain link fence (complete with wire ends at the top for the express purpose of deterring people like me). But I was not to be deterred. Going back now would mean going through the field again AND walking twenty minutes. And the hospital was right there!

Climbing over a fence is challenging at any time, but far more so when wearing thick winter boots and fighting to rise above the hip-deep snow that sucks you down. I finally made it up to the top, where I hovered on the spikes while preparing to throw my weight in one last concerted effort over the fence. After all, if I got hurt, I was already on my way to the hospital (how convenient!)

Rrrrip! Not my flesh thank goodness, but a large patch of my pants and long underwear had ripped open to the skin! Jessica's thigh exposed to the world! Walking the remaining ten feet to the hospital on concrete, open jeans flapping with each step, I momentarily experienced a sensation of "I wish I hadn't done that". But I quickly brushed it aside and proceeded to go to the blood lab in the hospital, ripped pants and all.

Anyone reading this story will have the same reaction that James did, "Why did you do that?". But, as ridiculous as it was, I hold that it was extremely fun laughing by myself as I crawled through the snow. Personally, I think it is a great example of enjoying living and feeling ALIVE.

Would I do it again? Probably not!

Report on the Murder Mystery!

2011-01-15T11:16:00.006-06:00

And here we are with the long awaited report on our murder mystery. Despite the fact that James and I were still writing up cue cards a mere two hours before it started, the evening was an unprecedented success! I give credit for the fun time to all of our friends and family who really got into character. I was in peals of laughter at the outbursts of angry Portugese from the Viceroy of Macau, the snuffbox, sneezing and embarrassing medical diagnoses of Dr. Wang, the mysteries of the Tao expounded upon by Master Huang, the operatic bursts of song from Esmeralda Castafiore, the unashamed American pride of the US Marshal and much much more!

So we wound our way down the paths of mystery, with great shocking revelations, startling accusations and, yes, even a few downright fights!

Here are some pictures of our great event.

Group Photo

James' sisters (Mei Li and the maid)

Our roommate (Japanese art collector)

My Dad (US Marshal Orin L'Amour)

James and I (and my wig!)

James' Sister (Madame Wang) and her husband (Dr. Wang)

My Mom (famous American opera singer Esmeralda Castafiore)

Me as the Empress Dowager Cixi with my puppet, the Emperor

Our good friends (the Dread Pirate Tshin Kuo-Hak and his cabin boy)

Goofy, goofy James (Sir James Basswood Yaardley)

Our Brother-in-law (Master Huang)

My sisters (Sister Maria Franco and Sister Maria Ascuncion) and our roommate (the Cardinal)

My sister and her husband (The Portuguese Viceroy of Macau)

James' brother (German mercenary) with an African head carving

Now here comes the shameless advertising. After all the time and effort we have put into this mystery, we have decided to experiment and see if we might be able to make a profit from this!

If you want to find out the intricacies of our story, experience the thrill of a good mystery and get dressed up with your friends for an evening, James and I are considering the option of renting ourselves out to conduct our murder mystery with you and your friends. You would provide the guest list, the location, the food (and a rental fee), and James and I would arrange the rest, even coming to your home in character to facilitate the smooth progression of your party. Make us an offer! We dare you!

Our own little trial run revealed certain glitches that need to be fixed, and of course, the expectation is that there will be some parts of the mystery that run slower than others. We are not professionals and we are still learning, but all of our guests said that they had a really great time.

Of course, the mystery will only be as good as the people who are participate, so you must be sure that you have outgoing participants. Enthusiasm is a must. And everyone must be dedicated to staying in character and following directions, even when told to do something "embarrassing"!

Further update - My last round of chemo went really, really well. Apparently the extra strong nausea meds did the trick. Ironically, I had more of an appetite while on the chemo than I have had in months. I have also started the injections for my white blood cells, and those side effects also seem to be minimal (some bone pain). I have another MRI on Jan25.

We have also begun the new term for school. For me, re-entering chemistry after a five year break has been a little like diving into a cold pool of water. I have been reminded of how much chemistry I used to know. Nutrition requires a lot of chemistry, but it is a very specific branch of chemistry, so I have forgotten a lot of the stuff from other branches.
Needless to say, a lot of studying is in order. It is starting to come back (thank you God!), but I have had to review some real basics in order to retrieve it. Balancing reactions, laws of thermodynamics, bond energy of glucose... I came home from my second class crying and feeling so out of the loop! I have been glued to my textbook for the last day, and thankfully, along with the returning knowledge is a returning love for Chemistry. Its hard, but I love the way that it is so logical!

The unfortunate news in our family is that the extra grant that would have allowed our whole family to go to Bali, was turned down. I suppose that if I were handing out grants, I would choose an application that overtly expanded science over one that involved flying a family to Bali so that they can stay together. Of course it sucks and we still haven't figured out how the summer will go now with this change in our plans. I won't pretend to be happy about this turn of events, but I also feel that it would be pointless to get overly upset about it (plenty of time for that later!).

Anyhow, that's all for now!

Coming Soon... The Murder Mystery!

2011-01-04T12:10:00.003-06:00

I'm sure you'll remember that I posted our Murder Mystery invite on here a while back. We ended up having to postpone it by a week due to a family situation. And that means that this Saturday, Jan.8 will be the grand unveiling! We are getting very excited!

Our story is set in the 1880's near Shanghai in China. A Portugese Priest has been found murdered, at his inland mission. Portugal is upset with China and considering military intervention, and China is angry at the insinuation that they are killing foreigners! Queen Victoria wonders if there is need for British involvement. All of this lies amidst mysterious backdrop of ancient Taoist art gone missing, a thriving underground opium trade and piracy on the high Formosan Seas!

Sixteen invitation have been extended and accepted to a small circle of friends and family. A wide selection of costumes have been rented or created. Character information sheets have been sent to each person. Secrets abound! And all of this comes to a climax at our house on Jan.8.

Here is a list of the characters who will be taking part in our mystery...

James Basswood Yaardley III, 9^th Earl of Hampshire – A magistrate sent by her Majesty Queen Victoria to investigate the death of the Priest. He must inform the Queen whether it will be necessary to assist Portugal in a war against China.

Lady Hedwig von Bremerhaven – Wife of the 9^th Earl of Hampshire

Arturo XXX, Viceroy of Portuguese Macao – As a Portugese citizen, the Priest fell under the jurisdiction of the Viceroy of Macao. If the Priest was murdered by Chinese locals, it becomes be his responsibility to bring his troops into the area and teach the locals a lesson.

Sister Maria-Franco, Nun of the Order of St. Bartholomew – She has worked at the St. Joseph’s Mission for 20 years

Sister Maria-Asuncion, Nun of the Order of St. Bartholomew – She only arrived a few weeks before the murder from Portugal to work at the St. Joseph’s Mission

Sgt. Major Orin L’Amour - United States Marshal – He has come to investigate missing art and stolen money on behalf of the Hartford Castafiores

Esmeralda Castafiore (“of the Hartford Castafiores”) – She is a famous American opera singer who paid a large sum of money for art that was never delivered to her.

Tshin Kuo-hak – Notorious Pirate King of the Formosan Sea

Yang Yang – Cabin Boy of Tshin Kuo-hak

Cixi, Empress Dowager of China – She wants to ensure that the missionary’s death does not lead to a foreign attack on Chinese soil

His Excellence, Cardinal Garibaldi di Popomobilissimo – The Cardinal is the Priest’s superior, and has come to investigate his death on behalf of the Catholic church

Dr. Wang – A reputable doctor of Chinese Traditional Medicine who lives in Shanghai. He often partnered with the Priest to provide free medical care at the Catholic mission

Madam Wang – She is the socialite wife of the reputable Chinese doctor Dr. Wang. She is very elegant, and from a very influential family in Shanghai. She was educated in America.

Master Huang, Abbot of Shanshan Taoist Monastery – The monastery is located close to St. Joseph’s mission. It is well known that the Abbot dislikes the Priest.

Mei Li – Chinese born, American educated, Mei Li returned to Shanghai with America’s famous free spirited attitude. She runs an opium den in Shanghai.

Klaus von Hess – He is a German mercenary (born in the Province of Hesse-Nassau). He has fought in wars on most continents, but currently shines his rifle for the Portuguese army of Macao.

Lao Pangzi – She is the Chinese washer woman and cook who has worked at the St. Joseph’s Mission for twenty years.

Aiko Yakamoto – Ms. Yakamoto is a wealthy Japanese art collector from Tokyo.

The only downside to our party was the dismaying news that I will back on chemotherapy for five days Jan.5-9, and that our party falls in this timeframe. Not so much fun, but we will press on regardless of my condition!

My pharmacy filled a massive prescription for me last week, and even the pharmacist were feeling bad for me and expressing concern! Two anti-nausea meds (one so strong that they had to appeal to a higher governing authority for approval). Two strengths of oral chemotherapy. Seven doses of injections to raise my White Blood Cell count over the next 14 days (side effects: bone pain, joint pain, nosebleeds and headaches). All of this on top of my anti-seizure meds and acid blockers for my stomach!

This update is not here so that you pity me. It is merely an update so that if you think of me over the next week you can pray that I am not just welded to my bed. There are numerous side effects to all these meds and they all sound less than appealing. My biggest struggle these days is my appetite, which is pretty much non-existent. Food has entirely lost its appeal for me (a sad loss - I never realized before how much pleasure I got from eating a good meal). I can only eat when my hunger pangs force me to, and then I need to stop as soon as the pangs are gone. Sweet things have no appeal whatsoever. For the most part I have learned to control and live with the whims of my stomach, but small disturbances easily make whatever is in there come up. I can see myself quickly becoming skeletal!

Nonetheless in spite of the discomfort, my spirits are high and I consider myself to be a very blessed individual. I celebrated my 27th birthday yesterday and it was very pleasant indeed. I am very thankful for my life.

Uncle Sam wants YOU to help James win Story of the Month

2010-12-28T20:59:00.002-06:00

Hey there all! James here. I have a story that was published on an online magazine called Bartleby Snopes. It is being considered for Story of the Month, and it would be swell if you could help out. Just visit this site:

http://www.bartlebysnopes.com/stories.htm

Scroll down to near the bottom, and you'll see the option to vote. My story is published under my "pen name" Jack Frey. The story is called Seafood Delight.

The last day to vote is January 2nd. Thanks!!!

Family Update

2010-12-14T18:06:00.008-06:00

I have realized that with all of my ramblings of things inside my head, family news has gone by the wayside. So here it goes, a sort of belated Christmas newsletter.

James' first term working at his Masters went well. For the most part, he has thoroughly enjoyed his reunion with the scholastic environment. There have of course, also been refreshers of certain aspects of school that we'd happily forgotten. An exciting possibility on the horizon is that James' project for his thesis is located in Bali, Indonesia and it looks like he'll have to spent a good portion of the summer there. Of course, I wouldn't find this very exciting if there were not the distinct possibility that all four of us can go. We should be hearing back about funding for this in the near future. So here is a new prayer request... pray that we can all go to Bali as a family!

As many of you know, James is also an extremely dedicated creative writer. He has seen a lot of his work get published in this last year and was also recently nominated for the Push Cart prize. These are all short stories, but he is also working on a novel or two (which I look forward to seeing in print!).

As for myself, shortly after writing that last blog post, I was given special permission to register late at the University and I am enrolled in a Chemistry course and lab starting in January. I admit to being a nerd in that I LOVE chemistry and that I am looking forward to a happy reunion with it. Like I said last time, I'll slowly peck away at the courses that I need, and refresh the other ones that I have forgotten. When that is done (probably one year), we can reassess the situation, see how things are going, and first and foremost, wait for God's direction.

I am also working on a Music Theory course, mostly independent. I plan to write the exam that I should have written 10 years ago and then I will be registered to teach. So I have spending hours refreshing things that I have not thought about it those 10 years. In the process, I have decided that music is an archaic language (rather like Latin) that has somehow managed to maintain its form over the years and not be changed into something that is more logical that makes more sense. Don't get me wrong, I do love it. But lets face it, the way to write and play music was developed way back around the Renaissance, not the most "efficient" time (just how many clefs and scale types can you have anyway?).

Anyway, all that to say that I think music theory is overly complicated and would probably be much easier if it had been developed today. Then again, that being said, I suppose the same could be said of most languages. Chinese and English in particular (very inefficient!). And if I am not careful I will make myself sound like modern snob who would happily do away with old and beautiful things for the purpose of efficiency and speed... definitely not me.

Ari and Jude continue to develop and amaze us. Ari's new thing is to stump me with very hard questions. Its not that I don't know the answers, its just that I don't know how to explain them to a 5 year old. The problem is that my instinct is to try and explain the science behind something. But I suppose that there is a reason that they don't teach science in Kindergarten! (a conclusion I came to when I found myself trying to show Ari with my hands how techtonic plates work).

So I have to find a balance. To the question, "Where do babies come from", I am not content to say "Because when a Mama and a Papa love each other very much..." etc, etc, etc. But I don't believe in telling him too many details at such a young age either. So I have settled for telling him about cells and how they work and how they grow and multiply and become different parts of the baby. I think this gives me a number of bonuses. 1) He thinks it is interesting. 2) It is the truth. 3) It skips the part that he is too young to understand and would probably turn into inappropriate jokes and lots of giggling (he is at the stage now where he thinks that certain body parts are VERY funny - what can you do?).

However, I realized on one occasion that I probably need to be either more clear or less detailed when explaining things of a scientific nature. Ari spent one morning blasting me with question after question and (to his credit) listening very carefully to my responses and asking intelligent questions in return. As such I thought that he was able to follow most of what I was saying. Interestingly enough, the discussion started off with him asking me about my tumor (how it got there, how it grows, why it makes me sick etc.). He already knows about cells, so I explained to him about "good" cells and "bad" cells. After exhausting this subject, he then started asking questions about babies, and again we talked about cells.

In the end of the discussion, he looked at me all confused and said, "So babies need tumors to help them grow?" I knew then that somewhere along the way I had messed up badly. But seriously, what else are you supposed to do when you are bombarded with hard questions and you don't want to brush them aside? I could say, "It just IS", or "you'll understand when you are older" over and over again, but I know Ari well enough to know that this would not satisfy him. Then he would just pester me until I got angry with him (also a bad option).

Jude is also showing remarkable perception. A number of times, I have watched a movie with him that he had never seen, and he was able to accurately predict what would happen in the movie before it happened. He doesn't watch that many movies, so this is not an indicator of his familiarity with filmography. Somehow at his young age he is just able to read events. He also has an adorable lisp with his missing tooth and listening to him talk is very funny sometimes. Some of this more memorable sentences in the last while... "Mommy I am a football team", or "Ari if you have a bad dream you should just think about biting a giant frog".

And now for one final reflection before signing off. This Christmas was a little chaotic in the realm of health. We've had a bad flu/cold go around all the members of our household, and this has coincided with a severe drop in my White Blood Cell count. I, of course, caught the illness (and more) which made for a very stuffy headed, bile-taste-in-mouth, and hungry Christmas. What got me through it without being cranky was a wonderful thought that I had one week ago.

I was sitting and daydreaming a little, thinking about what my life would be like if God healed me. As I thought about it, I suddenly became a little panicked when it occurred to me that I would have no idea what to do with that experience. If God were to give me such an amazing gift, what would I do with it? Would I be able to glorify him the way that he would deserve? But quick on the heels of that thought was this one. "Would God be more deserving of glory if he healed me than he already is now?"

No.

Joy and relief flooded me when I realized that whether or not I am healed, God is deserving of glory. Hand in hand with that is that God WILL be glorified... whether or not I choose to give him glory. God's holiness and his glory is not dependent on my circumstances. That makes me feel two things. 1) Relief - thank goodness it doesn't depend on me, and 2) Jealousy - its kind of like being told that an awesome party is going to be held and you are invited to join, but that if you decide not to come it is going to be an awesome party.

I WANT to be there. I WANT to sing God's praises, not just because of all that he has done in my life, but because I want to be part of the chorus that sings his praises. I loved knowing that this Christmas. That whether or not I feel "Christmasy" (what is that anyway?) and whether or not it is even Christmas, Jesus IS glorified.

In closing I wanted to send out a thank you to a number of people who sent little gifts either for us or for the boys. Whatever the gifts were, it is the thoughts that count the most. I am thinking particularly of a woman in Winnipeg who I've never met and didn't even know my name that sent me a scarf in the mail and a beautiful encouraging letter. You know who you are! I was very touched. Thank you very much, and yes, the "reindeer" made it through the postal system in one piece!

Give Praise Where Praise is Due

2010-12-10T13:41:00.012-06:00

On Friday I had another doctor's appointment. There have been a flurry of them recently because my doctor is anxious to get me back on my chemo regimen. However, the platelets in my blood count have not been cooperating. It would seem that they hate the chemo as much as I do. I am on a significantly lower dose of chemo than they want me to be, and I have had an extra week to recover from the last round - but my platelets keep dropping, which means they cannot treat me.

This could be frustrating, especially if Krang were to take advantage of this respite to grow larger and take over my brain. Nonetheless as I sat in the doctor's office I felt joy washing over me like a flood. This might sound twisted, but I don't really care. As I received bad news my whole body felt alive and my spirit was overwhelmed with the goodness of God.

I ended up spending close to half an hour sitting and waiting in that office by myself, watching nurses pass in the hall. But as I waited the joy in me grew and grew. I said numerous times lately that I have been waiting for some kind of confirmation of what to do with myself in this season of my life. As I have waited I have pondered a number of different options that interest me. Here are a few:

- focus on music using the "unprofessional" route and taking piano lessons again - then going on to teach (a few months until I'm certified)

- study music professionally by going back to school for a Bachelor of Music (four years...ahh, too long!)

- I already have a Bachelor of Science in Human Nutrition so I could go back to school and get a Bachelor of Education to teach science (two years... easier, but do I really want to teach?)

- I could work at some job (endless...sigh!)

- I could get my Registered Dietitian status by doing an unpaid practicum at various locations around Winnipeg (nine months... do-able, but I have a strong dislike for the way nutrition is applied in North America)

- I could go for my Masters in Nutrition (two years... but the idea of doing research on a single compound or body system for two years makes me shudder. My university doesn't work on development issues so much as scientific research - not my cup of tea)

As you can see, I feel a bit like I just graduated from High School, except that now I know more about myself and my interests.

On Friday as I sat in the doctor's office, something came to me and an overwhelming peace came with it. Something that seems impossible, but would be a step of faith.

Before I go there, let's just step back a minute. I don't know how many people remember the blog entries I wrote back in July and August, shortly after we discovered I have a "Krang". But there was an entry back on July 29 called What is it like to be Grieved? In that entry I outlined the approach James and I felt God was asking us to take. We felt strongly (and have continued to feel), that to deny the presence and (according to medicine) the inevitability of death in my situation would be to deny ourselves the opportunity to uniquely experience God. I believe that if we will seek God, even on the road to death, he will meet us in amazing and unexpected ways that are not open to us in a life filled with health.

This is not just physical death. In the last few months I have seen much death in my life. Death of my dreams and ambitions. Death of my self-confidence and my physical appearance. Death of my likeable personality. Death of "meaningful" occupation of my time.

One of the most difficult deaths in my life has been the death of incorrect beliefs. For example, I see now that I have subconsciously believed that I somehow need less of God's grace because I am a good person and have "succeeded" in life. Well, my "success" was taken away in the blink of an eye. What does it matter that you have University education, a happy marriage, wonderful children, fulfilling work etc, when death looms at age 26?

Other than some nice sounding obituary and a teary funeral, who will think of my successes after I am dead? Will I go to heaven and appear before God and hear him say, "Good job Jessica, you got an A+ in Human Anatomy and Physiology back in 2002." Or how about, "Jessica, because you bit your tongue and did not scream at James when he made you angry, you will make a wonderful addition to heaven." No. None of it. When I go to heaven, God will see me standing before him with my Death Warrant stamped "Paid in Full by Jesus", and that will be my ticket in.

I now realize that I have believed I need less of God's grace than others I know because I have spent my life making the "right choices". I never would have been able to recognize this in myself before. We all know people whose lives seem hopeless because they have made bad choices. It just seems like some people have so many problems that nothing could ever help them. The stripping away of all my "rewards" has shown me that nothing makes me good enough for God--not even spending a lifetime making the right choices! It was altogether too easy to strip me down to the same "level" as those people whose lives seem hopeless. In a matter of moments I had as many problems as they do, despite 26 years of making right decisions. All the things that I worked so hard for have no meaning when death feels so close. I have received many "rewards" for making good decisions, but the I may not have the lifetime I need to enjoy them.

Anyway, all of that was a side note to what I am trying to say (I haven't had a good rambling blog in a while!). If James and I had not chosen to embrace the potential that death lies at the end of this journey, I would have missed out on the Death of Me, as well as the deep revelation that my salvation lies only in Jesus Christ, in whom I live and move and have my being. Life does not come from my successes or my obedience. Life comes from Jesus Christ.

So far, Death has been a huge part of my journey. But in that blog entry back in July, I wrote that there were two aspects to this journey. Death was one aspect that could not be denied, but the other aspect was Faith, Hope and Love. I have talked a lot about Faith and there is a lot of Love, but there has not been much for Hope in my life. As I have walked through the "Valley of the Shadow of Death" these last months I have never been able to bring myself to think about the future.

Friday as I sat in the doctor's office, with sudden and unexpected feelings of joy, peace, and gratitude, I felt as though God had suddenly given me the gift of Hope. He brought to my attention a dream that I have had for the last eight years. I have written it off as impossible, and therefore not pursued it. Naturally, it seems even more impossible now than it did before...

I want to be a doctor!

This is long goal - so long that it exceeds the 4.5 year life expectancy that has been thrust upon me by Krang. This is more ambitious than any of the other options above that I have considered (and I wrote most of them off as too ambitious). But having seen so much death in my life, I see this dream very differently now.

It doesn't matter if I succeed or not - if I become a doctor or not. It doesn't matter if I die somewhere in the process or if medical schools don't accept students who have a "Krang" that might kill them before they graduate. Pursuing my dreams is not what gives meaning to my life. Jesus gives meaning to my life. Whether I believe it or not, he is the force that sustains me. I think that the purpose to pursuing this dream would be to provide a crucial balance to my life. So far it has been important for me to walk the path of death and allow myself to be prepared for death. However, pursuing this dream would be to walk the other side of this journey and allow myself to be prepared for LIFE. Physically speaking, I don't know which one lies around the bend in my near future, but I realized on Friday that I need to ready for both.

I also realized that this is not something that is unique to me. In the Christian life we are called to walk both in death and in life. To die with Christ so that we can live with Christ.

Practically speaking, my Nutrition degree can be used as an undergrad to enter Medical School. However there are a few courses I need to take to get in that were not required for Nutrition. So, we'll leave medical school for later. For now, I will get those courses. When I finish those, we'll look at the next step.

In the meantime, speaking of encouraging developments, some of my hair is starting to come back. Slowly but surely a soft baby fuzz is coming back in the less radiated areas. It is extremely soft and I find myself wanting to touch it all the time. But then I get scared that I'll make it fall out again if I touch it too much. Its like receiving a symbol of restoration. What a beautiful thing.

Bare Headed

2010-12-02T10:04:00.007-06:00

I have often thought over the years that if anyone were to read my journals, they would think that I was constantly a basket case... and that was long before I was diagnosed with a Krang! But the truth of the matter is that it is the easiest to spill your guts when your guts are spilling out of you. In a sense, this blog has become a bit of a journal. A number of times I have wished that I wasn't writing my junk out on here, but for the most part it has been a good thing. On a number of occasions it really has kept me from turning into a recluse and it has kept me accountable to others when I feel unable to express myself.

It is tempting to feel embarrassed that I have laid myself out on the table so many times, but I think that this is a pitfall that we often struggle with as Christians, that is, NOT laying ourselves out on the table. Pretending to be okay when we are not okay. Christians are supposed to have it together after all, even with each other. But I think that this encourages a level of hiddeness that makes it easy to keep others out of the more "sensitive" areas of our lives. As difficult as it is, I think that many of our most embarrassing problems would become smaller if only we spoke about them to others. For the record, I don't mean yelling from the roof tops (although I suppose I could be accused of doing that).

I can't describe how much relief I have felt when I speak about what goes on inside of me, instead of carrying the heavy burden and hoping it will go away. I haven't spoken of nearly all of the things that I struggle with on here (then I really would seem like a basket case), but I have a small group of people that I have made the choice to be very open with. One reason is so that I don't become weighted under heaviness, and the other is so that others can speak good things and scriptures into my life. Its like a breath of fresh air to hear words like this: "Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, inwardly we are being renewed day by day." (2 Corinthians 4:16). These days all the inspiring words of people have nothing compared to a well placed verse, or praying together with people (even if it has nothing to do with me).

Speaking about openness, here are some pictures that I have not wanted to put up on the blog for several months (let's go whole hog). For those of you who have seen me walking around with the classic chemo cap but with some hair peeking out, here is the full image of what my hair looks like right now. Keep in mind that this is a result of the radiation beam and not from the chemo. I only cover it when I leave the house, but there have actually been a few times that I have forgotten. Someone actually complimented me on my haircut and I had to pause to wonder what look they thought I was copying. Friar Tuck? Forest Gump? An army boot wearing feminist?

This bald patch certainly makes for a cold head however. We still don't know if it is permanent or not. Apparently it could take up to six months to reappear if it does. It came out in the third week of my radiation (first week of Sept)... all at once. It was not a gradual process. I was in the shower and when I pulled

my hand away it looked like a bear paw. I kept washing and every time I took my hand away there was more and more hair. The patch got a little bigger over time, but for the most part it all

happened in the space of ten minutes. Now, I plan on letting it grow regardless of whether or not the patch comes back and perhaps the rest of my hair will cover it a little. Maybe someday I'll be rich and I'll get extensions on the fuzzy little white hairs that are still there.

In other news, the boys are getting very pumped for Christmas and they are also really enjoying the snow that has been dumping on us for the last two weeks. Last week when we were at the mall they thought it was quite fun to sit on the lap of the man in red with the huge beard and tell him what they want for Christmas.

They have also discovered candy canes. Everyday, both of them show more and more signs of growing intelligence and take me by surprise.

That's all for today!

Drama Queen

2010-11-23T15:26:00.003-06:00

I hardly know how to put to words what is inside of me. I know that I can't express it verbally. People ask me how I am doing and I open my mouth wanting to say what's inside, but the only thing that comes out are reassurances. The truth is that I'm suffocating, but I have no idea how to say it. Something broke in me a few days ago. The dam of discontent came crashing down and I am now churning around in the foamy waters. Very dramatic I know, and somewhat humiliating to know that people who know me are reading this. But I have to write it, because it doesn't work when I try to say it.

Regardless of what I know to be true, I continue to measure my value by what I am doing (or not doing). I long to be a part of the world again, but since I have nothing to do but stay at home, I find myself curling up into a tiny hard ball - away from people, and away from myself. I want to cry but my eyes are dry. Dear God what happened to my life! I don't want to be hard! I don't want to be a basket case! I feel like I'd be happy if I was doing something, but maybe I'm just fooling myself. Apparently I've got years ahead of me... is this really what I am going to do? Nothing?

I can't say what I want to say, so here it is in writing, because I don't want to become a recluse. I feel like I am drowning. Please pray for me. Something has to give.

A Still Small Wind

2010-11-20T17:32:00.002-06:00

Over the last few weeks I've felt myself slip into a sense of apathy. Nothing really seems to phase me, but not much touches me either. I'm not restless as I pass through my uneventful days, but I'm not rested either. I'm not unhappy, but I'm not happy either. If I feel anything, its irritation at the idea of living like this for a long time when I know that I am capable of more.

I've thought for awhile that I should be taking this opportunity to read my Bible more, but something in me has rebelled against that idea until now. Today, I suddenly realized that I am slowly but surely withering, in front of my own eyes. So I went to my Bible and I started to read.

The first thing I read was in Luke 14:7-11. Here Jesus teaches about humility, saying that when you are invited to a feast you should not presume to sit in a seat of honor. After all, someone else might come who is more important than you are, and in front of all the guests you will be asked to move to make room for the more important guest. Instead, Jesus suggests that you arrive at a feast, you should immediately take the lowest seat possible. That way, when your host sees that you have taken a humble seat, they will protest, and lead you to a seat of greater honor.

I have read this many times before, but something about it struck me today as being very crafty, almost too crafty. Its like this reverse psychology thing where someone pretends to be humble in order that they may actually be exalted. But then again, it was said by Jesus, so there must be some merit to it. For me, I think it means humbly accepting the low seat I'm in, instead of thinking about the seat that I "deserve" to be sitting in. I don't deserve anything, not even what I do have. Yes, as Christians we have access to all the promises of God, and we should ask him for all the desires of our heart. But it is not very humble to tell God exactly what he should give us and how he should go about doing it.

Rather than be a proud bumbling idiot, I think I'd rather take my humble seat and wait for God to say to me, "Friend, we have a better place than this for you!" and guide me to the place where he wants me to be. It is crafty, but really at the heart of it is a high level of trust in God. It is trusting that he is not going to leave me in the low humble seat, and that he knows best which seat to move me to. I may not be moved to THE seat of honor, but perhaps there will be really interesting people to talk to at that seat.

I have mentioned before that I am in a place of silence right now, and that it is a good thing to wait for God in silence. I was thinking some more about this today, and I suddenly remembered the story where God tells Elijah to go out and stand on a mountain and wait for God to speak. Suddenly a a huge windstorm comes up and blows so terribly that it tears rocks loose from the mountain. But God does not speak in the windstorm. Then there is a terrible earthquake, but again, God does not speak in the earthquake. After that there is a great fire that consumes the mountain, but God does not speak in the fire. After all of that chaos, there comes a soft, quiet wind, and then Elijah hears him speak.

In the last few months I feel like we've experienced our share of loud chaotic disasters; windstorms, fires, and earthquakes. In all of these I have tried to scream above the din and ask God to speak. It seems like God SHOULD speak in the middle of earthquakes, fires and windstorms. It seems like the most natural time for God to speak because it seems like it would be the best time to REALLY show his power. But maybe he doesn't speak then because he knows that we wouldn't properly hear amidst all the noise. Maybe he waits for the silence when we are no longer fighting, because he knows that's when we'll actually hear.

Right now I am quiet verging on despondence and there are very few large and important plans in my mind. So today when I read my Bible, I finally heard that sweet voice and it made me want to weep. He told me that he's heard my screaming and my crying, seen my faith and my trust. He said that its been a been a beautiful and fragrant offering in his eyes. He told me that there is more in store for me than I would expect, but now is the time to be quiet.

It is simultaneously not much and yet much more than I expected, but its all I need for now. More will come when I need it. I think that embracing this time will lead to a lot of growth and some much needed follow up to a season of chaos.

Thats all for now

Murder Mystery!

2010-11-13T22:32:00.004-06:00

This evening, James and I sent out the following letter to some friends and immediate family.

Sir James Basswood Yaardley III, 9^th Earl of Hampshire, empowered to speak on behalf of her Imperial Majesty, the Queen Empress Victoria,

Shanghai, November 13, 1880

Dear Respected Person,

A tragic and horrifying event has taken place at the St.Joseph’s Mission in the village of Xiao Dongxi, Zhejiang Province. A priest was found brutally murdered. With regards to the investigation of this incident, you have certain personal vested interests in seeing that the matter is settled “properly”.

This incident has led to grave and exaggerated misunderstandings between the Majestic British Empire and the Imperial Qing Court of China.

In the interest of preventing war and promoting peace and international goodwill, I, James Basswood Yaardley, have been sent to Shanghai to investigate this atrocious event. You, Honoured Person, are invited to attend a dinner party on Her Majesty’s own yacht on the night of December 31. 2010, beginning promptly at 9:30 pm.

Refusing to attend will cast immediate suspicion on your person, and on your ancestors for generations to come. Please confirm that you will be in attendance with my dear wife, Baroness Hedwig of Bremerhaven, at your earliest possible convenience. You will be briefed as to how your are connected to this crime within two weeks before the dinner.

Most Respectfully Yours,

Sir James Basswood Yaardley III, 9^th Earl of Hampshire

That's right! James and I are writing a murder mystery for New Year's Eve. So far we are having a darn good time of making it up! The plot is very mysterious indeed and we have a wide spread of characters. If we could, we would invite more people, however it is already very complex to write a plot for 15 people!

Here's a little taste of our characters! We have a Cardinal sent by the Vatican to investigate the incident. We have a traditional Chinese doctor. We have a Formosan pirate. We have a US Martial. We have a Taoist monk, a peasant washer woman, an American opera singer, and even the Empress Dowager of China herself!

Who done it?

Angry

2010-11-12T09:15:00.003-06:00

For those who continue to read this blog, I'm sure you have noticed my dwindling number of posts. There are two reasons for this. One is that I'm turning into a hermit. Both in blogging and in real life I find myself withdrawing from people. Either I don't want to be around them, or I am silent when I am with them. This has nothing to do with who I'm with, and everything to do with me.

Another reason I have not been blogging much is that my thoughts have taken an increasingly negative turn and I have not wanted to put those up here. But really that is a somewhat hypocritical thing for me to do. At the beginning of all this I said that the reason I wanted to blog was to chronicle this journey that I am on, honestly expressing everything I experience. Apparently that is easier for me to do when I am talking about what it means to have faith, rather than now when I am angry and irritable.

Lately, I've been more prone to picking and choosing what I want people to know. This bothers me a lot. It is only one of many ways that I have seen myself withdrawing from people, turning inward and away. I have always been an open person, excited to meet new people, easily cheered up when down, etc. But now I hate meeting new people. My chemo cap gives me away. Most people are pretty good at masking their surprise after the initial curious look, but I imagine during the rest of the interaction that they they are burning with curiosity to know what is wrong with me. The thought of socializing makes me cringe. I feel like I am walking around with my hands clenched shut - and I hate that feeling, like I'm closing myself to the world.

Remember back when I wrote about Fiery Darts and Faith (Sept25)? I wrote about a hard realization I'd had that much of my faith until that time had been built on my good circumstances rather than on God, and that the stripping of my circumstances made me feel groundless. Well, I see now that another thing I have had faith in is my own good nature. "I'm a happy person, easy to get along with, people like me, of course God Loves me etc." But in the last while my good nature has also gone to the wind. I'm cranky and I complain a lot in my head. ("I hate being back on chemo. I'm so weak. I'm so breathless. I spend all my time sleeping. I'm always freezing. This sucks. My life is pointless. I don't want to talk to that person."

With my good nature stripped away it is hard for me to believe that any person, let alone God loves me. Yet another layer of the onion that is me peeled away.

All I see in me right now is ugliness and pointlessness, but regardless of that, I want to share myself openly both with you and with God. Why? Because I do not want to walk around with my hands in fists. I want my hands to be open. But they won't be open if I am trying to hide my ugliness. People will never know what is inside of me if I don't show them. And if they don't know what is inside of me, they won't be able to relate to me. If people can't relate to me... well, then I will be a lonely person.

Yes, I am back on chemo now and it is pure joy (let the sarcasm flow!). It is only for five days, but it is an increased dosage. I haven't been able to eat but that hasn't stopped my stomach from regurgitating bile. I am always freezing, regardless of how many blankets and layers I wear and my attitude SUCKS! I feel like throwing things. Two more days.

For those of you who feel that I have been denying myself by not being angry... here you go. I'm angry. Not at anything in particular... just angry.

It is Good

2010-11-09T09:18:00.002-06:00

As things have regulated and after I got the doctor's prognosis last week, I have had a certain concept in my mind. It makes its appearance in Lamentations 3 scattered amidst a cluster of verses.

Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, “The LORD is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.” The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD. It is good for a man to bear the yoke while he is young. Let him sit alone in silence, for the LORD has laid it on him. Let him bury his face in the dust - there may yet be hope.

Later it says, "For no one is cast off by the Lord forever. Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love. For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to anyone."

I felt a lot of discontent after I wrote the last blog entry. Something about it really bothered me. I felt like I had betrayed something in myself. The Doctor told me that I can have my life back and my instinct was to then go and look for a new life instead of waiting and trusting.

Just because I have "time" now, doesn't mean that I should go about trying to fill it up. What is the purpose of that? It my time fills up naturally and I can handle it, then that is okay. However I don't want to go looking for things to do, even if they seem like really good things. For example, a really "good" way for me to spend my time would be visiting hospital patients. But even the thought of that makes me tired, because my heart would not be in it.

I think that this is a time where God has called me to wait and to be patient, to be silent. Not a depressed silence, but an accepting silence. I don't want to just resign myself to this season of silence and less stimulation than I am used to. I want to accept it gracefully, and wait for the hand of God to make whatever changes he wants to make in me.

These verses above say that it is a good thing to wait for God in silence when we are young and that God even lays periods of silence upon us. The problem is that we young'uns really like to be busy! Who has time to wait? If serious constraints are laid on us, then we think we ought to resent them.

Instead of filling my time (just for the sake of it) and ruining the silence in which God speaks, I want to wait and see what he says. I believe he knows the desires of my heart and knows what kinds of ways I would like to spend my time, what kind of work I would like to do. But if I rush into something, I'll miss out on the silence.

This isn't to say that I would turn down great job opportunities or meaningful ways to spend my time now. But it is to say that I want to embrace the silence, however long or short it lasts. As to how to spend my time or what work to do... we'll look at each opportunity as they arise.

As a last note, I suspect that this posting is a little convoluted and difficult to follow. I apologize!

My Life - Handed Back on a Platter

2010-11-05T13:07:00.004-05:00

I had another doctor's visit today in which my life for the next two years was outlined for me - five days of chemo per month for the next two years and an MRI every three months. Fairly noninvasive. We won't know anything more about the nature of my tumor until we have had several of those MRI's As for the rest of it... "Don't worry about it!" says my doctor. Resume normal life! No need for constant supervision! Yes of course you can fly on an airplane by yourself!

Of course this is good news, but it does leave me feeling a little lost. Resume my life after so many months of being told to take precautions? The life I had before this doesn't really exist anymore. I can't resume that life, as ideal and pleasant as it was. Truth be told, I'm puzzled and a little angry to be told to resume life after the roller coaster we've been on.

I am very seriously considering looking for some type of paid employment, but I'm not sure what is open to me. "Having my life back" brings up more questions than answers, and I find myself more anxious than I have been for weeks. Its not that I enjoyed being an "invalid", but at least then I knew which doors were open and which ones were closed. I suppose it is easy to put your faith in "knowing", even if that knowledge is not very good. I suppose I just need to get used to the fact that I will never "know", and put my faith in God... yet again.

Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.

Prepared for Anything

2010-10-30T10:24:00.005-05:00

After our my appointment yesterday, I turned to James (home for not even 24 hours) and said, "Well, I went into that appointment prepared to hear anything except that"... And on that note I will leave you dear readers in suspense (ignoring your ability to scroll down and read ahead) and back up a bit. Actually the appointment was so confusing that I scarcely know how to summarize it.

I went for my MRI on Friday Oct 22. I was very unconcerned about it, any amount of anxiety came from my dread of having another IV. I know I should be used to these things already, but I HATE IV's! They don't make me nauseous or anything like that, it is purely the physical sensations of something penetrating my skin and going into my veins. Ugh! But after being poked and prepared, they slid into the MRI machine. On a sidenote, I did pause to wonder who the inconsiderate technicians were that did not think to offer me a heated blanket after making me remove everything except a thin hospital gown. So much for laying still during an MRI, I shivered the whole way through!

I was warned that this machine was louder than the others I have been in and they gave me headphones to protect my ears. Sure enough it was incredibly noisy. It occurred to me during the procedure that someone should write a musical-like song based on the noises made by MRI machines (purely for the benefit of those who have had to experience them). It reminded me of one of those scenes from musicals where the music begins with the coming together of random noises on the street. The tinkling of some wind chimes. The thump-thump of a woman kneeding bread. The thin streaming sound of a cow being milked into a tin pail. The crashing of the blacksmith's hammer. Etc, etc. etc.

Just like that, the MRI machine makes such random and yet rhythmic noises, that you never know what will come next. A silent moment broken by a loud buzz that makes you jump out of your socks (if I'd had them). I estimate that I would need about 20 MRI's to write the music for the ultimate MRI song. At one point the rhythm and beat reminded me of the Christmas song "Do You Hear What I Hear?". It started with a high whispered rhythmic beat, that was then echoed by an ear piercing base beat (same note but about four octaves lower).

Anyone want to back me monetarily for the producing of "The Ultimate in MRI Hits"? Just think of all the marketing opportunities. "Hey all of you cancer survivors! Don't you miss the days of MRI's, CT scans and IV's? You don't have to! We have recreated all of your choice moments in this compilation album for only $49.99!"

Anyway...

We were under the impression that this meeting yesterday was going to be revealing and informative, but in reality (surprise, surprise), it turned out to be another gigantic "Nothing to Report". I thought we were going to find out what the impact of the chemo and radiation had been, so I was asking all the wrong questions. Meanwhile the doctor was under the impression that we all mutually understood that this MRI was only taken to create a new baseline for monitoring purposes and not to reveal earth shattering information. To summarize the conversation would be very confusing, but even the information we thought was for certain seemed up for change.

Essentially, I was very confused which is why it was good that James (even in his jet-lagged state) was with me and able to understand. It didn't help that the doctor had a thick accent. (Incidentally, as we left, James turned to me and said, "Man, that guy's accent is awesome! I wish I had that accent!")

James' summary of the appointment was this: The MRIs that are taken over time are for the purpose of creating a "graph" of sorts, and only after we have had a number of these monitoring MRI's (every three months) will we know how the tumor changes (good or bad). The best indicator of my health is that in my day to day life, I am doing well, functioning without huge amounts of drugs etc.

I went into the appointment not really caring what we heard, but the vagueness of it only served to confirm thoughts that were already growing in me, those being: "I don't care what my medical prognosis is". I can't even imagine how irritating that appointment would have been if I had been nervously awaiting it and pinning my hopes on its outcome. Its hard to believe how much the information changes every time we hear it. As it was, James and I walked out of the appointment giggling together about how funny and inconclusive the whole thing was. We decided on the way home that our new approach is going to shift from "What are Jessica's limitations?" to "Jessica is going to do everything that she possibly can."

On a side note, I am not commenting on the competence of the doctors. Far from it, they are doing "their part", just as it is doing "my part" to live to my full potential during this strange and unclear time. If anything, the lack of conclusive information coming from the doctors is merely a reflection of just how much is not known about brain tumors. That is why I am not going to base my life on what they say. I will take care of myself to the best of my ability and not do things that endanger other people, especially the boys.

I bought my medical ID bracelet this last week and explained to Ari that if I ever fall down and can not talk to him, that he should find the nearest adult and tell them to look at my bracelet and they would know what to do. We have explained to Ari in child appropriate terminology that there is something in my brain (that is not supposed to be there) that sometimes makes me fall down and makes me unable to understand people. He understands that, and he seems to understand the bracelet too. We have decided to give the boys information in stages. As they understand more, we will tell them more. At this point time seems to be on our side.

That's all for now, except that it is so good to have James home again! I realized when he got back that I had been steeling myself against hope for his return. Somewhere inside I was convinced that something would happen to delay his return or that something would happen to him. Ahh, women are strange!

Swimming!

2010-10-19T16:42:00.009-05:00

I know this is my second post in one day, but here are some pics of the boys with me and my family at the pool. Seeing the boys wearing water wings reminded me of a time when I was swimming as a kid (here's some of those memoirs!). I had four water wings, and I thought that it would be extremely clever of me to try wearing all four at once. One on each ankle and one on each wrist. No sooner did I get them on then I was underwater! My body bent into a deep U-shape with my hands and feet above water. I also soon discovered that no matter how hard I struggled, my water wings wanted to stay on the surface of the water! After some frantic thrashing, I managed to get one of the wings off, which then had me with one leg suspended and the other grasping for the floor. When I had corrected the situation, I looked around to see if anyone had wittnessed my shame. No one had! But I certainly learned my lesson!

Ari also learned his lesson yesterday with the ball in this picture. I watched him with a mischievous gleam in his eye as he crouched on the edge of the pool, preparing to leap onto the top of the ball. He lept, and to his astonishment the ball rolled over on his weight and he was immediately underwater! I have never seen such a look of astonishment on his face as when he came up!

Why Does She Talk So Much About Faith?

2010-10-19T16:34:00.004-05:00

Obviously I don’t have the benefit of taking a readership pole, but the question that I imagine many people have is, “Why does she always talk about faith?”. I imagine people asking this question because I have asked it of myself. The only reason I can think of is that in Bible tells us to focus our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen because what is unseen is eternal.

If for no other reason, I fix my eyes on what is unseen because I can’t bear the burden of my “seen” everyday life. I can’t even begin to describe that feeling I get, when in the space of a few minutes it feels like someone has laid a lead vest on me and weighted it down with anvils. I won’t try to describe the feeling, because I think everyone has their own experience of this. For me, this usually happens daily at about 3:00 in the afternoon.

I CAN’T look at what I see, because what I see is terribly depressing. So I MUST look at the unseen, and that requires faith. Not flash in the pan faith, but a daily faith to believe that what is unseen really is true.

As some of you may have seen from the comments on the blog, a church leader recently gave a sermon using portions of my blog as illustrations. He sent me a copy of his sermon, and one evening alone by myself, I listened to that sermon. I felt that he put together a wonderful message and that he represented my thoughts well.

However, there was another interesting side effect of hearing that sermon – for the first time, I saw my writing through other people’s eyes. I couldn’t believe that the words I shakily type when I sit alone with my computer, come out sounding so full of faith. I sound so darn certain of myself in the face of this trial! I found myself thinking, “Who is this Jessica Frey? I really need to meet her and talk to her.” But nobody sees me when I lay on my bed and stare at the wall. Nobody sees how easy it is for me to give in when the pain gives my heart a good twist several times a day.

You may ask yourself (as I do), what exactly is it that hurts so bad? But I have no answer to that. I can’t put my finger on it. It just does. So much has been lost.

In nutrition we talk about acute malnutrition and chronic malnutrition. Acute malnutrition occurs during times of natural disasters, war, etc. It is a period of intense food shortage that causes a child to become very skinny and bony, but after a time it ends. There are some serious impacts to a child’s body, but generally speaking for the long term, the impacts are reversible. With chronic malnutrition however, the child is deprived of food for such a long time that it actually stunts their growth and development. These effects cannot be reversed and for the rest of their life they will bear the inner and outer markings of that period of malnutrition.

I think faith can fall into these categories too (I know there are people who could blow holes in this analogy). There are many times in our lives when we are called upon to have intense faith for a shorter period of time. These times are important, but perhaps it is easier for us to “recover” or even sometimes to forget after these times. However there are other times when our faith needs to be more durable then it does intense. Durable, because there is a long stretch of wilderness ahead of us. We will bear the marks of this time for the rest of our lives.

In the beginning of this crisis, I think I had an intense faith. That intense faith was a gift from God. Nothing else would have been able to get me through those first few weeks. And in those first few weeks, I made a lot of big, bold statements. But now we are stretching into months. And just like the Israelites in the wilderness, I find that if I don’t get my manna from heaven each day, I’m a basket case. You can’t sprint the marathon. I still believe the big bold statements I have made, but let me tell you they are being put to the test of time.

These last few days have been especially hard emotionally, with James gone to Beijing. Not only is he where I want to be, he is NOT here with me. Even though he is coming back, I still have the sensation of having been stripped of yet another thing. I’m not saying this is true, but it FEELS like I have already been stripped of a future, stripped of my independence, stripped of having a future role in my children’s lives, and stripped of any meaningful occupation for my time. Having James away has stripped me of the only person who grown with me continually for the past six and a half years, and intensively grown with me in the last three months. All those things combined together makes me feel like one lonely individual.

What can faith do for me when I feel like this? I’ve been asking myself this question everyday. I think sometimes the only thing that keeps me going is that I have a deep desire to show God that I love him. When I could be complaining in the wilderness, I want God to look at me and see me thanking him for his goodness and telling him that I love him. After all, who demonstrates love better? Someone who gives a dozen red roses on Valentine’s Day or someone who stays with you when it is easier to leave?

I want Jesus to know that I love him, so I want to sing for him when it would easier to scream at him. I’m not saying that I should squelch the desire to scream (I have screamed). What I am saying is that I want to seize the opportunity give something to God when it actually costs me something. For me right now, this is faith.

One in Beijing

2010-10-15T23:09:00.004-05:00

Well, in a very quick and unexpected turn of events, James left early Thursday morning for Beijing while the boys and I have stayed home in Winnipeg. He has gone to wrap up some of the loose ends of our lives there. In the days leading up, I was truly dreading his trip for a number of reasons:

1) I want to be there

2) Call me a wimp, but loved ones on planes always makes me a bit nervous

3) In all that has happened the last few months, James has been the only consistent variable for me (Other than God of course, but you've all heard my ups and downs. Sometimes God feels very far away.)

But the funny thing is that whenever James travels, I find it is easier to have him gone than to prepare for him to leave. When he is gone I have the simple choice of either making the best of it or being miserable. I generally don't like being miserable. So this has left he boys and I to our own devices. Part of the time will/has been spent at home with my sister and part of the time will be staying with my parents.

In the last few days I have finally come off of all medications except for the anti-seizure, the most significant of which is a steroid. This steroid has been the bane of my existence for the last several months. It promotes weight gain, causes your body to retain water (lending a puffy appearance), causes mood changes, causes acne and muscular decline and much more. In the few days since I have been off of it, I have been noticing some significant changes, such as:

1) The shape of my face is starting to re-emerge from under all the acne and swelling

2) My clothes are fitting a little better

3) I've noticed an increase in mental capabilities. Instead of being content to sit, I find myself looking for mental and physical stimulation. At the end of the day, I want to know that I did something.

The third one is interesting, because only now that it is leaving do I realize just how numb I have been to my surroundings. I'm not sure which is worse; sitting and staring into space for hours or being okay with it. I'm not claiming a complete recovery, since I might very well return to my numb state, but I have noticed a significant (and much appreciated) difference in the last few days.

Of course there are other parts of my physical condition which seem to be permanent losses. One major casualty is my eyes. They are so blurry! And of course my right ear which still rumbles constantly, occasionally switching to a high pitched whine.

The boys have been doing very well. Ari's teacher tells me that he is picking up French very fast. Speaking of hearing problems, we suspect that Ari is suffering from some serious wax build up in his ears. I used to have that problem as a kid, and Ari can't ever hear a word we say to him. His response to everything we say is to yell at top volume, "WHAT?". He is also always yelling and it is getting worse these days. I am well acquainted with the treatment and equipment used to solve this problem - I had it done many times when I was young.

Ari's hearing "disability" has made communication with him interesting. Last week just before our Canadian Thanksgiving, I told Ari all about the Pilgrims being saved by the Indians and the story behind Thanksgiving. Well, combined with his great love for Peter Pan, Ari has now developed a deep fascination for Indians. On a side-note, I apologize if anyone is offended the use of the term Indian, but in a historical context and when teaching a five year old, it is the only term that makes sense to use and is relatable to him.

So anyway, today when I picked Ari up from school, he asked

me to tell him more about the Indians and how they lived. I of course was very enthusiastic to tell him about the different nomadic and agricultural groups, how to make birch bark canoes, how to make pemmican, how they hunted buffalo, and how they used all the different parts of the buffalo. The trouble was that for every sentence, Ari would interrupt me with a "WHAT?", and I would have to yell out the sentence again. Our whole neighborhood now knows how to make a birch bark canoe and how to make pemmican.

This evening the boys watched the movie Hook, and I think we have found a new favorite. Jude cuddled with me and decided at the end that when he grows up he wants to be Captain Hook (naturally). Ari on the other hand could hardly sit still and couldn't bear the suspense, constantly asking plot ruining questions. When I put him to bed he was still seriously pondering the implications of the movie and trying to fit together all the pieces of Peter Pan the cartoon and this new sequel. Of his more interesting questions were:

"In the first movie, Peter Pan tells Wendy that if she grows up she can never come back. How can Peter come back?"

"How did Wendy become so old if her and Peter were kids at the same time?"

By the way, Hook is also a good movie to watch if you need a reminder as a parent to lighten up a little. Robin Williams manages to make some clasic parent lines sound like such spirit breakers. Such as, "What did I tell you about blowing bubbles in your chocolate milk!" Watching it with them certainly made me realize how many of the things I say to the boys must sound pointlessly jerky.

Anyway, there are some random bits for you. Time for bed!

Soil

2010-10-12T13:56:00.002-05:00

You walk on it, vacuum it out of your rug, blow it out of your nose on a windy day, and rely on it to remain alive.

Yes, soil, that four-letter word. No surprise to find that James is writing this post, and not Jessica (although I've persuaded her that soil is actually interesting).

I really like soil, with all of its complexities. I won't get into any of them here, or I may lose this audience faster than topsoil in a windstorm. However, I just wanted to bring up the subject, and perhaps get you thinking for a moment about how incredible it is that soil exists! A community under our feet.

Feel inspired yet? Go stick your nose in a garden! You won't regret it.

(And for any palm readers out there, yes, that is my hand.)

Killing Two Birds with One Stone

2010-10-07T10:57:00.009-05:00

As things have slowed into a sort of pace and living with a Krang in my brain becomes a fact of life that only occasionally hits me in the face, I find that I have less dramatic processing to do. I am still weighted down by sudden realizations of the implications to my life, but by and large, it has become a fact of life. The lessons that I am learning these days have far more to do with how to live my life with this new complication: attitudes, approaches, etc. These develop more slowly and are not as easily bloggable as have been the last three months of "crisis" moments.

Nonetheless, I have had a new idea for what to blog about. Writing "memoirs" sounds like a very lofty thing to do, but what I have in mind is just to process my life as it slowly flashes before my eyes here on the blog. Not chronological, not planned, not complete and (believe it or not) NOT in preparation for death.

I know that it could seem vain to assume that anyone really wants to hear about my life, but truthfully I have not understood why anyone is interested in what I have been writing anyway. Mostly I want to do it because I am a reflective person. Quite naturally, the threat of death would make most reflective people think about their life, and I find the the best way for me to reflect is to write. Interestingly, half of the "life" I will be reflecting on are the things that have never happened, like all the wild and sometimes unrealistic things that James and I have talked about doing together. I will continue to write about our present journey, but since it is happening slower now then before, these will be less frequent.

James is well settled into his Master's Program at the U of M and loving almost every minute of it. At some point I will get him to write about it on here so that you can also know what he is doing. My summary would fall sadly short.

It is certainly a lot of work. He reads his requisite 5000 pages of readings and then summarizes the topics for me over a number of conversations. I really enjoy this. It would be very easy for me to feel like I live in a small limited house while James lives primarily in the big wide world and comes home to sleep. I have had to avoid this train of thought, because then it would be easy for me to turn into a guilt tripping wife who is always pestering her husband to "come home". I don't want to be the kind of wife who nags her husband for attention. I want to be inviting, so that he wants to spend time with me. Thankfully for us, I find all the things that he reads about for his classes extremely interesting. It would be much harder if he was studying anything related to Math. We have always had very similar scholastic interests. This leads us to our first "reflection".

Over the course of studying for our undergraduate degrees, we discovered that we had chosen very complementary fields: James in agriculture, and me in nutrition. We started out thinking that we were in two totally different areas. In our first years I would be learning about vitamins, nutrition education and food chemistry while James studied about soil science, crop rotation and production quotas. However, as time went by we gradually realized that both of us had far more interest in the social and international implications of our degrees than in the latest scientific research. For those of you who don't know me, I have very little interest in the supplement aisle. I am a hearty proponent of a well-rounded diet (in all parts of the world) and have limited interest in supplementation of Coenzyme Q or fill-in-the-blank vegetable extract.

How many hours we spent reading about and discussing the food supply chain, the various "sell outs" in our fields, topics in development and international programming we'll never know. Whatever the case, there were many nights where we fell asleep exchanging thoughts on these various topics. This was only the beginning of more common interests. I have recently been reading a book by Jared Diamond called Collapse outlining how various societies through history have dealt with the social, economic and ecological problems facing them. It has sparked many an interesting discussion between James and I. Let me point out that these have been points of shared learning for us and expanding our knowledge base, rather than "solving the world's problems".

On a side note, I would be very quick to recommend Jared Diamond's writing. He is better known for his best-selling work, Guns, Germs and Steel. He managed to arouse my interest in the current economic and ecological challenges that are facing Montana, something that I can guarantee you I had never thought of before.

And with that somewhat random thought, I end my blogpost. The only medical update I have is that I will be going in for another MRI on Oct 22 at which point my oncologist and other neurologists will determine what the impact of my six weeks of treatment was. After that we establish a new baseline and plan from there. I will not know any of these outcomes until I see my oncologist on Oct 29.

Farewell

"Radiation Off" and Gaggles of Geese

2010-09-30T22:54:00.007-05:00

That's right, radiation is officially off. I brought home my monstrosity of a green radiation mask on Monday. Do I want to keep it? I don't know, but it sort of seemed like if someone should throw it away it should be me and not some hospital employee. I'm playing with the idea of paper mache... I mean really, how often do you get a perfect mold made of your face?

Three days off of radiation, two weeks off of chemo and I am already feeling a million times better than I was. My platelets are still low and we have yet to discover whether or not I will need a platelet transfusion. Now we wait to let my body recover in the next four weeks. After that comes another MRI and we find out what happened during the last six weeks and a new baseline for the future.

James and I have decided that we really don't care much about what the outcome of things will

be. It changes all the time anyway, and it is always based on percentages of this and that. Nothing is concrete, nothing is known, therefore we choose to ride the less emotional rollar coaster of taking every peice of news with a grain of salt.

Fall has certainly arrived with all of its stunning beauty here on the prairies. Last Sunday, James and I left the boys with my parents for the day and spent the day driving in the fall beauty together by ourselves. For those of you familiar with Manitoba, we went out to Hecla Island and Gimli (picture). It was truly beautiful and refreshing to be in nature and to be alone. We chatted about important things like our mutual dislike for Obama discussions and the ecological situation of the coral reefs around Indonesia. We had lunch at a little Greek diner in Gimli, walked the pier and giggled together about a rediculous Chinese name we invented for the duck we saw swimming around the docked boats. All in all, a very good day filled with normal (for us) interactions, without any overwhelming needs to discuss heavy topics. Those topics did come up, but they did so naturally and fluidly, not forced (the way that it should).

An amusing part of our new home is the duck pond that is in the park behind our house. They are rediculously close to us and all we can hear at any hour of the day is Canadian Geese squabbling amongst themselves. Night time is especially bad, and as they bully each other around, I find myself imagining that they are all simultaneously saying to each other, "Squack! Squack! I'm a goose! Squack! Are you a goose too? Squack!" I have to admit that I have never spent so much time contemplating geese before as I have in the last few weeks. I've started thinking about them as large football shaped torsos with cylindrical necks and zero brains. James and I have been concocting all manner of ways in which we could sabotage them and throw them into even more chaos (ie. large area net systems for trapping, timed shooting as they fly over our house so that their velocity would carry them downward through our kitchen window into the waiting boiling cauldron of water, or just sneaking up behind them and slapping them on the back of the head).

No I am not an animal hater, but trust me, after this much exposure to them it is really easy to start thinking about them as a bunch of idiots!

Lately, I have been spending a lot of time working on a project. The project is to turn our blog into a family scrapbook of sorts. I don't mean a cutesy scrapbook, but just a means turning our China experience into book form so that we can page through it at our leisure and look through it. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I also have this idea that it would really suck to lose all of this writing if the internet were ever to collapse. This is something that I really want the boys to have to look back on. The other thing is that I can put things into this book that we were never able to put on the blog. I plan on including email exchanges between James and I when we were off traveling, news stories that were happening while we were there etc.

The only problem with this is that it requires me to spend a lot of time on the blog, which as you may have figured from the last entry, can be very painful. It has been very hard for me to look at the blog and not compare "life then" to "life now". Thus, I have spent hours copying and pasting, formatting, changing etc., only to come away from it feeling very sad.

On Monday, after spending a morning doing this, I took a step of independence and announced that I was going to pick Ari up from school by myself. This is of course a calculated risk... what if I had a seizure during the half hour that I am gone? But I knew that what I needed more than anything at that time was some time to talk with God, be alone, and hear his thoughts.

This is what I came away with, and it has helped me more than anything else I have received in the last few weeks. If Satan throws fiery darts at me, they are intended for my demise. I am a child of God and he hates me. These darts are intended to turn everything about my life into something so painful that I can't think about my life without feeling pain. Me being aware of my mortality and possible death has made everything about my entire life hard for me to think about. Even absurdly small things. But what am I going to do? Should I stop thinking about and reflecting on my life? I would be submitting myself to Satan's highway robbery if I allow him to make all of the good things in my life into something that is painful, just because I no longer have it.

God showed me that Satan has been using the things near and dear to me to deceive me into opening up to the pain that he wants me to have in my life. His fiery darts come in the form of things that are dear and precious to me, memories of China, memories of my life etc. Because it is precious to me, I want to hold on to it and even hold it close to my heart. But that doesn't change the fact that it is a fiery dart that is meant to hurt me. Satan will always want to take good things and turn them into things that will hurt us. So what do I do with this?

As I walked to pick Ari up, I realized that I need God's help to extract the bitter from the sweet. I need his help to extract the poison that Satan has inserted into the good things in my life. Those weapons would not be effective if they did not carry something precious to me. As I walked, I poured out these things and slowly but surely I could feel the poison and the pain that has been flooding me for the past several weeks seeping out of me. Suddenly I could remember my life again with joy and rejoicing, instead of looking at it through a thick lens of death. I can remember our time in China now without wanting to weep. What a gift!

For days now I have felt so good! It almost feels unfair. I have found myself questioning if it is right to be able to so freely give the bad things to God, while I keep the good. But then I remembered that this is at the heart of what we believe as Christians. We as people are all destined for death, but Jesus came and he died in our place so that we could experience life instead of death. He takes our ruined lives, and in exchange gives us his life and his beauty. He takes my ruined and seemingly hopeless life and gives me beauty in its place.

On a human level, my life has literally been sentenced to death and for a number of weeks I have allowed the sting of that death to infiltrate itself into all parts of my life. But because Jesus is stronger than death and because I am learning to trust him, that sting is being removed from my life day by day. I feel joy again. I feel peace again. I no longer feel that my life has been taken away from me. I do not want Death to take slowly over my life with its deceptive ways. Instead I want give it up freely to the only one who conquered Death.

You may have noticed that I have not included any options that do not have Death. I think that in my situation Death is unavoidable, whether or not I physically die. My choice is either to die the way that Jesus did (with the hope of a resurrection), or to let Death take over me. If I follow Jesus to Death, then I have the great promise of Life. But if I let Death take over me, then I have no hope at all.

Thank you Jesus for Life.

Every so often...

2010-09-28T23:38:00.005-05:00

...Every so often I need to put up a ridiculous picture of myself (James) on the blog. Here's one. In this particular photo, I am in a 3-D movie theater in South Korea. The video was in Korean, which explains the tiny wire in my right ear. English in one ear and Korean in the other!

Fiery Darts and Faith

2010-09-25T10:01:00.003-05:00

I have been wondering over the last few days at how so many things have been hitting me like a physical pain deep in my heart. Here are a few examples:

- Carrying a sleepy Jude to the bathroom last night. He cuddled right up and pain shot through me to think that he may not grow up with the personal experience of knowing how much his mother loves him

- I was looking at old photo albums yesterday that I had not seen since before we left for China. Physical pain shot through me as I looked at our wedding pictures and pictures of the first few months of Ari's life.

- Pictures of James and I together looking carefree and happy. What if the boys look at these pictures as if they are a far off dream and not something they have ever personally seen. What if they don't ever get to witness the carefree dynamic and James and I have with each other? What if they never get to see for themselves how mu

ch we love each other?

- The boys watching Peter Pan and being so excited when the children learn how to fly. "They can fly! They can fly! They can fly!" They are so precious, such gifts!

- Seeing any picture of myself before three months ago.

I have been really shaken by the fact that any little thing these days has the ability to send me rocketing deep into a pit of pain. What is wrong with me? Where is my faith? The Bible tells us that our faith is to be used like a shield and it can protect us from all of the fiery darts that are thrown at us by our enemy, Satan. It is his goal to deceive us and to cause death in our lives, more than just physical death. Why are these darts racing right past my shield and hitting me in my weakest parts?

I woke up this morning with a song in my head, with these words (based on Philippians 3:7-10):

All I once held dear, built my life upon

All this world reveres and wars to own,

All I once found gain, I now count loss*

Spent and worthless now, compared to this,

Knowing you, Jesus, knowing you

There is no greater thing

You're my all, you're the best,

You're my joy, my righteousness

And I love you

I realized today that I can sing less than half of these words honestly. Actually right up to the part that I have marked with a star. I have mentioned before that I have led a charmed life up to now. I have never struggled with self confidence (those of you who have fought this losing battle for many years officially have permission to hate me). I have held dear the person that I am, and I have built my life upon the things that this world longs to own. I have known and experienced things that many people never have had, but long for: a happy marriage, beautiful children, university education, opportunities to live in another culture, a nice appearance, many friends etc.

It is humbling for me to admit that it has been easier for me to believe that God is good and that he loves me when I come from the charmed life I have lived. It is even more humbling to admit that part of my faith has been built on these things. Why else would those darts be hitting me so hard? Perhaps the most humbling thing to admit is that I am not yet at the point where I can call these things worthless. I love them, I want to hold on to them. But I will never truly have faith until I can truthfully say that the things of this life that change and do not last, have no worth compared to Jesus. He doesn't change.

When I look at myself three months ago and myself now, I want to cry. This family picture pretty much sums it up for me. It is a physical representation of what I once "counted gain" but now feel I have lost. Look at that happy, beautiful woman with a happy handsome husband, two happy beautiful children! Look at their shining future together! Look at their adventuresome spirit!

That is the only me I have ever known. I don't understand the me that has taken the place of the woman in that picture. The new me is a stranger. The new me has ugly patches of hair, a puffy face (notice that I have not put up a comparison picture), and acne. She sleeps a lot, can't see very well or hear very well. She can't concentrate. When her husband says he loves her, she can't help but wonder if he is lying (the new me must be as much a stranger to him as she is to me).

I literally feel stripped and my faith is part of what has been stripped from me. I see now that I have placed a great portion of my confidence and worth in the things that I have had. Now that I have lost them or at least feel like they are slipping through my fingers, I see how shallow my faith has been. No wonder these darts are hitting me so hard! I am not ready to let go of this "faith" I have held yet, even though it has/is being torn to shreds in front of my eyes. It reminds me of a verse in Isaiah (64:6):

We are all infected and impure with sin,

When we display our righteous deeds,

They are nothing but filthy rags,

Like autumn leaves, we wither and fall,

And our sins sweep us away like the wind.

My faith and my righteousness has been built on a foundation that does not last. Beauty, relationships, being smart, independent, helping people etc. These things do not last, and if I seek to make my life valuable and righteous through these things, I will lose... I HAVE lost. The funny thing is that I would never have known that I was basing my faith and my value/righteousness on these things unless I lost them.

There is not much comfort in what I have written. There is not much comfort in knowing that I am shallow enough to prefer my rags of righteousness over the real thing that is offered by Jesus. But there is the hope that this can change. There is the hope that I can learn to place my value in things that last forever and are true and not in "leaves that blow away in the wind". Look at how easily it happened! Three months and my life is unrecognizable!

Thus closes another rant. Why anyone would find this interesting is a mystery to me, I do it for my own mental processes. Eventually it all comes pouring out whether I want it to or not.

A Changing Set of Needs

2010-09-21T13:08:00.003-05:00

Many people have been asking us what our needs are and what they can do to help. Overall, in terms of our needs, we are doing very well. Nonetheless, I understand the desire to help. So here I will list what our/my needs are, even just so that you, our support network can feel at ease that we are not lacking anything.

Mine:

1) Time to zone out and have nothing needed from me (this happens whether or not I am given that time)

2) Time to live in a normal environment with a fairly predictable schedule with James, the boys and the others members of our household. This includes plenty of considerably quiet evenings.

3) Time to be quiet so that things that need to come out (be it in me, in James, in our marriage or with the boys) come out naturally and not in forcible explosions.

4) Time to express myself creatively in ways of my choosing (eg, reading, playing piano, or continuing to help on some MCC work).

Now that we've been back for awhile and life is starting to take form, our needs have become much more inwardly turned. However, our schedule has for some reason simultaneously become more outwardly turned. You'll notice that the common denominator in all of these needs is time. This is one area where I have noticed debilitation on my part. I used to be good at playing the mental day planner, where I could see what would happen, what was needed and at what time. This is how James and I managed to simultaneously get university degrees and have two children. I can't do this anymore. When I look at the things around me in my day, I can't see how they fit together anymore. It is like my ability to think in terms of time and space has diminished, and my mind just shuts down. I just see them around me and what they require of me and promptly feel overwhelmed by them. Frankly, it makes me feel like a bit of an idiot.

If the things that I know are going to happen have this effect on me, then I am sure you can imagine how much I get thrown off when unexpected things happen. Unfortunately, I have noticed that I have utterly lost my ability to handle unexpected events. I find myself utterly frazzled if people (however good or well meaning), just stop by the house and sometimes even planned interactions can do this. Please don't feel bad if you have been part of our social schedule, it is not my intention to make anyone feel bad. Additionally, it is not any one person or event that can be draining, in fact singular interactions can be quite good. However, we are finding that the sum total of these other interactions has the ability to take away from the things close to home that really need our attention.

Obviously, we need human interaction and the support of our friends and family, but right now I think that the most important thing that needs to happen is a "getting in order" of our household, and an inward turning of our energies to our little family. In the last few weeks there have been so many events on a daily basis (expected and unexpected), that I find myself not knowing where I am. There is no time for things to be processed slowly and naturally, so they come out in small bursts late at night when James and I find that we have time to ourselves.

One reason I'm really finding the need to conserve my energies, is because I want to prioritize time with the boys. Anyone around the boys knows that interactions with them require twice the energy requirement that most human interactions do, and this is not the time for them to get less.

So in case you were wondering if there is a hidden message here, the answer is no. What I am doing is honestly expressing our needs so that you can understand them and not feel like there is more that could be done. We are realizing from our end that we need to be a little more stingy with our social calendar. This is not because of the people we could or could not see, but because our little family has needs that have been put on the back burner for long enough. I think everyone can understand that, and I assure you that there is no hidden message for any one person or group of people

In terms of our daily needs my sister Rachel, whom I've been affectionately referring to as my nursemaid (not the "wet" kind!) has been graciously running the affairs of our house. She has been cooking, cleaning, child caring and much much more. I am so thankful to God for putting us into a situation where we mutually needed each other. She feels blessed to be able to raise her two year old daughter (my niece, Naomi) in a community environment. I have someone who watches me closely and sees what I need before I do (a serious benefit when you feel as scattered as I do right now). Our other room mate has also recently returned from MCC service and as such we have many similar experiences and emotions to share in terms of reverse culture shock.

It feels like we have formed a bit of a hodge podge alliance in this house. All four adults are going through times of serious transition in our lives but we are held together by a need for each other and belief in God's faithfulness. It is also a good thing for the boys to have a "little sister" and to learn how to be gentle with her.

Quick update on my treatments. Last week, I was taken off of my chemotherapy. My blood work revealed that my platelets had dropped to critical levels. As such, I have been off of the chemo for a week now. At this point in time the platelets situation seems to be correcting itself, but we won't really know until more time has passed. Radiation continues, four more treatments including today. My right ear is having some problems. I am definitely losing some hearing but I simultaneously experience ringing and rumbling (as if a train were going by).

Thats all for now!

The Tooth Fairy has Landed

2010-09-17T08:55:00.007-05:00

Shortly after we arrived back in Canada, we were sitting at supper one day when Ari bit down hard onto his fork. A look of surprised pain flashed across his face and an exploratory wiggle with his finger revealed that his tooth was officially loose. James and I figured that it would probably root itself again since he was only just barely five. We promptly forgot about it.

Fast forward to supper Thrusday night... There we were nibbling on pig's feet and slurping some noodle soup (just another clue of our hankering for China!), when Ari shocked us all by pulling his tooth so far forward that it touched his gum. We were surprised to see that while we had been distracted by all the moving, hospital visits and whatnot, Ari's tooth had already begun to discolor in his mouth. In case you were starting to suspect negligence on our part, let me point out that we do brush his teeth everyday. However teeth brushing is usually fairly chaotic and is peppered by these types of statements (the type that are highly distractive to making close observations). "Ari, stand still on TWO feet!" "Ari, stop pushing the toothbrush with your tongue". "Ari, don't bite the brush"

So after supper, James got out the thread (I was quick to inform him that I would NOT be one doing this task) and retreated with Ari to the upstairs bathroom. I sat expectantly waiting for the screams and howls, but heard none. A few minutes later, Ari came down and said very calmly, "Papa says that we're going to have to use pliers". The pliers went into the bathroom too, and I sat again waiting for the screams and howls. But in short order, Ari, James, pliers and tooth all emerged with zero tears and minimal blood. Ari was very proud of himself as you can see from the photos.

In typical James fashion, Ari's first experience with the Tooth Fairy took on some unconventional character traits.

The most unconventional trait is that his name is Ondar (see photo). Ondar is a man from Tuva who is famous for his traditional throat singing, a talent that James covets and aspires to. If we are driving down the road, chances are that James is trying to teach himself how to throat sing at loud volumes. He has tried to teach me how to do it on number of occasions, but it involves creating ticklish vibrations deep inside the recesses of your skull, nasal passages and ears which drive me batty! It makes me want to rub my head vigorously, so I leave the throat singing to him. If you are curious to know what throat singing sounds like I have created a link to a Youtube video showing Ondar and his five year old protege singing for Chevy Chase. Maybe someday this will be James and Ari! Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElwKydsd0e8

Anyhow, the boys are very familiar with Ondar, having frequently watched Youtube videos with James of him and often throat singing along with James in the car. Strange family activity yes, but family bonding doesn't always have to take the form of Monopoly right? So, for Ari to think that him losing a tooth was an occasion for Ondar to slip into his room at night time (all the while throat singing), take his tooth, and leave a surprise, was a very big deal indeed. He stared wide eyed and tried very hard to pinpoint exactly what time to expect Ondar to come into his room. He was crestfallen when I informed him that Ondar only comes when kids are sleeping. I warned him before he went to school the next morning that his friends and school and teachers would probably think that Ondar's real name is the Tooth Fairy.

Now for a new tone altogether. I want to take a moment here to thank everyone who has been in contact with me over the last few months, but especially in the last few weeks. I can't even count how many people have sent emails, facebook emails, sent forwards or links, left comments on the blog or made other personal contacts. Everyone of these contacts has been personal and meaningful to me. I have to simultaneously thank everyone (you know who you are) and apologize for not being able to personally respond to each one. As I read each one, I think about what I want to say to each person in response, but I am unfortunately in a season where my energy is extremely limited and has to be portioned out. I have teared up at many an email. If I may, here is a mass response with a summary of the many different thoughts and responses that your emails have elicited.

1) I feel honored. One of the greatest rewards I have received from being open is that others are being open with me about their own pain and struggles. Please don't think that I would ever be burdened to hear about the struggles that are happening in your lives. It makes me glad to know that me identifying lies I believe in my life would help others to identify lies that they have believed in thier lives (or other things that have been written about). I want you to know that I have a deep respect for the stories and experiences that are shared. We are only given one life to live and unfortunately, sad times make up as much of our lives as good times. If we despise the sad times and do not carry a respect for them as part of our lives, then we can not truly value our lives.

2) I feel humbled. My story may seem big and flashy, but in reality it is no harder than the things that other people face. I can truthfully say that on this road so far, I have not thought "Why me?". This is because I have spent the rest of my life wondering "Why not me?". Why have I had such a charmed life, while I see others around me who live daily with great disappointments. High hopes for marriage that came crashing down. Family feuds. Tragic deaths. Years of illness. Struggles with depression. Bad relationships between parents or children. Fill in the blank. I have had none of these disappointments in my life. My big tragedy happened suddenly and it seems more terrible because I am so young and happily married and have kids. But I am in far greater admiration of the people who have lived with years of disappointments and still have faith (and also those who don't have faith). Life has not been a disappointment for me, but for many others it has been.

Another part of the humbling has been to see how far the net goes. There have been a lot of people in contact whom I have never met, but who are reading what I write. I am also stunned by the variety of people reading. People who I have met once, or have a distant mutual friend. People with different faith backgrounds or who are somewhere around the world. It amazes me to think that God dropped a rock in my pond, and the ripples are spreading to places that I have no idea of.

3) Sometimes I feel frustrated. I know that people will always interpret my experiences through their own life experiences, but there are times when I also feel misunderstood. I may express deep sorrow and sadness on this blog, and even use words like "depression", but this does not mean that I have lost hope or that I am becoming a pitiful creature. What it means is that I am on a bumpy journey that changes everyday and that I experience every emotion on the spectrum from very low to very high. That said, I can understand how it would be easy to misunderstand much of what I write.

Just because I have a deep yearning for God does not mean he has deserted me... maybe it means that I want more of him now than I ever did before. Maybe I veiw him differently now. Before I viewed him as more of a friend or a Father. Now I find that I am beginning to see him as more of a lover, and that is far more intimate. Lovers have a different type of relationship than friends or fathers and daughters. Lovers desire each other, and I have never desired him before the way that I do now. In our idealistic view of marriage we often say even a lifetime with your spouse/lover is not enough. That means that in a dream-like world we veiw spouses/lovers as ideally having an insatiable appetite for each other, even if reality often does not look that way. I have more of that appetite now for God.

There is a lot less to distract me now. I may express my doubts in God, but in the end, I know that I will get exactly what I want from him. What might that be? HIM. I don't want only one part of him... just his healing, his joy, his love etc. I want ALL OF HIM. All inclusive. To only experience his healing would be incomplete. I want EVERYTHING that he has.

So thank you to everyone who has been in touch with me. If something I write rings a chord of recognition in you, I'd love to hear about it. Please keep it up. I often find myself thinking about the individuals who sent me the emails (I have a lot of time to sit and think these days). As I said, if I do not respond it is merely a indication of my energy levels and not of my reception.

Bye for now!

Deep Currents

2010-09-13T10:44:00.005-05:00

As many of you have noticed, our blog entries have declined in number. This is largely due to not having had internet access for eight days. However, that lack of connection turned out to be a good thing, at least for me (Jess).

Overall, its been a busy and fairly discouraging week. The last few days have found me pondering things that are so deep inside, I don't have any way of expressing them. I find myself retreating deeper and deeper inside of myself and sometimes that really scares me. I don't know how deep I go. I tried my hand at writing some poetry. In a sense it was a good thing, because it allowed me to give voice to some of the deeper, harder to express emotions that I have inside. But it also gave voice to a pain that I was otherwise unaware of. Pain that made me want to draw back even more. Maybe this is how depression starts.

I am now in my fifth week of treatments (out of six). This probably sounds hopeful, but the truth is that with each day that goes by, my body feels more and more ragged. No matter how much I sleep (or don't sleep) my body always feels as though I have spent the whole night partying. If I do sleep, I feel better for about half an hour after I wake up. This makes me think that resting is useless no matter what I do, so why even try resting? My vision is blurred and my ears feel infected (both things that I was warned about).

But we took the cake last night when James had to take me to the emergency room for crushing, piercing chest pains. I had been having them on and off for the last 24 hours, but last night they got so bad that I couldn't ignore them anymore. Chest pains is listed as one of the EMERGENCY SEE YOUR DOCTOR immediately symptoms in my information booklet. So even though I really didn't want to go, I knew that it would be stupid not to. The concern with cancer patients, especially those receiving chemotherapy and radiation is that they could experience a pulmonary embolism (blood clot in the lungs). This is a potentially deadly situation, and truthfully, it was stupid of me to wait as long as I did to finally go to the emergency room.

But it happened just as I had imagined that it would. I was poked and prodded, tested, imaged and EKG(ed). It was invasive, tiring and painful. In the end, they determined that there was no blood clot and that my heart was okay... but we don't actually know what the problem is, which means that it will probably happen again. This is mightily discouraging and a bit like having cold water thrown in your face.

Overall, this is how I am doing. I can function alright on a daily basis. I don't feel like I am hiding things or living in denial. I can joke and have fun for real, it isn't some big show I put on. I don't feel like I am pushing myself. However, I am easily drawn into these deep, slow channels that run below my surface. They carry me along and move me. Somewhere in these deep channels I have spent a lot of time contemplating the Song of Solomon.

This is a beautiful book of the bible with passionate poetry spoken between two lovers. The two are enthralled with each other and everything about the other person has made a deep impression on the other lover. The way they smell, the way they look, the way they speak, the way they feel. But then they get separated. The Lover goes off into the night and his Beloved goes out looking for him. She goes out into the city streets at night, searching for him, driven by the memory of their love for each other. While she searches for him, some men come along and beat her. But to everyone she meets she says, "Have you seen my Lover? If you see, him, tell him that I am looking for him. Tell him that I am mad with love for him."

I feel like the Beloved. I have deep precious memories of times when Jesus felt incredibly close to me, where I felt that no one understood me the way that my creator does and that I could even understand a bit of him. But I have since followed him into a dark place and I can't see where he is. I feel like I have been beaten. My hair and my physical beauty have been stripped from me. Sometimes, I feel downright naked, cold and alone, even ashamed.

But you are the people that I meet on the street. I hear that there are many people praying for me. Truthfully, I don't pretend to understand what that means or what that changes. But if I can make a request to those of you are praying for me, you the people that I meet on the street, this is what it would be. "Have you seen my Lover? If you see him, tell him I am looking for him and that I won't be satisfied until I have him. Tell him that I am mad with love for him." I know that he has not deserted me, but his withdrawal has ignited a fire in my heart.

Pics of House and Activities

2010-09-08T18:41:00.005-05:00

The Boys being pigs and very happy about it

Some homegrown Manitoba scenery for you. This is my childhood in a nutshell

The Duck Pond behind our house

The House

LIfe at the Intersection of Normal St. and Krang Ave.

2010-09-08T18:30:00.004-05:00

This blog posting is coming from an internet cafe because our household phone and internet remain disconnected with no hope of connection for a few more days. That also explains the silence of this blog for the last week and the inability to answer any emails. This post was composed on Microsoft word and then pasted into blogger at Starbucks.

Normal St. and Krang Ave? Okay, the street names are changed, but we have in fact moved to a new, permanent residence. We are now the renters of a four bedroom house near the University of Manitoba. With us will be living my sister and her daughter, and another friend whom we have known for a number of years (also a returned MCC volunteer). This is how things are going to look for the next year at least. My sister will be acting as my “babysitter” and between the two of us we will take care of the kids and other household duties (sounds like the plot of a Jane Austin or L.M. Montgomery book). James and our other roommate will both be beginning Master’s Degrees. My daily hospital visits are only for three more weeks.

What I just described sounds like a “normal” life. No more moving around, in two and half more weeks we’ll have no more daily hospital visits. I’ll walk Ari to school just down the street every morning. Sounds like the kind of life that is not disrupted by a brain tumor (thanks Krang). But I chose this blog title for a reason. Here we are settling into a “normal” life, but living under abnormal circumstances. How does one live that life? If this is where the rubber meets the road, then how to you drive that car? Pretense?

I exerted myself physically for about ten hours on Saturday as we moved. Unpacking, cleaning etc. But on Sunday I paid for it when my body and brain were so shut down by fatigue that I was almost immobilized. Then my emotions were stretched so thin that I screamed at the boys when they thought that I was tickling them while trying to wash their feet in the bathtub. This is not the Jessica that I know.

This morning I laid in bed praying about this, wondering, asking God for an insight or two. More than practical life, my biggest question is this. Where does my relationship with God fit into this whole thing? I feel desperate to have him as more and more a part of my life, but in our normal lives we usually find it easier to slip into complacency with God. I can truthfully say right now that my heart’s desire is to know Jesus. I know that I can’t do this, I know that I am unable to handle most things in my life right now. I need Jesus. But he feels far away.

As I laid bed, asking these questions and thinking these thoughts, it occurred to me that maybe I was asking for the wrong thing. I want to see Jesus in my life, but maybe what I need first is to understand what might be blocking my view of him. Things like lies that I have come to believe, or fears that I am grappling with.

Here for your viewing pleasure are some lies that I have come to believe about myself. I will word them in the way that they present themselves in my mind:

1) I am less valid as a human being. If death is invisibility, then I am slowly becoming more and more transparent, and less a valid part of people’s lives. If James and I are married until death do us part, then we are now less married than we were then we were two months ago. If we were holding hands tightly like a basket weave two months ago, we will slowly over time loosen our hands until we are only touching fingertips at full arm’s length, and then I will die.

2) I am responsible to make sure that James has a full and satisfying life. Now that my ability to put excitement into his life has been taken away from me, he will slowly lose interest in me. I will no longer be able to stimulate his interest.

If these are the lies that I have subtly come to believe, then what is the truth that counteracts them?

1) Until the point that I die, I am remain a valid, influential human being, able to impact the people that I meet. James and I are as married as we were two months ago. It is not God’s will to slowly weaken our marriage. Rather, it is his will that our basket weaved fingers will stay strong and together until the very moment that one of us dies. The truth is that it is the very lies I believe that would become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If I choose to become invisible and invalid, I will become invisible and invalid. If I choose to loosen James’ and my hand, they will become loose.

2) James has more needs than I can meet. He was created by God and for God. A mere human wife cannot fulfill all that he needs. Maybe I thought that I was making his life more exciting before, but it was foolish of me to take credit for being able to make him happy or not. Of course I play a role, but the more important role is God’s.

So those are the lies that I have believed. Even just identifying them releases some of their hold in my life. What about the fears? Believing lies changes the way that you look at life. Grappling with fears has the ability to immobilize us and make us inactive. I have realized that my reaction to fears is often to grab a hold of them. It’s like there is a lion in front of me and my instant reaction is to grab it and try to hold its mouth shut. I drop everything that I am doing, just to try and control these fears. But just like Daniel in the lion’s den, I need to trust my fears to God and trust that he will close the mouths of my fears, even though they are right in front of me and not going away. If I hold on to a lion in front of me, I will get eaten from behind.

So what are my fears?

1) The boys need more than I can provide. In the last two months two things have happened. My physical and emotional ability to deal with two boys has declined and they have simultaneously had so much family and so much stimulation around that their expectations have gone up. Where does “normal” life fit in here again? I have heard it said that stress comes when we see that our ability to do something falls far below what is required of us. This really stresses me out. That is why I screamed at them in the bathtub yesterday. Lord Jesus help me give this to you!

2) How I do I act around James? We are so comfortable with each other that all our negativity sometimes comes spilling out onto the other. While we have gone through hard times together, it has never happened where both of us are going through personal difficulty at the same time. Both of our worst sides are coming out, and sometimes it is like being with a total stranger. Its almost like we need to date again! But who wants to date a sarcastic, complaining bald guy, or a weepy, emotional bald woman? However despite these difficulties, we both acknowledge the need to keep pursuing each other, and the most important thing is that we are talking about it.

The good thing is that, overall, we feel like we have just come through some kind of a gauntlet. There are still swinging swords and things coming at us to throw us off balance, but they seem to be a little fewer and farther between than they were for the last few weeks. We have more lighter moments now than before. Doubtless this will change again, but hey, what can you do?

Personal Contact

2010-09-01T11:12:00.004-05:00

A number of people have expressed an interest in having personal contact with us, either through the blog or through mutual connections. For this reason I will post my email address. I do this because I really appreciate the fact that many people have responded to my openness by opening up about their own pains and trials. This means a lot to me. I love hearing other people's stories. That is one of the things that I miss the most about China, I heard so many stories there.

I do however have some misgivings about putting my email up here, primarily because some people feel the need to "set me straight". Its not that I can't take criticism or think everyone should agree with me, but I do have an instinctual aversion to personal insults and profanity. Feel free to disagree with me, but please keep in mind that these two things I mentioned bring disagreeable emails to a whole new level.

That said, here is my email: freynfrey at gmail.com

Remembering the Mainland

2010-08-31T16:16:00.010-05:00

Jess here:

Today I woke up with feelings of joyful anticipation for the day, something I haven't felt for a while. Here's why:
1) My doctor changed my anti-nausea meds to something stronger, which means that I can now eat breakfast without throwing up and enjoy the rest of my meals without that horrible pervading feeling of nausea. Food is such a wonderful thing!
2) We're moving to a permanent address in a few days!
3) We get to go watch my brother-in-law play baseball tonight. I played baseball for many years and was about to join a recreational team in Beijing before we left.
4) I did not wake up with a splitting headache for the first time in days

In the last while, we've had the sensation of getting a little "China starved". Here is the evidence (how many more lists can I make?):
1) I am currently in the process of simultaneously reading three Chinese biographies (with another ten or so lined up),
2) We've been searching Youtube and Youku (the Chinese version of Youtube) for Chinese music videos, and
3) We have watched two Chinese movies in the last week.

Each one of these things has, in its own way evoked very clear and real memories of China in me. These are the kind of memories that have taste, smell and sound attached to them. The ones that you can almost relive they feel so real. Sometimes I physically have to stop reading my books, because they are so real to me.

Much as I hated the Chinese music videos while I was there, they now remind me of grocery shopping or riding the bus. That in turn makes me remember everything that I enjoyed about riding the bus. I know, I know, read far enough back on this blog and you'll remember everything I hated about the bus. Nonetheless, there were things that I loved too.

For example, I loved sitting on the bus and watching the elderly people. They all have so much character, so much independence and yet demand so much respect (I think). I would find myself staring at them and wondering about their lives. I also enjoyed it when the other passengers on the bus would assume that I didn't understand them and talk about me when I was right there. Thinking about riding the bus makes me think of the ticket woman who yells loudly in everyone's ears (picture). Then there is the man/men that every bus has (no matter what time of day) that smells like a brewery. Or there is the young boyfriend that drapes himself so heavily on his girlfriend's shoulder in a "cutesy" way, that I begin to feel very sorry for the girlfriend who has to slouch off to the side in order to compensate. Then there were the horrible men's fashion shows that were always playing on the TV. See example above to the left!

Watching Chinese movies with English subtitles is also an interesting experience now. They were not that widely available in Beijing (what's the use when everyone speaks Chinese?), but now that we have access to Youtube again, we can watch them. If we watch without subtitles, we are generally able to get the basic plot, but we end up missing a lot of the details. Movie Chinese tends to be very short and abrupt, or colloquial if you will. However, watching with subtitles is simultaneously educational ("Oh, did you hear the way that he said that? I never would have though of saying it that way!"), and yet distracting ("Weird, the translation totally missed part of what she said").

As to our own Chinese ability, we have not found ourselves forgetting it just yet. It seems to be sticking pretty good. We have attended a Chinese church on a number of occasions and instead of scratching our heads searching for words, it all comes pouring out in a joyful flood. We have also been skyping with some of our friends back in Beijing. James and I have decided that Chinese is our official "hospital language". When you find yourself spending a lot of time in crowded people places (as waiting rooms tend to be), it is very convenient to speak a language that most people don't understand. Of course, we have also learned the hard way that there are enough Chinese people around randomly that we probably shouldn't be cracking too many dirty jokes with each other!

As useful as having a hospital language can be, it does also have the effect of driving home the fact that we no longer NEED to know Chinese. Now it is a quaint, but sort of strange and useless tool that we have in our belts. It is easy to forget that this tool used to the most valuable one we had and that it was one that we carefully sharpened every day. When I was recovering from my biopsy last month, the nurses all thought that it was very cute that we were speaking Chinese together (almost as if we were wearing matching Hello Kitty backpacks). In Canada, speaking Chinese is cute and a little bit impressive, but in China it is just necessary. Nonetheless, we put too much time and energy into it to ignore it now. We have determined that we will attend the Chinese church weekly and try to bring home Chinese exchange students from the University (we’ll let them go eventually).

Funny story. The other night we were driving around near our old University and at a certain intersection we had to wait for a group of Chinese students to cross the street. They were walking extremely slowly, and James, forgetting that his window was open, yelled in the voice of a Beijing man who has been smoking for 40 years, "Kuai yidianr ba!" (Hurry up will ya!). One young man looked at us in astonishment and nearly tripped over his feet to hear a skinhead Canadian yelling at him to hurry up in Chinese (Beijing accent no less). I burst out laughing and gave the guy a broad smile, just to let him know that he wasn't crazy.

Recently we also had to go to the Manitoba Health office to get our health insurance issues taken care off. The couple in front of us in line was an elderly Chinese couple and they were speaking together in Mandarin. When they got to the counter, James and I were of course eavesdropping. Between the somewhat impatient clerk and the limited English of the woman, there was much miscommunication going on and the frustrations were mounting. You may ask yourselves why we did not quickly stand up and yell "I speak Chinese!" but there were a number of reasons why we did not. One was that the office security was very sensitive about the privacy of each individual case. The other was that we did not want to embarrass the woman. She was doing well enough to get by and we didn't want to show disrespect for her by diminishing her ability to speak English in front of a crowd of people. However, as soon as we got to the counter and mentioned to the employee that we could understand, he told us we should have come up and helped him out!

We have actually randomly passed a number of Chinese conversations on the street here in Winnipeg. The funny thing about it is that it is exactly like hearing snatches of an English conversation on the sidewalk. The topic is usually mundane and not very interesting. "That bill is due next month". “The Doctor said you should see him in two weeks”. “You know I hate salad”. But here is Winnipeg it sometimes comes as a shock to realize that without trying to, we just heard a Chinese conversation and understood it.

Another element of my reliving China experience is that I have still been contributing to some of the MCC work that I was involved in. As I work on my computer, doing my familiar tasks and duties, I find vivid images entering my mind. People, places, traveling, hotels, the food, the stories, so much! It's so tangible I could grab it! Somedays it is very hard not to let all of those thoughts and memories end with an abrupt, "Well I guess I'll never do that again".

While traveling James and I often found ourselves in situations where we had to attend banquets and eat tons and tons of food or risk insulting people. At the beginning this was hard to handle, especially when every meal was some big to-do and our gastrointestinal tracts felt like solid tubes of chilis and meat (in James' case, often raw meat). Oft times the meat was unsettlingly unrecognizable, but then there were the other times that it was extremely recognizable (served in the natural beauty of its whole animal form).

It was not uncommon to come home with an unpleasant case of watery bowels and an overwhelming desire to eat vegetables and fruit. Now we bemoan the fact that it took us a full six months or so to become accustomed the to spicy/burn-your-mouth-and-all-of-your-sphincters meat fests that these occasions were. It feels like we wasted six precious months of not fully appreciating food that we now love! This picture is a really representation of how food there would be for maybe eight people. The dishes would be stacked on each other multiple times and we would all attack them simultaneously with our chopsticks. Not very sanitary, but very satisfying!

Oh I suppose I'm just being melodramatic. Give me centre stage and I'll delivery a soliloquy to make your heart sob!

Farewell!

The Obsession with Hair Continues

2010-08-30T21:23:00.005-05:00

Hey All. James here.

I figure that if Jessica gets a wig, then I get one too. However, I want to remain true to myself... no covering up the fact that I'm balding. So if I'm going to wear a wig, it's got to be a balding

wig!

Dark Man and Family

2010-08-30T11:33:00.009-05:00

James here.

Inspired by Jessica's bid to create the zaniest family photo, I have decided to photoshop us into what I think is appropriately called Dark Man and Family.

Behold, Dark Man. The trouble is, he doesn't appear obviously photoshopped. I mean, I've worked on construction sites with guys like this! Very creepy.

In fact, I think I can tell you a bit about the man in this picture: his name is Pierre, and he's been banned for life from the Franz Motor Inn, after what has famously become known as the "April 3rd Incident". That scar on the left side of his nose? Don't even ask.

Dark Wife looks a little more photoshopped, with her Joker smile. However, you wouldn't guess right off the hop that she is big into curling, and that on any given night, you can find her glued to the TV, watching the Beautiful Game live or on scratchy old VHS cassettes. She's been known to punch game moderators in the face when they make a call she disagrees with--and she's even worse when she's actually one of the players.

Dark Ari is a cheerful lad, unaware of the hostilities that simmer in the upper tiers of the Dark Family. He receives mediocre grades in school, particularly in spelling, but he does will in gym class, which is enough to satisfy Mr. and Mrs. Dark.

When Dark Ari grows up, he hopes to own the Franz Motor Inn.

And last of all, we have Dark Jude. When Child and Family Services learned that he was sleeping in a cardboard box in a damp corner of the basement, they tried to take him away from the Dark Family. However, subsequent DNA testing revealed that he isn't a human boy at all, but rather a strange mutant possum. That explains his incredible love for dry cat food.

Family Photos and Capacity Building

2010-08-30T00:52:00.004-05:00

Here is the long awaited family photo with all of us buzzed and beautiful. I include two different versions and James is creating his own version of our family photo. My family photos are mild renditions (coneheads and a few additions), but James' rendition of our family photo is a little more unique. Curious George joined us for the original shot because everytime Jude gets a buzz cut, he looks like a monkey (of whom Curious George just happens to be his favorite).

And here we have the Coneheads!

And here is a sneak peak into future blog posts: After shopping around James finally found a wig he likes (WHAT!) and we are officially moving into a permanent house this week. Hurray!

I have recently been reading the biography of Watchman Nee. This man was a Chinese Christian who taught and wrote many well recognized foundational Christian books. He had a huge influence among Chinese Christians during a very tumultuous time in Chinese history. Much more could be said about him, but it is his teaching that has hit me hard in the last few days.

He wrote that "Maturity is a matter of the enlargement of capacity. You must allow God to give you time to suffer beyond measure. Then your capacity will be enlarged. It takes hard times to mature a Christian. The fact is that you will never be the same after you pass through suffering. Either your capacity will be enlarged, you will become more hardened. For this reason, when you are experiencing hard times you must pay attention." He also wrote that if we try to avoid these times of suffering, it will only prolong the time that it takes for us to become mature in Christ.

I guess I can see how this could be that new perspective for me that I have been looking for, like I asked for at the end of the last posting. But what bothers me is that This perspective is largely based on suffering, and there something in me that is loath to call what I am going through "suffering". Discomfort, yes. But, if I am suffering, then I am doing so in a whole lot of comfort. I have people taking care of me who love me. Even when I can't eat, I still have food available. I lay my sick body in a soft bed. I feel that to call what I am going through "suffering" would be to do a serious discredit to those who have truly suffered. Not to mention, I don't want my "new" life perspective to be based on a martyr complex.

Second Attempt

We all remember the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand. There he was with his disciples and five thousand people were following him to listen to his preaching. They were hungry and had not eaten in days. The disciples suggested that Jesus send them home to find food, and Jesus in turn suggested that the disciples find food for them to eat. This of course was impossible, but a quick search revealed that one boy had brought a long a lunch of five little barley loaves and two small fish. Jesus blessed the food, and after he had blessed it, there was enough for everyone to eat with twelve baskets full of food left over.

In one of his last recorded sermons, Watchman Nee points this out. It didn't matter how much food Jesus started with. Even if he had had 100 loaves of bread and 200 fish (although it is far greater 5 loaves and 2 fish), it still would have been a miracle that the people were fed.

What matters is not how much they had to begin with, but the fact that Jesus' blessing was on it. I will poorly summarize Nee's words here for the sake of brevity. He says that blessing is the working of God where there is no explanation for it; where what we put in does not equal what is put out. If we think that his blessing is reliant on what we put in (our capacity), we limit God's abilities. However, when we realize that it is God's blessing that makes the outcome, we find out that the outcome is far beyond our capacity and even surpasses our wildest dreams.

I have zero capacity right now. I lay on a bed for half the day sleeping and vomiting. I'm exhausted and I struggle with depression (especially in the afternoon). My ears are inflamed and my eyes often feel like they have needles poking into them. I know God is with me, but I'm starting to feel very vulnerable right now.

But however small my capacity is, all I need is his blessing in order for what I do have to become a massive outpouring. So what do I have? I have his love. I have the assurance that Jesus has conquered death. I have a role. I have the assurance of Jesus' life inside of me and that as a child of God, I reflect his character and his nature to other people. I don't feel these things all the time. I would be lying if I said that I don't have days of serious doubts and depression. But feeling emotions is different than knowing truth. Even when I feel different emotions, I still know what the truth is. Unfortunately, feelings are much easier to pay attention to!

I suppose that I just contradicted myself. Suffering enlarges capacity... and yet capacity is nothing without God's blessing. So do I have my new perspective now? No, not by a long shot. Not any one of the things I read about or think about or that people tell me is going to offer me universal comfort. But I am being changed and transformed day by day. "For I am confident of this, that he who began a good work in you (me) will be faithful to perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus" (Philippians 1:6).

Don't worry. Lighterhearted posts are coming!

Needing a New Perspective

2010-08-24T07:49:00.008-05:00

I suspect that there are a great many people who feel as if I have been in denial about my situation, talking about how blessed I am, how I want to use this opportunity I have been given and so on and so forth. I for one, think that I have been very open and honest about my experience thus far. The hard part is to continue to be open when some of these less enjoyable emotions kick in (as they have). But, I said that my goal was to document my journey, and the negative emotions are also part of this parcel.

One of the most humbling things that I have to reconcile myself to these days is the fact that I have zero independence. I am at risk for having spontaneous seizures (especially during the six weeks of receiving radiation treatment since it causes swelling in the brain), and this makes me the equivalent of an adult who has the freedom of a child. I can not be left home alone. I can not take care of the boys by myself. My driver's license has been revoked. Any type of cooking or chopping should be with someone else. I can't even go to my own doctor's appointments by myself. If I want to go to the corner store to buy something, I need to pull someone along with me.

It feels a bit like I've been tied on a string and hung around the necks of those around me. Everyday, James, my parents and I must review the day. Who will be home with the boys when? Who will be with Jessica when she needs to rest? Not only has my independence been removed, but the ability of those around me to function is also greatly limited.

What makes it even harder to swallow is that so far, I'm doing fine! I'm told that it is in the last half of my six weeks that the more cumulative effects kick in and that at that time, I'll probably be a pretty unhappy camper. But for now, I have learned how to control my nausea and exhaustion, and other than not having hair, you'd never guess that I have a brain tumor. I have a lot of small side effects, but they are the kinds of things that I am accustomed to ignoring in myself. Headache? Take some Tylenol, ignore it and it'll go away.

I find myself pondering a lot of "what if?" scenarios. It all happened so suddenly. Other than two incidents of pre-seizure symptoms (referred to as auras) in the two weeks leading up to my seizure, there were no signs, no warnings. I was busing around Beijing by myself, having stimulating and interesting conversations with any old Chinese person who decided they wanted to talk to me, going to the market by myself to bargain for our daily vegetables and then go home and cook them (by myself), flying to other far away Chinese cities for the day to having meetings with people, and able to stay at home with the boys by myself for days at a time so that James could do his work travel. I was playing an important role as an MCC volunteer, helping people.

What if that seizure had just never happened? Obviously the brain tumor would still be there, but what if we just hadn't known about it for another long time? What if I hadn't been instantly put on a regimen of medications? Would I feel more sick? What I be seizing all the time? What if we just hadn't known until one day I collapsed and never woke up again? Do I think that would be better? I don't know.

There is this idea of "the future" that has become a bit of a sore spot for me. I have mentioned this before. Yesterday evening, I felt driven to go for a walk "by myself" (walking up and down the same stretch so that my family could still monitor me). As I walked, I realized that all of my life I have always used walking by myself as a time to dream. When I was in middle school, I started walking the dirt mile roads around my hometown. I would go for hours at a time and spend the whole time dreaming about my future. When James and I started dating, we would walk those same mile roads and dream about our future together. After Ari was born we found a park that followed the river in Winnipeg and we would walk him in his stroller along that path for hours... always dreaming about the future.

Dreaming about the future for me has never been about scorning the present. It has never been done out of wishing that things were different. Thinking about my future has always been a product of being excited about the life that I do have! I always felt that there was so much potential and enjoyed what I was doing at the time, so it seemed like the future could only hold more exciting things. What could those exciting things be?

Yesterday I had an encounter with Jude that I felt summarized the way that I feel now about the future. It was also very telling about how my three year old is handling these circumstances. Jude has always been a much more cuddly boy than Ari. Up until we left for China, he was extremely attached to me, and even as he has become more independent, he still really enjoys getting his hugs and cuddles from me. So far, his reaction to our overthrown lives has been to pull away from me. Now, finally, after almost two months of this, he is tentatively starting to approach me again (like when I put him to bed the other night).

Last night the dam broke. He was crying about something completely unrelated and I was sitting with him in his room holding him. Suddenly he started sobbing huge gulping sobs, grabbing at me desperately, stroking my facing, squeezing me tight and saying over and over again, "Mommy, I want you! I want you!" I felt my heart get ripped open and the two of us cried together. It was as though he felt like he just couldn't get a hold of me, even though I was right there.

Obviously the encounter was heartbreaking for its own reasons, but it also occurred to me that the way that Jude was trying desperately to get a grasp of me is not unlike the way that I feel about the future. Slippery. Shadowy. Right in front of me but having no form.

Lord Jesus, I need a new perspective!

Like a Sweet, Cooling Salve

2010-08-21T23:04:00.009-05:00

After the week that we've just had, the moment I just had was like sweet, cooling salve to a raw patch of skin.

With all the medicines, doctor's appointments, running around, errand running (never stops), radiation everyday, trying to figure out how to deceive my body into absorbing food and irregular yet crowded days, I have felt a shift take place in me this week. Detachment. I have the knowledge the something is building in me, but that I have no tools and no will to look at it. James has felt a shift too, but for him it has taken on the different form of irritation and frustration.

Detached wife... irritated and frustrated husband... great combo. As James has said, it feels there is a very limited ability for us to improve our situation, but there is a lot of potential for us to make it worse. Sort of just makes you feel like giving up.

Today at 8:00 am, James packed up the car, packed up a glowing Ari, and went camping. Many times in Beijing, instead of a bedtime story, James would talk up this Great Day to the boys. The day that they would go camping together. Of course we expected that when we returned Ari would be almost seven and Jude would be five, so Jude would be old enough. But with their ages being what they are, Jude stayed home with me and with my parents while Ari, puffed with pride, rode off with James (three hour drive) to the Canadian Shield.

I hope that their time together is a sweet salve of its own. For me, my moment came this evening when putting Jude to bed. After praying with him and turning the lights out, my Dad came into the room with his guitar to play a little for Jude while he fell asleep. This is serious nostalgia for me, as it is something that he used to do for my sisters and I while we were falling asleep as kids. I turned to leave the room, but Jude's little three year old voice stopped me. "Mommy, I want you to sing and lay with me in my bed."

Really? Truly? This non-stop energy ball that hardly has time to give me a hug during the day? This boy that instinctively draws away from his mother at this stage and gravitates to masculinity? I took him in my arms and he cuddled right up while my Dad and I sang together in harmonies for 45 minutes. Songs of trust, songs of hope. Old songs, where I could hardly believe that I even remembered the words they were so deep in there. With Jude's chubby arm stretched over me and his even breathing, and me singing in the darkness, I knew that I am blessed beyond words. I hope that Jude remembers falling asleep like that as clearly as I know I will.

Even with the detachment that I described setting in this week, there have been a few conclusions that I came to this week:

1) I am going to start taking piano lessons again. It has been ten years since the last time I formally had lessons and I quit somewhere in my Gr.9 piano. However, playing formal piano for preludes, offertories and congregational singing at the international church in Beijing challenged me to a new level and re-stimulated my interest in pursuing it further. I know that my area of weakness lies in my technical training and ability. But I figure that if my life is going to limited in some areas, I can expand it in others. If I have a lot of time at home, why not practice piano for 1 1/2 hours a day? The house we will be living in for the next year (as of September) has a good piano in it. I also see it as an opportunity. Even if I live until I am 80, I want the boys to remember me playing piano. Its a little pricey to take advanced lessons, but I figure that if I can teach three or four beginner classes a week, then maybe I can pay for one advanced lesson a week. Opportunities abound.

2) I want to put Ari into a little hockey league. We can get used equipment at his age so it shouldn't be too expensive. He has only become aware of hockey since returning to Canada, but he is pretty enthralled by it. Even if I live until I'm 80, I want him to remember me cheering him on sidelines. We have also chosen a school to enroll him in. It is a French Immersion. He already did the Chinese thing, so really, why not put him into a French school? Canada is bilingual after all. Might as well embrace the opportunity. Especially when the French school is so close to the house we are renting. We'll give our son the opportunity to turn into the consummate French-speaking, hockey-playing Canadian! If he decides later on that it is not for him, then so be it. Maybe having him learn French will help James and I remember all the French we learned in school. We can both read and understand French, but now after learning and speaking Chinese intensively for a year and a half we both find it extremely difficult to speak French. I say we, but in truth, I'm afraid that James is in better shape than I am!

3) I want to be like a solid oak tree that has been planted to display God's glory. How do I do this? By putting down solid roots in him. I am becoming more and more convinced through this whole thing, that in order to truly know and believe God and be confident in him, I need to zoom out a little and take in his WHOLE character. There are two ways that this has been illustrated in my mind, one that I heard and one that I have seen in our lives:

Illustration A:

If someone knew that I like to eat chocolate pie, it would be very kind of them to bake me a chocolate pie. It would be even nicer of them to make me two chocolate pies or even three chocolate pies. But if they continuously and only ever gave me chocolate pies

everyday after that, we can assume that I would fairly quickly become tired of eating chocolate pie. Just because I like it, doesn't mean that it is the only thing that I want to eat.

We do the same thing with God. Sometimes, we zoom in too close. We concentrate on ONE of his characteristics, or on ONE story from the Bible and we decide that that one characteristic or story summarizes who he is and how he works. Maybe its a little broader than that. Maybe we choose 15 or 30 stories and base it on that. But the truth is that the Bible is full of controversial stories about God that display controversial characteristics. This should not be surprising. We are told that man was made in the image of God, and what human do you know that does not have controversial characteristics? Better yet said, how many interesting human beings do you know who only eat chocolate pie? What else does God want to eat? What strange and new things might he want to do in my life... even if it involves a brain tumor? I want to look at his many characteristics and stories, even the ones that makes me say, "Huh?"

Illustration B:

As I have mentioned in previous posts, James and I have had numerous difficult conversations in the recent weeks since my seizure. Because we want to be honest and open with each other we have had to say some things to each other that are really HARD. It has struck me again and again that if I didn't truly know James' character and his heart and his personality, I would have misunderstood 90% of the things that he has said to me. This is mutually true for things that I have said to him. Those misunderstandings would lead to division between us and a lot of hurt. But this has not been the case. I know the way James thinks. I know the way that his thought processes work. When something comes out sounding awkward, I usually hear the eloquent version that he had in his head. I feel confidence and security in what he is saying because I understand it in the larger picture of who he is.

How much about God do I misunderstand because I do not look at HIM and at his character? How often do I hear hard things from him and get hurt because I couldn't understand what the heart and the intention was behind it? I want to have the same level confidence and security with God as I do in those hard conversations with James. Like a mighty oak that stands firm, with deep roots.

There she goes again spouting her opinionated opinions! She sure has a lot of them!

"Radiation On"

2010-08-18T08:26:00.005-05:00

Our lives have now taken on a bit more structure to them. At 7:00 my alarm goes off and I take my first dose of medicine: anti-nausea. At 7:30 it goes off again and I take my second medicine: Temozolamide, an oral form of chemotherapy. I lay and relax for an hour and then take three more meds: anti-seizure, anti-heartburn, anti-brain swelling. At this point I can officially eat. Monday this resulted in four hours of vomiting bile. At around 2:00 I managed to eat five crackers and felt drastically better. Nausea, and very small portions seems to be the name of the game so far.

At some point (usually in the afternoon) we go for my radiotherapy. James sits in the waiting room while I change into a hospital gown. I enter a futuristic looking room and lay down on a machine.

My hard, green mesh mask comes down over my body down to mid chest and is bolted to the table (it kind of reminds me of closing a guitar case). I can feel the pulse in my throat pushing

against the mask and the thing even presses against my eyeballs. My collarbone feels compressed.

This is of course so that they can radiate me with perfect precision. Yes, I can breath. If I position myself just so, I can also keep my eyes open in slits so that I can see a bit of the procedure.

The technicians hover over me, their shadowy hands adjusting,

bolting, making markings on my mask. Eventually, they tell me that they are now leaving the room, but don't worry, they are controlling every machine, they can see me the whole time and they can hear every noise I make. They leave the room and James

watches on the outside as a massive door about 1 ft thick slowly slides shut with me inside. A sign above the door illuminates, saying "Radiation On".

Inside the room, from my slit eyed, green meshed perspective, the machine starts to work its magic. Electronic arms, rotating disks and red lights move around me. They move toward and away from me, but they never touch me. They buzz, they beep. Red beams of light appear and disappear. I have to fight my basic human instinct to try and see what is coming at me from my peripheral vision. There is Spanish flamenco guitar music playing in the background.

Maybe like the Man in the Iron Mask, I am actually an illegitimate heir to the throne of England. Or maybe I am just starring in a SciFi movie.

Sheep Shearing Days

2010-08-16T21:55:00.023-05:00

This extremely undignified image of the sheep being sheared is pretty much how I feel about my appearance these days.

My physical appearance has already changed drastically in the last month. While I was in the Beijing hospital I lost a lot of weight

because I wasn't really eating and so I was smaller than normal when I returned. However, since then with being on certain meds, I have gained weight, my body has been holding water and I have broken out in my first ever case of acne.

Strangely enough, it isn't any one thing about my changing appearance that bothers me, but rather that it changes and fluctuates everyday. I don't recognize myself when I look in the mirror anymore and any secrets I had to improve "flaws" (both real or imagined) have been rendered useless.

Now with having started my radiation treatments I will also be losing my hair in 5-10 patches of varying size. I have (in good spirits) joked with James that he will soon have his own personal Gollum, stroking his arm and calling him My Precious.

Yesterday, in order to avert this tragic mental image, we took the bull by the horns (or if you prefer, me by my wool) and shaved the hair off into a very smart looking buzz cut. I'm not as cute as a freshly shorn sheep, but it'll do.

My dear sister Rachel, in a very unselfish, bold and supportive move also shaved off her entire long, beautiful, curly ponytail. This beautiful mane is being donated to Cancer Care. I wasn't sure if I should cry for the loss of two heads of hair, or for how unselfish it was on her part. Here she is below, ponytail half off. See how similar we look! The boys have not been done yet because our razor kept running out of battery power. Maybe today.

Family Video

2010-08-16T11:07:00.002-05:00

As promised so long ago, here we have the video that was taken of our family during our photo shoot in Beijing, two days before Jess' seizure. Please refer back to the blog entry from August 3 entitled A Full Full Life to get the whole story behind this video. It is a super fun video. We thought it would have us talking in Chinese, but they chose to overdub the whole thing in a really strange and kind of quirky song. Anyway, we thought they did a great job.

So click on this link to see some free advertising for BPhoto studio in Beijing (for all our foreign friends we left behind in Beijing)

Family Video

Krang Likes Doowop Girls

2010-08-15T22:46:00.006-05:00

Its true, its true. Last week, I could've sworn that I was in a sappy Steve Martin movie (something like Father of the Bride). You know how he is in those movies. Someone says something to him, and then he turns to the camera, tilts his eyebrows in that nostalgic way of his, and some old Doowop song fades in that fits with the line that was just said.

Last Tuesday, I came into the living room, sighed heavily, and sat on the couch. My mom turned to me and said, "Its been one of those days has it?". As soon as the words came out of her mouth, I heard the volume of four harmonizing doowop girls fade into my consciousness and these words. "Mama said there'd be days like this, there'd be days like this, my mama said! Mama said! Mama said!" (please listen to it at this link, it really enhances the story!).

I know that in the past I have talked about my ability to really get a song in my head. For example, last November on this blog I blasted B.I.N.G.O. for its very existence and the fact that Ari had learned it at his Chinese kindergarten. Ari still refers to it as "that song that you really hate Mommy".

Well, these four miniature doowop girls have been bopping and swinging around in my head at all hours of the day and night for the last five days. If I wake up at 3:00am, its a guarantee that I'll hear them again ("Mama said! Mama said!") and sometimes I'll even have unbidden mental images of them dancing around up there on a stage, singing their harsh harmonies, the heavy base line booming away. You'd think that I was at a live performance. Naturally, I have come to the conclusion that Krang likes dancing doowop girls and is paying them by the hour to sing and dance for him in their flashy dresses. Krang suddenly seems very hedonistic.

Suddenly I find myself looking to the start of my radiation and chemotherapy tomorrow as a possible method of atomizing these doowop girls and sending Krang spiraling downward into depression. Bring it on!

On Wives, Servants and Miserable Health

2010-08-13T20:18:00.007-05:00

On Wives

Today, I suddenly felt the inexplicable urge to apologize to James. I wasn't feeling sorry for myself and I wasn't trying to make him feel any responsibility to me that he doesn't already have or has taken on. But as the two of us have struggled with our confusing thoughts, conundrums, moral dilemmas, futures etc., I have found that I am viewing him as much as a fellow human being as I am my husband. This is a good thing.

If I view him only as my husband, the danger is to only see the vows that he made to me on our wedding day. Love and honor, sickness and health, til death do us part. Doesn't he owe me those things if he promised them to me?

But if I view him as a human being, I see someone with great passions, great talents, great dreams... no small future. I see him through the more compassionate eyes of someone who is watching another person's dreams get "tied down" (for lack of a better word). This is certainly not what I envisioned for my life, but it is equally not the future that I envisioned for James. In the last few weeks we've been given so many possibilities, statistics. According to medicine I could live anywhere from less than 1 year to up to 10 years. That is a lot of time of uncertainty, of opportunities possibly missed, of emotions that are constantly changing.

Today I really felt that as one human being to another I needed to express to James that I feel deep and sincere regret for him. I wanted to acknowledge that he is experiencing multiple layers of loss. I wanted to recognize it, not as a guilt tripping wife or an anchor hanging around his neck, but rather as an acknowledgment of his value. I did so, and in that one moment, it was amazing how the dynamic between the two of us changed. Both of us dropped the roles that we are "supposed" to play. He didn't try to fight it and say that he wasn't facing loss. I didn't cry and expect him to tell me how untrue it was. It just is. How can I show him how much I value his commitment to me, if I refuse to acknowledge just how huge that the price tag is?

And I do value his commitment. He is not hiding from me. Of course only a jerk would physically run away at a time like this and desert his wife, but many more people would just check out emotionally. James has not. What courage.

On Servants

Yesterday evening, my mom and I sat in an outdoor patio and talked together for good long time. As we spoke, I managed to express something that has not come out clearly until now.

It goes again with this path that we are on, and the distinct feeling that we need to follow it exactly where it takes us. Here it is.

I have an opportunity that can not be missed. I have the chance to walk a path that many people walk, the path of watching my physical body deteriorate and die. Through this I will be able understand and experience many things that I would never otherwise be able to understand or experience. However, lets just say that that at some point on this path, God in his perfect will decides to heal me.

Wonderful! I mean that with my whole heart! Just think of how amazing it would be to have that second shot at life! If he heals me, then someday I will be on the other side of this and I will have many years to contemplate all the things that happened, all the thought processes I had and all the things that I learned. But this is the clincher, if I find myself on that side, I want to be able to say that I made the most of this opportunity that I was given.

There is a famous parable Jesus told, where an employer gave three servants different amounts of money to be taken care of by them. To one servant he gave 5 units of money, to the second he gave 4 units of money and to the third he gave 1 unit. The first two immediately went and invested their money and both of them saw double returns on their investments. The third one took his money and hid it in the ground where it would be safe.

One day the employer asked the servants about the money. The first two gave him back double what they had been given and the employer was very pleased. His response was to trust them with even more. But when the third one gave him the same amount of money back, the employer was angry and called his servant lazy and afraid. "Why didn't you at least get a little interest on it from the bank?" And he took away even the little bit that the third servant had been given.

If I am healed and someday Jesus comes to me and says, "Jessica, what did you do with that experience that I gave you?", what do I want my response to be?

"Well, at least I endured it. I refused to think bad thoughts and I survived by shear willpower. I never stopped believing. By golly, I fought it and thanks to that fight, I am alive today!"

I don't want to just survive! What a waste! My life is worth more than survival, of that I am sure. Call me egotistical if you want to. I want to LIVE, even if my body dies. But if my body does live, I want to know that even while my body was dying, I truly was alive. I don't want to sound like I am demeaning any else's experience, if that is what their experience is. As I said before, I can only speak for what I want. Maybe for now, I know more about what I don't want and it comes out sounding really strongly opinionated.

On Miserable Health

Bold statements, I know. Premature? Possibly. Especially as I am heading into six weeks of very hellish sounding treatments. Today I was told that I will most likely lose hearing in my right ear (thanks to Krang's elaborate position in my brain). And that is only the tip of the iceberg. I have pages and pages of all the possible side effects that I might experience and every last one of them bites. Many are life threatening. Its very sobering reading, I can assure you. Probably the most sobering thing for me is that this will be the first time that I will physically FEEL like I am wasting away. Until now it has mostly been statistical facts and figures and strange medicine side effects.

But I also know that God will give me what I need when I need it. He has so far, and he will continue to do so. There are enough people out there who have gone through chemo and radio that I can only assume that God has special provisions for those who are undergoing it. I guess we'll just have to wait and see!

Out-of-Bounds

2010-08-12T13:13:00.005-05:00

Hey all.

We learned this week that Jessica will be starting chemotherapy on Monday, August 16 (instead of today). The reason for this is that they will also be starting chemotherapy, and want to kick them both off on the same day.

Of course, this will not be fun for anyone. So I'll infuse a bit of humour into the situation by sharing a photo that I took in China. This sign was posted in a restaurant above a door leading to the kitchen.

The Chinese says that "non-work people (employees) are forbidden from entering". Of course, the English translation is, well, typically nonsensical. Of course, if you're just trying to get away from the proselytizing horde out in the dining area, then you might need to break the rules and hide in the kitchen for a while.

Improvements to My Head

2010-08-11T13:35:00.007-05:00

I (James) was becoming increasingly dissatisfied with my supposed "Lumiere" picture a few posts ago. The only thing vaguely luminescent about that photo is my arms, which are glowing like burnished bronze.

So I've decided that I need to put up a new and improved photo--one that presents me in a more favourable light (ah, the Lumiere puns will never end).

The photo of me you now see is much more representative: a light-hearted guy with a lightbulb-shaped head.

Actually (and I know that one should never try to compliment oneself, especially not in public), I think I have a fairly uniformly shaped head. So far, no one has asked me, "So, when exactly did you get hit in the skull by a shovel?", or "Kid, you're a phrenologist's nightmare".

I've really noticed my eyebrows lately, as they have now become the "hairiest" part of my face. Did they always wriggle so? And my lips! Were they always so enormous? And was that brick wall behind me always so rugged? And was my shirt always so blue? Ah, so many questions in life...

An Invitation to Watch the Library at Alexandria Burn

2010-08-10T17:55:00.011-05:00

As "defeatist" as this title sounds, it is not meant to. It's a reflection of the growing process that James and I have needed to move through as time passes. Let me explain...

A few days ago, James said two things to me, both in reference to this new situation that we find ourselves in. The first one made me laugh long and hard and the other one made me cry:

1) "I feel like someone just took a crap in my lap and now I can either stand up and try to wipe it off (and get crap all over myself in the process), or I can just let it sit there and have a mound of crap sitting in my lap."

2) "I feel like I have been told that for the next undefined period of time, I have to watch the Great Library of Alexandria burn to the ground, knowing what treasures are hidden inside. I could read continuously my whole life and never turn all the pages, but now they are being reduced to ash."

In its day, the Great Library of Alexandria was the largest collection of writings from around the world by Alexander the Great (he didn't live to see it). Historians drool when they think about all the goodies that must have been hidden inside this treasure trove, but unfortunately it was burned to the ground sometime between 48 BC and and 642 AD. Some people would see James' comment as being very morbid and morose, but I take it as an odd compliment, and a very romantic one at that.

Regardless of whether or not I burn to the ground or whether God chooses to put an end to this burning, I am currently a building on fire.

I want to make it clear that I do not have any designs or preplanned intentions for this blog, except this: to track this journey that I am on. I do not want to make large, overblown faith-based statements that I do not actually feel. Neither do I want to be hugely cynical and negative. My emotions will change and they will change frequently. I want to track them honestly, because frankly, I have recently become aware of how many people there must be on this same path...

So many questions! What does a situation like this do for a marriage? What does it do for your future? What does it do for your children? I guess I am in the process of finding out.
But this process is mine and it is the journey that God has given me. I choose to share it because I believe that there is value in being open. What I do ask for a level of respect for the personal nature of the things that I share. Please, don't be embarrassed when you see me. Please don't feel that because I am being open on my blog, that you are somehow being a Peeping Tom. Truth be told, I don't see myself as having a huge message to share, but it has become apparent that for some reason, I have been handed a microphone. You are not under any obligations to listen to me or to agree with me, but please respect me.

James and I are eating bitter, and we are eating a lot of it. The last few days, all we have done is eat bitter. And what comes out when you eat bitter? A lot more bitter. We simply can not make it through one day without having at least two HEAVY discussions, where all of our inner slime comes pouring out and there is no off switch. We don't aim our slime at each other, thankfully, but it's like timer goes off and we each let it loose simultaneously. It's chaotic, there is no order, but the things we say to each other are generally of the same vain and we can relate to each other. It is a very strange twist on a marriage to have the primary mode of connection being the NEED to let loose the brimming vat of slime that has filled up over the previous few hours. It is very bitter. We have never related to each other in this way before. Thankfully, for all of our bitter conversations that we have had, we usually end up laughing, feeling lighter and relieved.

The simple truth is this: we have no idea what to do with ourselves! Within five weeks we have gone from a life of purpose, placement, independence, cultural stimulation, enjoying a family life in one permanant home... to a life where our home changes every few weeks, making doctor's appointments, waiting for those appointments, driving to those appointments, arranging a zillion small details, moving our stuff around, rarely seeing our own children, dealing with tedious tasks on a daily basis...

And always WAITING! Waiting for what? The building to burn? I ask you how, even with a heavy helping of God's grace, is a married couple to deal with our respective sides of this issue? I feel like a building on fire! The bitterest thoughts that I have had in the last while is this one: I can't see that I have a future! For some reason it is easier for me to bear this idea in and of myself, but the really unbearable thought for me is that I do not have a future to offer to my amazing and dedicated husband. We got married because we saw a beautiful future together, and I feel like I am watching my ability to give that to him burn into ash. I have been dreaming about my life for my entire life! I have been dreaming about my life with James since a few weeks after I met him! I have been dreaming about my boys' futures since before they were a twinkle in my eye! And in James' eye. ;)

Do I stop dreaming? James and I have discussed how far removed we sometimes feel from our own thoughts. Its as though we are standing in a parking lot, thinking. A thought like the one I just wrote comes up, "Do I stop dreaming?". Then I step out of my own body momentarily to say to myself, "Of course not, that would be losing faith." But then I step out of that second body into a third person and that person says, "But James still has a future, do you expect him not to think about what life changes he will go through if you die?" Fourth person, "No, I want him to be honest with me and I am glad that he is." Fifth person, "So what is he supposed to do with you in the meantime? How do you express these feelings to him without laying a huge burden on him of not knowing how to respond?" Sixth person, "Yes, what do you have to offer to your husband except pain and a burning shell?" Seventh person, "But I know that God has given us something unique and special through all of this, and I KNOW that he is not just telling us to watch my library burn."

And on it goes... James and I have started referring to these types of mental dialogues as getting together with our 35 closest friends, the ones who are always willing to pull their van into the parking lot of our minds and step out one by one to have a good debate. Before you know it, you are surrounded, exhausted and defeated! We have also compared it to us sitting around with these 35 closest friends, floating on driftwood and discussing again and again how exactly it was that your ship just went down. You don't really want to keep talking about it, but you're still floating on driftwood and it seems like not talking about the ship wreck is pretending that something serious did NOT just happen.

Today after our afternoon slime fest, James had to run some errands (surprise, surprise) and I was waiting in the car for him. I had the heaviest weight like a blanket resting on me and all I could do was trickle tears. I didn't want to sob or cry, I just wanted to detach myself. I am so glad that James and I talk about these things, but what on earth do you do with it afterwords? After all of that slime gushing everywhere, its all the eye can see.

I am starting to learn that after these sessions, I don't know how to pray for myself. After all, I spend all of my time in my mind. But then it occured to me that James probably feels the same way and he doesn't know how to pray for himself either. I need to pray for him, because there is only one person I know, who knows exactly what James needs and that is Jesus. Jesus knows what to do with slime, no matter how much of it there is and how much surface it covers and how it won't stop coming.

This evening we went for a walk. It was so open, it was so comfortable. We had no sense of underlying discomfort. We laughed, we joked. What a strange life. Was this afternoon worth it? Sometimes it's a little too raw to say. But Jesus has shown himself to be faithful again. Lets see what happens tomorrow...

Reflections: James, Town Picnics and Landslides

2010-08-07T09:40:00.009-05:00

James, our family forerunner, has gone ahead and bicked every bit of hair on his head (okay, he still has eyebrows and eyelashes). I think he is pretty handsome and he pulls is off well. The boys will also get shaved sometime in the next week, and I will follow suit. What is that famous saying? The family that goes cone-head together stays together? Okay, maybe that one isn't so solid and steadfast, but here is one that is a real gem: Husbands, tell your wives from the earliest days possible in your relationship that you think she should shave her head. Tell her frequently, even if she looks at you with a slight amount of irritation or even offense! Here we have one wife who is so happy for her weirdo husband harping on her about this since the day they started dating. Is it so hard for me to believe now that he may not care about my bald head? Not at all!

A husband of noble character who can find? He is worth far more than rubies. His wife has full confidence in him and lacks nothing of value. He brings her good, not harm, all the days of his life.

I realize that this was written about the Proverbial woman, but I think that it is equally as applicable for a good husband. Obviously this is not a test that someone designed for James (and I certainly do not view it that way), but if it were, he would be passing with flying colors. When we found out about Krang, one of the first things that James said to me was that in a strange way he was grateful for this opportunity to prove himself as a human being. The Chinese talk about life hardships as eating bitterness (chi ku), and now after six years of eating sweet fruits, we get to eat bitterness together... it is an honor.

From the beginning James has been very straightforward with me that he wants me to be straightforward with him. Let's feel what we feel. If there is something that you are thinking about, chances are it should be talked about. The result is that he has created for us a very intimate and beautiful place where we have safely talked about very "dangerous" (dare I say explosive and highly charged) things together. It has also highlighted how much we think alike. I can't even imagine how hard this would be on us if we were married to someone who refused to ever think about something that was not "positive", refused to talk about unpleasantries. What pressure we'd be under!

Additionally, he has provided for me a picture of how Jesus is to me as a lover. The book the Song of Solomon talks constantly about the Beloved and her Lover and how they meet each other in a private garden filled with exotic scents and smells that no one else has access to. Others can smell the garden and they can gossip about them, but they don't truly know what the two of them share together. I feel that I have gained this both in James and in Jesus.

I don't really sleep well these days. My nights are a maximum of six hours because inevitably I wake up in the middle of the night, thoughts alive. I am learning that at this point it is futile to try and sleep, so I have been getting up, journaling and reading my Bible until sometime after the sun rises. I have learned through these times that whatever I blog about on here and whatever I talk about with others, Jesus is jealous for my private thoughts and for my private time. Right now this is not something I have a choice about. There is so much happening right now and so much on my mind that to NOT get up drives me crazy. But whatever I lose from a few hours of sleep, I gain back in a growing confidence of his love for me. Like James and I, we have our own private garden, incredibly safe, where dangerous things happen.

This weekend in my hometown of Landmark, Manitoba they are celebrating a Friendship Festival (community activity weekend), and it has been a fun thing to get involved. This town is less than 2000 people (someone correct me if I am wrong). The boys have been so excited by it! This used to be the type of thing that I snubbed my nose at, being so small town and all that, but I suddenly realized that there are tons of Hollywood movies that focus on plots about small hick towns and their quirky ways. Why would my hometown be any less interesting to the wide variety of people reading this than Reese Whitherspoon in Sweet Home Alabama?

I took some videos of the boys enjoying themselves on the dance floor, screaming as candy was thrown to them from the parade and gaping at the daring dirt biker, but apparently they are not compatible to this computer. You are all missing out. Ari dancing on the dance floor to You Ain't Nothing but a Houndog is a sight to be seen! You would think that this kid has been watching dance movies or professional dance-offs or something like this, but for the life of me I can't figure out where he picked these things up! He turns his face real mean and contorts it into strangely appropriate and very rockstar like faces. He jumps wildly in Jimmy Hendrix like guitar moves. He even got down on the floor and pulled a few coffee-grinder like break dance moves. This kid does them all! When the music got slow he turned ballet on us! He did not get that from me! Jude was much more content to jump up and down, but he did so for an hour straight and his hair was dripping with sweat by the time he was done.

I want to post a link to a news story happening in China. This story has been ongoing since a few weeks before we even left. I have been struck again and again from our experiences in China just how often and how long lasting the Chinese people seem to be called upon to eat bitterness in their lives. There are so many earthquakes! There are so many landslides! Always there are sudden, pointless and terrible tragdies and that is only a portion of the greater, harder lives that so many of the people I have met lead. The Chinese people are so complex and dynamic and I never want to lose my appreciation for the way that they live their lives.

You can find the story here.

At our MCC orientation, we were taught that as overseas workers we were going to wittness unbalanced power relationships in our own lives that would unsettle us. We talked about it in great detail. How do we as workers accept this? How to do we deal with it? I never expected to see it played out like this, in such a personal way. While I was being medically evacuated from Beijing with doctors and ambulances, medicines and more than enough money, we were watching this very landslide story play out on the news. I was reading about it in my hospital room in Beijing. While we waited for our flight out of Beijing we saw it on the TV's. Perhaps the contrast of it at the time was mercifully spared by medication. Thousands of people wiped out in landslides while one powerful foreigner is evacuated for having a Krang. I have talked to so many Chinese people with stories like these landslides and as disconnected as I am/was, my heart breaks for them. They are not being pulled out.

If you were worried (or maybe relieved) that you may never read about China again on this blog, don't be. James and I have discussed, that while the emotions related to our sudden evacuation from China have been postponed by our more immediate concerns, they have been by no means supplanted. I mourn having left China, and it is all going to come out yet. I have so many letters to write, so many goodbyes that were never said, so many memories that have not been processed.

Its all coming... just wait for the deluge!

Heres a little humor to leave you with. Looking at the picture of James at the top I decided that he destinctly reminds me a certain well-known and well-loved cartoon character: Lumiere!

I, Robot

2010-08-05T11:11:00.011-05:00

Yesterday, I went for a fitting for my radiation mask.

Under this perfectly-formed, hard mask of green swampy-looking mesh, Krang will be attacked by radiation with up to seven beams from different angles. The fitting itself was an interesting experience. The mesh was placed in hot water so that it would mold perfectly to my form and then I was strapped down firmly to the bed with a headrest underneath. It felt very futuristic, and I am glad that the pictures look just as futuristic as it felt. Let me tell you, that thing is tight. The technologists let it slip that they are not professionally allowed to use the word "claustrophobia" around radiation patients.

This picture makes me think of a few things. One is that it makes me think that I have just been uncovered somewhere on a prehistoric dig, like Encino Man. Another is that I am about to go into a procedure, where I will inevitably come out looking like this: thanks irobot!

Or I might come out with only part of me altered:

This cat here on the right is the first cat to have a bionic paw transplants. This story hit the news shortly before we left Beijing. I'm hoping that the cost/benefit analysis of this operation was determined by the advances it would lend to science rather than by level of value placed on the cat!

Anyway, it looks like I will be starting six weeks of radiatheraphy, as of Thursday, August 12. We go in five days a week, and this may or may not be offset by chemotheraphy. This will be determined by the results of some genetic testing which a sample of Krang was sent away for.

Lightheartedness aside, there are a few things that I want to say on this blog. The more well known my situation has become, the more people have been responding to it. I have appreciated all the responses, but I can see how some of what I have said would lead to confusion about what my meaning is. I feel a certain weight about this blog. I feel a responsibility to maintain it and to be open, but at the same time I am aware that I open myself up to other's scrutiny and personal belief systems. I can not answer for the ways that others believe, I can only answer for my own personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

Having said those things, I hope to make a statement on here that will help some people understand me a little better if they are willing to do so. However, in order to do this I have to ask people to read what I am saying and not what they think that I am saying. More than a few people have presumed from the things that I am writing that I have somehow given up hope, given up my faith that God heals and even made a few other more outrageous assumptions.

Let me pose a question:

How does the Bible define faith? Hebrews 11:1,2 says that "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen, for by it, the men of old gained approval from God." Verse 6 says, "Without faith it is impossible to please him, for he who comes to God must believe that he IS and that he is a rewarder of those who seek him".

Is the point for me to have faith in my faith? No. Rather, HE is the assurance of my faith. On this dark path, I have received comfort beyond all my expectations and imagination. These are the things that I have heard all my life that God does.

Before now, I had faith that God provides these things. Now that I am going through this experience, I have the assurance of them. I used to understand that he is with us in dark times. Now I know it to be true. I believed that he is faithful and that he provides. Now I feel him beside me. I heard of a peace that passes all understanding, but now that peace is MINE.

This afternoon I laid down on my bed, feeling heavy, feeling weighty and inside my heart cried, "Father I can't bear this. My mental processes can't bear it. Be to me the counselor that you promised in the book of John."

Slowly but surely the helplessness lifted, and even though my body was still heavy from lack of sleep and exhaustion, and my mind was overstimulated, peace came.

My faith is in the character and the nature of God. He proves himself in so many different ways over and over and over again. My faith would have no footing if it was based on how strong my will is to live.

Do I have a strong will to live? Absolutely! Can I add even a minute to my life by worrying about it? No! Do people die? Absolutely! How can these things be reconciled? They are reconciled through a faith that God is a rewarder of those who seek him. If he puts me on a dark path, I want to seek him on the dark path and receive the rewards that can only be found in those places. Light never shines so bright as when it shines in a dark place.

This has already been my reward and I know that there is more to come. I know without a shadow of a doubt that I am not alone! Where he wants to take me on this journey of faith is up to him. What my reward is, will be for him to decide, but it will be more than I could ask for or imagine. It will be good. It will be full. HE WILL BE FAITHFUL to me, because it is in his nature to be so and he never changes.

A Full Full Life

2010-08-02T22:22:00.009-05:00

Jess here. As I the reactions of people who hear about my story are trickling back to me, I find it interesting to note a few things.

1) The people who are furthest away from me seem to have the hardest time with it. All they hear is: 26 year old mother of two boys aged 5 and 3, wife, missionary. These facts alone seem to highlight to many people the unfairness of life.

2) Everyone has to respond based on their own life experience and they have to fit this in to their own life perspectives somehow. Of course it seems unfair.

I myself have thought a bit about the unfairness of it. Will my boys remember me? Who knows? But the other night as James and I talked about this question, something occurred to me that had the ability to turn this upsetting thought into something that suddenly made me very happy.

This was the thought. What if I had never had them at all? I can't even imagine how sad and inconsolable I would be right now if I felt that I had never had the opportunity to do the things that I have done. What if I was 26, unmarried, had no children, no prospects... and found myself diagnosed with an WHO Grade 3 Anaplastic Oligodendrioglioma? I would feel as though I had never had the chance to live and to do the things that I had always wanted. I realize that there are people who would think that by saying that I am placing all my value in my husband and my children, but that would be a very shallow reaction. What it means is that I have been married for six wonderful years and that I have been so privileged to see myself and my husband reflected in the faces of our children. What a blessing! I am so proud of all three of them! Just look at how cute those boys are! Suddenly all the incredulism that I experienced (and imagined) when I found myself to be 21 years old, married for less than a year, working while James was in University and pregnant (yikes!) seems so worthwhile.

So this blog is dedicated to yet another blessing that we were given by God shortly just two days before I had my seizure. Sometime in June, I found a gift card that we had been given by Ari's kindergarten to have ~$100 of free family photos taken at a professional photo studio. It turned out that the expiry date had already passed, but I figured that we could pull our "poor illiterate foreigners" wild card and see if they were willing to accept it. It turns out that they were, even though we were three months passed the expiry date. It also turns out that they don't often get the chance to photograph foreigners and especially foreign children.

We set up a date (July 3) and were informed that we would be given costumes and themed clothing to wear for these photos. This type of photography is very popular in Beijing, especially for weddings. It is a mark of status to have a professional wedding album done with numerous different themed wedding pictures (Victorian, traditional Chinese, Renaissance etc.). Unfortunately, in our conversations with them, we somehow missed the fact that we would have one set of pictures taken in themed clothing and one set of pictures taken with our own clothing. So when July 3 turned out to be an extremely hot and muggy day and we had to ride the bus for an hour in extreme discomfort, walk through narrow hutongs (back alleys) without street addresses and bear James' extremely bad mood, we were not very selective about the clothing that we chose to wear for this photo shoot. In fact, for about an hour before leaving we debated whether or not we should even go and whether or not we were just going to end up with a bunch of goofy pictures. The boys chose their own clothes (hence Ari's Spider man tank top and Jude's street-rat clothing) and James and I paid little attention to our own apparel.

We showed up at the studio very cranky, soaked, sweat trickling down our backs into our "you know wheres", 35 minutes late and extremely unenthusiastic. The team of photographers announced almost immediately that we would begin with the "own clothing" pictures. James and I winced at the thought of just how silly we must seem showing up with these clothes for a formal family portrait. Jude's tank top was so loose that we had to keep adjusting it so that the loose part would hang in the back where you couldn't see it, and his grey shorts were undeniably stained... like I said earlier, street rat clothing. Thankfully, the ladies offered me a brush and I was able to straighten my hair.

The shoot turned out to be super fun and we had a blast. They also videotaped us the whole time, so it captures us dialoguing with them in Chinese (something I don't think we've had on this blog). I don't know if the video will be too big or not, but I will try to post it on here along with these pictures. When I think about the fact that we almost didn't go just because of a hot day and cranky moods, I am so thankful that we actually did go. Two days later I was in the hospital and our world was turned upside down. Thank God for his foresight and his blessings!

I had to be pinned tightly into this qipao (traditional Chinese dress) and wore shoes that were about four sizes too big for me. Nonetheless, it was a great time. These pictures were only a few of the pictures that were taken, but I think that they are a pretty great selection. We haven't actually seen these pictures in the flesh yet. This last Sunday night at about 11:00 pm our time, I was bemoaning to our Chinese friends on Skype that we left before we were able to get these pictures picked up. Well, low and behold, when we woke up the next morning, our Gmail inbox had been flooded with pictures of our pictures, which are now waiting with the rest of our possessions in Beijing to somehow make their way back to us. What wonderful friends!

Catch a good glimpse of those golden locks while you still can. Soon, and perhaps forever, I'll be a patchy scalp with red spots (all hidden under various soft caps of course, and perhaps a wig depending on how pricey they get). This may be the only time you'll hear me say that I have loved my hair for years. Actually, never mind, I do plan on devoted a whole blog entry to my hair (just a warning for all of you who think that is too vain). My plan is to buzz my head at the beginning of the treatments. I'd rather watch it all fall off in its entirety at one time than see it fall out miserable clump by miserable clump. Additionally, the skin is expected to become quite sensitive on my scalp and the thought of buzzing a sensitive scalp just sounds unpleasant. Trust me, you'll be hearing more about this.

I am officially taking votes on which photos people like the best. My personal favorite is the one at the top with us all in traditional Chinese dress. James, the pompous landlord lectures his sons, who joyfully accept all of his instructions (looking as cute as possible), while the doting wife and mother smiles on. I also love the individual ones of the boys. I also suspect that this is the same photo studio that came to Ari's school and took that strange Harry Potter picture of him that I posted this last Christmas. I am almost positive that those are the same glasses! Oh well, very studious looking!

For now, that is it. Farewell from the Freys!

The Island Clause

2010-07-30T22:49:00.009-05:00

James here. Anyone familiar with my hairline will know that it is becoming increasingly easy for my scalp to "breathe". Plenty of sunshine makes its way through the ever-thinning canopy of my once-thick locks.

Baldness is hereditary, and I received a bit of a double portion. My father sports the "Apostle Paul" look, with a wrap-around swath of hair clinging to the latter portions of his head. It suits him, especially with his silver beard streaked with black. The best word to describe his look is sagely.

My mother's side of the family has thin hair. I mean this both in the sense of folicles per square inch, and in the sense that the hairs themselves are narrow in diameter.

No surprise then, that I should have inherited a head of hair that seems to be self-winnowing. And I'm fine with this. It's not that I've resigned myself to going bald. It's more that I couldn't care less. If I end up looking like Daddy Warbucks, then it was meant to be.

There is one thing that would bug me a bit, though. As the hair at my temples recedes, the hair at the centre of my forehead shows no signs of following suit. I have visions of a future in which most of the hair has fallen from the top of my head, leaving that stubborn little patch at the front all by its lonesome. It would become an island of hair, floating on a sea of shiny skin.

With this vision in mind, I entered into a verbal contract with Jessica. I called it the "Island Clause". If I should ever show signs of "moving to the Island", then I have full permission to shave my head to the scalp. I might look like a wannabe biker, but at least I wouldn't look like a unicorn. Or worse yet, a bad clown.

Today, after waiting for more than a week, Jessica and I met with a group of doctors to discuss treatment options for her tumour. In a few weeks, she will begin a 6-week treatment of 30 sessions of radiation therapy. There is a list of unpleasant side effects caused by radiation therapy. I won't go into all of them here, but one of the more prominent ones is hairloss. After a week or two, the hair will begin to fall out wherever the rays enter her head. This will apparently occur at numerous points, and will mean that patches of hair will fall out. Worse yet, the doctors informed us that the hairloss may be permanent, and that if it does grow back, it may take up to 6 months to do so.

So it turns out that Jessica may be enacting the "Island Clause" long before I do. Or we may just shave our heads together! How cute. Two little Daddy Warbuckses, hanging around the mansion, counting their war bucks together. Being bald will never look so good.

What is it like to be Grieved?

2010-07-29T15:56:00.005-05:00

I will explain the title of this blog in a few moments, but before I do I feel that I need to explain something of the approach that James and I are taking these days. There is one Old Testament story in particular that I have not thought of in years that has taken a hold in my mind. It is found in Numbers 22, and it is the story of Balaam.

Balaam was a prophet of sorts that was called upon by the King of Moab to curse the Israelite people as they were taking over Israel under Joshua. However, Balaam knew that God would not let him curse the Israelites so he told the king's messangers that he would not do it. He tells them that "Even if the king were to give me a palace filled with silver and gold, I would be powerless to do anything against the will of the Lord my God." However, the king tried again and Balaam decided to go anyway, promising to God that he would only say what God told him to say, be it blessing or curse.

As they start out the next morning, Balaam experiences a lot of trouble with his donkey. The donkey sees an angel with a sword blocking his path and does everything he can to avoid the angel. He runs into a feild, he crushes Balaam's feet against the stone wall and eventually he just lays down on the road and refuses to move. Each time Balaam beats him. Eventually God lets the donkey talk to Balaam and the donkey says "What have I done that deserves you beating me?" Then God opens Balaam's eyes to see the angel and the angel says to Balaam, "Why have you beat your donkey these three times? I have come to block your way because you are stubbornly resisting me. Three times the donkey saw me and shied away, otherwise I would certianly have killed you by now and spared the donkey." The angel then tells him to finish his journey, but only to say what God would have him say.

When Balaam arrives and looks over the encampment of the Israelite people he blesses them. Not once, not twice, but three times.

James and I feel strongly that we are on a path that we can not escape from. It is a path that has been set out for us and there is a donkey under us that is being guided by an angel of the Lord from behind. We are not even using our own feet. I have no desire to try and guide this donkey, because if I do I'll just get my feet crushed against the walls lining this path.

I also feel strongly that there are two componants to this path we are on. One componant is that of faith, trust and hope. The second componant is that of death.

In the first componant there is a beautiful relationship with Jesus Christ where James and I both know that he is with us in personal and meaningful way. Do I feel attacked? No, because I feel so protected by him. Do I believe that he can heal me? Yes, and it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if he does. This is not a battle in my mind.

The second componant as I mentioned is one of death. I think a lot of people will cringe to hear me say this, as if I have given up or something like that. But lets face the facts. For as much as the Bible talks about fullness of life in Christ and his good plans for our future, there is also a heavy emphasis on death that we only seem to think is applicable only when we attend funerals. Even though we as Christians we talk about Christ having power over death, we still do not like to think about it very much. When someone is sick, we pray for healing. That is fine. It is also biblical.

However, if we think that the only answer to sickness and death is healing, then we turn the great potential for God's work into something that is very one dimensional. If God healed everyone who became sick, we would start to believe (with reason) that God is also afraid of death and that even HE thinks that death is to be avoided at all costs.

This is not true. After all, Jesus himself died. God became a human and then he submitted himself to a very humiliating death. He also overcame death. We are reminded again and again in the Bible that this earth is not our home, and that without our even being aware of it, we long for our true homeland. I remember many times in China where I thought about Canada with longing. If the process of my death could show to others the fullness of his life in mine, even in the face of death, what more could I ask for? What if the death of a Christian could seem beautiful? If there is beauty and hope that I can embrace, even in death, then I want to. The thought of struggling is so unappealing to me.

That being said, James and I are walking this road as one that will likely lead to death, and we are doing it willingly, because we feel that to close that door would be to refuse to let God show himself to us in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. I think that if I refused to walk this path, all the peace that we have had would fly out the door. Obviously we do not want it to end in death. We have cried together, sometimes daily, out of a deep feeling of painful loss. Everyday I cry at least once. Of course we have asked God for my life and for healing, because he KNOW he could do it. We walk the path believing that God could pull us off of this in a moment if he if it is his will. But I don't want to have a faith that is unable to look past the issue of healing. I want to have a faith that takes in as much of God's controversial character as I can. I want what he has for me, even if it is not healing. Just think of how much we stand to lose if we choose only to look at the physical healing side of God's character.

What is it like to be greived? This has by far come forward as one of the strangest experiences for me in the last few weeks. As the seriousness of my condition has come to our attention and the doctors start to use words like "life expectancy", I have begun to see in the people around me the beginning a process that I always assumed would happen after I died. They are starting to greive me. Maybe one of my sisters will look at me with tears in her eyes, look away and then mouth the words "I love you". Maybe James will hold my hand while he drives and look at me for long periods of time with a generically sad face. Even Ari and Jude have been cuddling with me far more than they used to, even though they don't really understand what is happening. My parents hover over me tenderly. There is tenderness and gentleness in every interaction, and emotion is never very far from the surface.

I feel two things about this. One is that I am honored to be a part of it. I am glad that instead of some type of freak accident, I have the chance to have important and open conversations with those I love over a period of time. I know it needs to happen and there is no way that I want them to hide this from me. But on the other hand it is very hard for me to watch, because as a human being that is still very much aware and alive, I am wittnessing the people I love begin a process that ends in letting me go.

I have cried a number of times over this thought, that eventually, if things follow what we are being told, my family will need to move on in thier lives. They will always remember me, yes. I am a unique individual, yes. Irreplacable, yes. But I am human, and eventually people's lives will move on without me. My boys. My husband. Today as I struggled over this, greived this, I prayed and asked God to show me something about this that would make it a little easier to bear.

This is what he reminded me of. The Bible is full of statements of precious we are to God and how we bear his annointing and how he lives in us, how nothing can separate us from his love. I am irreplaceable to the creator of the universe, my Father, my friend, my lover. Psalm 139 says that he knew me and created me in my mother's womb. This means that he has been intimate with all of my inner being since before I was born... before any other human came to know me I was irreplaceable to him. Even if my family, the dearest ones to me will eventually need to move past me, let go of me, live without me and even find others that will fill the role I would otherwise play, I am irreplaceable to God. Rather than feel any amount of betrayal about these things, I want to soak in his love for me. Right now I can not understand his love for me, but eventually I will. As Christians we often use these promises and this irreplaceable God role to have special meaning for the specific circumstances that we are in. That is fine. Of course we want to understand God in light of our situations. But suddenly I am realizing that this is the only thing I have, and even though the sting of being greived is still there, it is amazing for me to know that I am intimately known.

Life on a Horse Farm: The New Normal

2010-07-27T09:10:00.004-05:00

Lest it should seem that this blog has recently transformed itself into a venue for depressing and distressing news, I would like to actively work against this tendency by continuing to post for the purposes that we were originally using. In one sense I feel as though the blog has lost its interesting background in Beijing, but if we look realistically at it I suppose we would see that the stories being told in the past were fairly ordinary. What we have now is just a new normal.

For the last week and the next week, "normal" is living on an acreage on the Canadian prairies. My sister and her husband have extremely kindly vacated their home for us. They live as caretakers for an equine park. So what this means is that a hundred yards from the windows of the house we have this view.

There are several dozen horses being boarded on this farm. For miles in every direction we have nothing but tall, sweet, prairie grasses, horses running around and being exercised and solitude. Its pretty much perfect for the family that has been through our last few weeks. I can't describe how soothing it has been for me to fall asleep with the smells of sweet clover from the fields, the sounds of crickets and birds from my childhood and the cool breeze coming in the window. Last night James and I lay our bed and just listened to the sound of the house being buffeted by strong winds and rain. I have forgotten how ferocious the wind sounds as it whips around uninhibited in a good storm. It used to scare me, but last night I loved it.

This housing has been perfect for us. Close enough to people to have contact, but isolated enough that I don't need to interact with too many people.

Another strange feature is that we also have our old cat around again. This cat lived with us for almost four years before we left for China (my sister took him then) and it is amazing how strange it is to have the boys playing with him again. We are talking about the "world's most laid back" cat, who lets Jude truck him around by one rib (bent in hairpin shape).

There are other aspects to my new norm that I have a harder time getting used to. One is that I am almost constantly in a dazey dreamlike state. I can fall asleep at the drop of a hat and when I do, I dream strange jerky dreams where I am completely unaware. It is a bit unnerving and makes me feel very vulnerable when I wake up from one of these episodes. But I am learning how to read and calculate myself even in this new state.

Before I leave off, I have to state again (just in case I haven't said it recently enough) that James is God's greatest blessing to me and to our boys. What an amazing husband. For better or worse he is here, and I love him very, very much.

Craniotomy Part 2: How My Jesus Has Proved Himself to be my Fortress

2010-07-24T12:35:00.005-05:00

Before you read Part 2, I have to insist that you read part 1. However, because of the way this shows up on the blog you may be tempted to read part 2 before part 1. Don’t do it.

Psalm 48:3 says that God himself is in Jerusalem’s towers and that he reveals himself to be her defenders. Verse 4 and 5 say that the kings of the earth joined forces and advanced against the city, but when they saw it they were stunned, terrified and ran away. Verse 8 says that we had heard of the city’s glory, but now we have seen it for ourselves, the city that he will make safe forever.

In the last day I have seen this, I have witnessed it in my life, and I would be a blind man if I did not walk away from this deeply impressed by the beautiful weight of this blessing I have been given. My Jesus is my tower, my defender, my fortress and I will be safe there forever.

As James described the process that I went through to have this biopsy, I hope that you were cringing mightily. I’m not t trying to toot my own horn here, but there is something deeply psychological about feeling and hearing screws crunching around the bones in your skull at four different spots, followed quickly by about 20-25 long, thick syringes of freezing puncturing into the skull again and again, and the feeling of numbing juices pumping into your head. Call me a drama queen if you will, but I never want to experience that again. Once the frame had been mounted, adjusted and readjusted several times, it was like have metal inside my head. Every time the frame was touched the reverberations traveled deep inside my head, sending a jittering feeling down my spine and into my teeth. This is not to mention the operation itself for which I was partly awake (especially during key moments like sawing through my skull, pulling and prying).

In order for you to understand how this fits into my Mighty Fortress, I have to go back a year and a half in time. Exactly one week before we left for China, in February of 2009, I had a dream that puzzled and confused me to the core of my being and I have wondered about it ever since I had it. In this dream I was sitting in an empty room by myself on a single chair, holding a gun. I was thinking to myself very calmly about the pros and cons of killing myself. I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself. I wasn’t trying to get people to notice me. I was just thinking about it logically. I speak in total truth when I say that I have never in my life been suicidal, but for some reason in this dream, I decided that I was going to do it. I lifted the gun to my mouth and I pulled the trigger.

Instantly, my head became very heavy, like it was filled with lead and it was like there were pressure points on my skull, pushing in. I could not lift my head and it was filled with darkness and weight. I felt my life leave my body and I went into a very dark and a very small place. In that place in head, I heard myself say, “Jesus, do you have anything to say to me?” Instantly I heard a response. He said, “Jessica, you hold my life in your hands.”

But everything about that seemed wrong to me. After all, isn’t it God who holds OUR lives in HIS hands? I tried to correct him, but he spoke again and in that small dark place he said to me, “Jessica, you hold MY life in YOUR hands.” After that I woke up, and that dream has stayed with me ever since, making me wonder what it could possibly mean, or why I would have had that dream when I have never been suicidal. Besides, I have always been under the impression that people don’t usually feel themselves die in their dreams.
Yesterday after they pushed, pulled, injected, screwed and pressed things into my head, they shoved me into a tiny, dark little MRI machine, and suddenly I was back in my dream again. I was in a small dark, enclosed space, with metal in my head, pressure pushing in from the outside and an inability to lift my head. It was 100% exact sensation I had had in the dream after I shot myself. The intense pain, the pressure, the exact same sensations. And in that small, dark, very scary and painful MRI machine I could hear the exact same words spoken to me again, over and over again. “Jessica, you hold my life in your hands.”

I know that there are a lot of conclusions that people could draw from this. I know it sounds crazy. There could be theological discussions, healing discussions, suicide discussions… but I’m not that interested in those, because I know that I got exactly what I needed from it. I now know, that God saw this coming and he prepared me for it. I know he loves me so much that he would give the same physical sensations to let me know that he is was/is with me during a time of extreme physical duress and emotional pain time in my life. He was with me in the place telling me that the power of his life is in my hands. If I have the power of God’s presence, I do not need anything else… even my human life. I can let go of my life knowing that his life is far greater than mine and that what he chooses to do is what he will do. Praise his name, no matter what happens I am safe in his walls! I don’t say any of this with a feeling of helplessness or giving up. Rather, it is submission and it is peacefulness…

The preliminary medical news we have received from this biopsy is not good. With the worst level being a Grade 4, Crang looks to be either a 3 or a 4. It looks like we’ll be going to surgery within six weeks, with potential for serious loss of functions on my part after the surgery. After that, chemotherapy, radiation, gradual degradation…

But he spoke to me, and no one can ever take that away from me. He loves me and no one can ever take that away from me. He loves my children and my James and no one can ever take that away from me. What a blessing! What a gift!

Craniotomy Part 1: How Krang was Invaded and Diagnosed

2010-07-24T12:19:00.005-05:00

My tumor has been named, in a manner that I consider to be quite fitting, after Krang from the Ninja Turtles. I only became familiar with this character as an adult, since I never watched the show as a kid. I was struck by what a disgusting and repulsive cartoon character Krang truly is. He is a wrinkly, pink brain with two angry eyes, a twisted mouth, and two nasty tentacles branching out on either side. When he speaks, it sounds like sheet metal being torn in half. He is always plotting evil schemes to take over our world.
And so Krang is now the name of my tumor, as I can easily imagine it plotting and hissing away up in my head (an inside job of sorts).

A Description by James
On Thursday, Jessica went into Health Sciences Centre for a biopsy. We arrived at the hospital at 5:45 am, when even the worms know they have nothing to fear, because the early birds are still hitting the snooze button.

The procedure began when the surgeon mounted a metal frame on Jessica’s head. It was held in place by four metal pins, each one sharpened to a fine point. At each point, the doctor injected so much freezing that her scalp was bubbling up. As the doctor tightened the pins, the points pressed through her scalp until they connected solidly with her skull beneath.

Sufficed to say, this was neither pleasant for Jessica to endure or for me to watch. However, I was amazed at Jessica’s ability to remained composed, eyes closed, hands folded in her lap. Only once did she draw her breath in sharply, and when she finally spoke, it was just to let the doctor know that some of the freezing was trickling into her eye.

The whole purpose of this contraption being mounted on her skull was to provide the doctors with “frame” of reference (pardon the pun). Because the doctors must insert needles into the brain, they want to have as much accuracy as possible. The frame allows them to pinpoint the location of the insertion to within less than one millimeter.
Once the frame was successfully mounted, Jess went through another MRI scan. She was then wheeled off towards the surgery room, and I went to sit in the waiting room (a place I will become more acquainted with in the future, no doubt).
The surgery went well, and within a few hours, I joined Jess in the step-down room, where she recovered over the next 24 hours. She stayed the night in the hospital so that the hospital staff could monitor her vitals. She also had a EEG test done. This involved hooking up a fistful of wires to her scalp and monitoring the electrical activity in her brain.

The EEG is an interesting test to watch on the screen. It reminds me a bit of watching a seismograph or a polygraph test (neither of which I have actually seen in real life, but abundantly in movies…) Each region of the brain provides a squiggly line with means something to a trained specialist. To me, the untrained un-specialist, it was just interesting to watch all the lines go crazy whenever Jessica did something as simple as move her eyes or blink. This is because the electrical output of the brain spikes during any muscle movement.

The results of this test showed no abnormal signs, other than the obvious presence of a tumour. She was then permitted to go home, where we have been resting up.
And now, without further ado, here is Jessica’s version…

Back in my 老家 (Lao Jia)

2010-07-17T07:45:00.008-05:00

The title of this post is a very common Chinese phrase. It means that I am back in my "Old Home", the place where I was born and raised. When the Chinese use this phrase however, they often mean it in a sense of returning to your roots, and not necessarily the place where you feel you belong. That is not necessarily to say that I don't feel I belong here. Rather it is to say that it is so sudden and unexpected.

Two weeks ago I fully expected to not be leaving China any time soon. I certainly did not expect that when I left the house on Monday, July 5 to have some Uighur food with our newly arrived visitors on a really hot humid day that I would not be going back. I feel as though I have been evacuated with the clothes on my back. James would argue that most refugees don't have the privilege of dictating to their sister from their hospital bed via cellphone precisely which white ruffled shirt with the yoked collar she wants in her already-bulging suit case. (Believe it or not, my motives were not entirely vain. James kept telling me that we could buy second hand clothes back in Canada, but I knew that I wouldn't really want to buy a new onslaught of clothes when I am well aware of having more than enough clothes in China.)

Nevertheless, the whole packing thing was not ideal and I feel as though most of my life is sitting in a very dear and familiar place on the third floor of a Beijing apartment. I have had to buy jeans already since the weather is much colder in Manitoba than in Beijing. I have found myself wondering why anyone here is using air conditioning at all since I'm even wearing sweaters outside. Why use air conditioning when it is freezing half the year?

The contrast between the things that are obviously missing and the aspects of my lao jia that are dear and familiar makes for a heady combination. There is something missing from the air, but something new as well. Obviously there is no smog, which believe it or not can be somewhat endearing (is this girl unsatisfiable or what?) when mixed with the smell of coal and roasting lamb kabobs and spices. Instead, there is sweet, sweet prairie grass and open clean spaces.

Unfortunately, if I try to write down all of the things here that strike my poor brain with contrasts, I will make all of your poor brains hurt (sorry, I can't resist the urge to make brain jokes now), so I suppose those will have to come out slowly over time. For the time being we will move on to the more official status update of the "pet fungus" that I have been growing over the last while.

If I could, I would put an image of my MRI scan on here. It is interesting for more reasons than one. For one thing you can see my bone structure and profile really clearly and that is interesting. And then of course there is is the Milky Way type object that is located in the three way intersection between my occipital, temporal and parietal lobes. It looks very dense and white in the centre and then swoops artistically off into a myriad of designs and densities at varying points. If my body had to produce one of those, at least it looks kind of pretty. This is a very different "image" than the Chinese doctors were providing us with. Then it sounded like a roughly spherical, dense object, not unlike a UFO that had landed in my brain. The real thing looks very organic, very natural and frankly, very scary.

We have been told that among neurosurgeons there will probably not be any straight consensus on my case. We have had full confidence in the Chinese system. However, we are now in the process of making a transition of doctors and this obviously hard on my body and on my mental state. Ultimately, there are two overall options:

1) Surgery (Total Resection, or "The Option We're NOT Doing")

Some doctors, including the ones we were speaking with in Beijing, feel that total resection of this tumor is best. I would face the possibility of losing some of my faculties (possibly including total loss of vision in my left eye). Unfortunately, the presence of a brain tumor requires that the surgeons balance the pros and cons of every option. Moreover, as I already mentioned, this Milky Way object does not have clearly defined boundaries and essentially goes from being abnormal at the centre to more and more normal at the edges. Not exactly your standard cut-along-the-dotted-line procedure.

2) Medication and Monitoring (The Option We ARE Doing)

To stabilize me in Beijing, I was on a high regimen of medications for a variety of things. Depressants, two types of anti-epilepsy, sleeping meds, steroids, anti-nausea, etc. Now I am on a sort of withdrawal of these meds and being put onto new ones. I am getting better, but the last few days have definitely been ones of dizzyness, nausea and very little mental activity for me.

Anti-epileptic drugs will be part of the "new normal", and will help to prevent another seizure. This coming Thursday (July 22) I will have a biopsy done at Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg. This procedure involves mounting a temporary frame on my head, using screws which will make contact with the bone (ouch!). I'll be awake for this, which should be fun. They will use this frame to increase the accuracy of the biopsy.

A biopsy, for those who do not know (as I did not), is essentially a way for the doctors to take a sample of brain tissue without needing to make a large cut in the skull. They just drill a hole and insert a needle to withdraw a cluster of cells. They will take several samples from a number of places in my brain.

The doctors will then be able to analyze the tissue and provide us with a clearer understanding of what type of cells are involved (there are lots of cell types in the brain). They can also get a sense of how irregular the cells are, or how much they differ from normal brain cells. This is important, as it lets us know whether the tumor shows signs of being malignant.

There are many unresolved issues at the moment. I am already starting to see some of the effects of decreased abilities. I am not sturdy by myself, I have a hard time spelling and talking sometimes. This is also very scary, and makes me wonder if I will see myself degenerate sharply. This is something I associate with the elderly. James' grandmother was in her 80s when she died last year, following almost half a decade of Alzheimers. During this time, her biggest struggle was during the moments when she became aware of just how much she had degenerated.

The doctors will be able to follow the tumor by doing regular scans of my brain. If it shows any signs of growing, then we will need to reassess the situation at that time and reevaluate the list of pros and cons. This, I think, will be the name of the game for the foreseeable future.

But there is definitely hope. I am very grateful to everyone who has been an encouragement to me and to James. We are very blessed by your kind words and the affection that we've felt from all corners of the world. Thanks to you all.

For now, I'll end here. There may be a few random words between now and next Thursday, but I won't have too much meaningful medical news to report.

Love to you all.

Pictures Part I

2010-07-14T08:27:00.001-05:00

As I write, Ari and Jude are flying somewhere over Alaska, far out of the reach of thier mother's love. Thank God that he is with them and my heart can rest freely for that reason.

Here are some pictures to memorialize our time here in the Beijing medical scene over the past week and a half. This first picture is of myself and our Aiyi who came to bid me farewell at the hospital today. I was very touched by her emotion at saying goodbye to us and we spent a good hour or so talking with each other, just woman to woman. She is so wonderful!

The second picture is of Ari with a priceless expression on his face. I think its summed up pretty nicely in this photo.

Tomorrow, I will be bound in thigh high anti-coagulant socks, given shots of subcutaneous blood thinner, accompanied by oxygen, re-intravened with a saline lock, transported twice by ambulance and three times by wheelchair. Suddenly the apostal Paul's references to our perishable bodies have such a new meaning. I live in an earthly tent for a short while, but my spirit has a hard time fathoming all the fuss that is going into me. I guess that all there is to do is to be thankful.

Pictures Part II

2010-07-14T08:25:00.000-05:00

The first picture is our brother in law Carlos who was enthralled by the homemade bird kites that get made here in China. James, he, the boys and another friend were able to get away from the hospital for a little while yesterday to have some fun in the park. While I was bored and extremely unhappy at the hospital, I can honestly say that I was happy not to be constantly subjecting them to my misery.

Second picture, more fun in the park. I think that the boys are unmatchable in their enthusiasm for juice (not that they get it that often)

Thoughts from a hospital bed

2010-07-13T21:07:00.001-05:00

Still no journal and still lots ot thoughts so here I am again.

What bittersweetness has been the last few days. I don't think the human brain (especially mine apparenty!) was made to handle such contradicting thoughts. Only God can help me come to terms with all the things that can simultaneously coexist in my head right now. I don't want to speak like someone expecting to die, but when you are brought face to face with that possibility there are certain things that happen. I don't want to play on emotions or be dramatic, but suddenly I have this great desire to be an open person, not to be hiding things and not to leave things unsaid. This is not out of fear, but rather out of a great gushing from within me.

James and I have had much opportunity for conversations from my hospital bed and these talks have been so very meaningful for the both of us. One thing that James and has said over and over again, is that an event like this acts like a plough that comes and stirs up the soil of your life, and in that ploughing, you get to find out what has been there all this time, or the different things that have been growing (other than tumors!). In one sense, I feel like I have been given a great gift. How often have we heard people ponder the qeustion, "What would you do if you knew that you had X number of months/years to live?" Whatever the outcome of this whole thing is, I feel like I have really had the chance to ponder that question, and the seeds this plough has turned up have been very precious to me.

1) I am so proud of myself. I'm not trying to be vain, but I don't have any resonant feelings of having wasted any of my twenty six years. As cliche as it sounds I wouldn't change anything. I am so happy with James and I am a very proud mother. I am happy that I have gone to school and that I love nutrition and that I can speak Chinese. I am happy that I have loved James and the boys with all my heart without clinging desparately to them. I am so proud of the boys and I am so pround of James. They fill my heart with joy like nothing else. If anything happens to me I have no doubt that they'll have the best father in the world and I think I have the smartest, cutest boys on the planet.

2) I am so happy for my friends, family and friendships. I am happy for having loved people and been open with them, for hearing other people's stories and appreciating them for their own unique value.

3) I really love the Chinese people that I have come to know. There is a certain lack of fear that exists in them that we do not see in North Americans. I don't know how to explain it, but there is this expected inevitability that in your life you will eat bitter things, and when that happens, all you can do it eat it. None of my Chinese friends have shied away from the strength of emotion that I have even been scared of in myself. They hold my hands (literally), they have prayed and spoken words of encouragement.

4) I am so happy that I have been saved from a meaningless life apart from God. He fills my days with beauty, with purpose, with life.

5) While we are writing a list, I might as well as add that my Dad is also scheduled for an angiogram sometime in the next week and my Mom recently had an MRI. When it rains it pours!

It is awfully strange to have these sensations combined with a definite sense of limited mental ability. We don't really know if it is the medications or the tumor, but I have very limited concentration. Reading and concentration is difficult (such as looking at anything, thinking, walking), but I also have another day to kill until the doctor arrives to escort me back to Canada. I have to sit still when I am normally used to being very active, both mentally and physically. I could spend all my time watching movies, but right now that just seems like it would be a waste ot time. James is being quite a trooper. He is playing guitar for me for hours on end.

To sum it up, there is no way to sum up the way that I feel. I battle boredom and a feeling of uselessness of all things. I battle confusion and I feel intense gratefuleness at the same time. What are humans if not complex? I feel some anxiety for the boys, because I wonder what they will remember of this. They say children adapt quickly, but as we saw with coming to China, Ari took a little longer than we expected. At what point in thier childhood do we explain the Mommy had a brain tumor that could reappear? Who knows? Right now I am okay with not knowing.

This blog post is simultaneously scattered, dramatic, overdone and not enough... but none of these things on purpose. I look forward to seeing many of you soon!

Love Jessica

The Ravings of Jessica's Brain Tumor

2010-07-09T23:16:00.001-05:00

I will try to put into writing the events and the emotions of the past few days. Why on a blog, you may ask? It maybe seems a little to public a place to put private thoughts and emotions Well, there are a few reasons for this. One is that I can not use my hand to write in a journal due to the constant presence of a painful penetrating saline lock in my right hand. Typing is a little more endurable, but I fear that if my thoughts don't get out, my gloomy presence will darken the atmosphere of so many people who are trying to help me. Another reason is that I have had this idea of one day printing up this blog in a sort of book form for our family to look back on in years to come. It would seem a bit neglectful to overlook an event of such an earthshattering nature that occured during our time in China. Another is that this is the most effective way for me to respond to all the emails from people asking about my well being. So that being said, here are some categories of things going on in my mind.

1) Fear (of course)

Having a seizure turns out to be a very terrifying experience. I have dim recolections of reading Chinese characters at school, watching them change on the page in front of me, smelling an odd smell and feeling a strong sense of deja vue These pre-symptoms had also happened twice before, but when I laid down they went away. My mouth suddenly stopped working and I was trying to apologize to my teacher for my sudden intense confusion. I figured that if I went to drink some water I could maybe shake it off, but as I held the water in my hand, I found that I could not control it and it was splashing all over me. I remember calling for help, but I don't remember hitting the floor or going into convulsions. After that it was all a blur of hearing voices until we had been in the emergency room for a while. They took me for a CT scan pretty quickly, and upon hearing that I had a 4-5cm tumor, I started hyperventilating. James was very good about acknowledging all of the variety of thoughts that we had in our minds without dwelling too much on any one of them.

2) Confusion/Depression/Guilt

Of course I wondered if I would live to see my boys grow up, or if I would eventually fade into a dim memory in a few important people's minds. I have also been on anti-stimulant drugs to keep my brain from becoming overly stimulated. These have made me dozy, somewhat depressed and unfocussed. The guilt of course comes from the knowledge of just how many people's summer vacation I am personally ruining and how much money is being spent on me. I know it can't be helped, but it certainly is not anyone's idea of a good time to be running around at all hours of the day and night working out things for me.

3) Curiosity/Humor

I will be very bummed out after my surgery if they do not let me see this thing that has been growing in my head for who-knows-how-long. Being in nutrition, I have had to take a number of classes on the human body and its goings on. I would be fascinated to see the small portions of my own brain that they remove and the tumor as well. Also, if I suddenly require any type of "hair loss" inducing treatments, I will get to see what I look like bald. That ought to be interesting. James has been trying to convince me for years that I should shave my head. Another part of the humor comes from how everyone is referring to this as "Jessica's tumor". I think this is funny because it sounds like something that I have been carefully nuturing and hiding over the years, like a precious fungus or a strange monkey's paw. For the record, this does not offend me. After all, what else are you supposed to call it? Jessica's pet? It also reminds me of the story from the Bible of the Philistines returning the Ark of the Covenant to the Israelites and placing golden rats and golden tumors inside.

Another part of my curiosity is from wondering what my head will look like after this. Obviously, this tumor has misplaced something, so it is just going to be empty when they have taken it out? Will I have a steal plate in my head? Will I have a baby-like fontanel? "Hey guys, Jess is getting angry, her dent is turning red!"

4) Thoughts about the future

Suddenly it seems ironic that I was whining a bit about missing Canada, the clean air and al the open spaces. While I never really thought that I wanted to go home, this whole thing has made me certain that I am not ready to leave China yet. If we were leaving for good, my heart would be breaking right now. We have so many friends, we have gained so much training and ability. As the days pass, I am beginnging to view this whole thing as something that I will live through rather than an untimely end to my life. Of course we still don't know for certain what the nature of this whole thing is and my mood changes several times per day, but everyday seems a little more positive (except for my restlessness at being cooped up in the hospital). I am dizzy and easily exhausted, I do need people to help me do everything, I have limited interest in outside stimuli, my appetite is at an all time low. Most of the time I sit in a dull emotionless world and wonder "Is this really my life, my story? It seems too dramatic, so sudden! How will it end?"

5)Thankful

Thank the dear Lord this happened exactly when it did. Three days before the seizure I was in Chengdu (2 1/2 hour flight away from Beijing) by myself for the day and it would have been terrible if I had been on some street somewhere in Chengdu where no one knew me and it had happened then. Or what if it had happened when James was traveling and I was at home with the boys? They would have been terrified! God was watching out for all of us! My sister, Tannis was with me and able to respond very quickly. My brother-in-law, Carlos, was able to stay with the boys while James brought me to the hospital. The boys have been in good hands with them, they have been kept in a reasonable schedule and have had just enough questions answered not to be too worried about me.

My God loves me so much, and he loves my children, and he loves my husband and family. I have even heard from people from whom I thought I'd been estranged,, and this has perhaps been the greatest blessing of all. If good can come from this, let it come. For the trials we face, I want to gain the most from it. For the blessings that we gain, I do not want to be blind to them.

Thank you Lord Jesus for your faithfulness and for your love! Amen.

News you don't expect to read on our blog

2010-07-06T19:11:00.001-05:00

This is James writing for Jessica. Monday was a strange day. At about 4:30 in the afternoon, Jessica had a seizure. She was experiencing blurred vision, a strange smell and a strong sense of deja vue. She went to get some water to drink but she fell and hit the floor hard, and was convulsing for about 20 seconds. At that time, she was attending language class. Tannis and Carlos (Jess' sister and her husband), had just arrived on Sunday so thankfully, Tannis was with her. Carlos was at home with me and the boys, so I was able to go straight to get Jess, who was unable to walk. We arrived at the hospital, by which time Jessica had recovered a bit of her mental clarity, but was still unable to move much and was very confused.

Over the last two days we have gone through CT scans and an MRI, both of which reveal the presence of a brain tumor about 4-5 cm in diameter. It is located in the right side, occipital temporal area.

We are all doing well. Carlos and Tannis have been a huge blessing, and we are convinced that it was definitely God's timing to bring them to Beijing now. Jessica is a little bit scared, but is also smiling. I'm very proud of her. Our Chinese friends have also been a big help to us, especially since Tannis and Carlos do not speak Chinese and don't know how to get around or buy food for the boys without their help.

After a long day yesterday we received some very good news. After Jessica's MRI, we were visited by the neurosurgeon. He said that the tumor does not appear to be malignant. It is located in a very accessible region of the brain, not close to regions that may cause unwanted side affects. (However, it may mess with eyesight and speech, so this is something to pray about.)

Additionally, he said that there appears to be some calcification of the tumor, which implies that the tumor is old (as the protein exits the tumor, proportionately more calcium remains). This is good, because it indicates that the tumor has been slow growing. If fact, he mentioned that some individuals may even be born with brain cells that gradually grow throughout life, and that the tumor may have been around for years.

The interesting side is that the presence of the tumor explains a number strange things affecting Jessica of late, including vision problems, spells of dizziness and confusion, strange smells, strong deja vue and dull headaches. All these things can be explained by the increased pressure in her cranial membranes.

The immediate steps to be taken include putting her on a medication that reduces edema (gathering of water in the brain) and also a type of anti-epilepsy medication. They could operate as soon as a day or two from now, but this point we need to make some decisions about where to have the surgery done. After the surgery, there is a chance that she may recover within five days!

I don't know what else there is to write! Praise God for his provision through all this. We've been really blessed by our friends and family!

James

Smorgasborg

2010-07-01T09:17:00.002-05:00

This blog posting unfortunately has no theme. It is a mix and match. However, I have been planning for some time now to do a feature (or maybe two) on Chinese fashion. I was actually scolded last week for taking pictures of the clothing in a department store. That should appear on hear somewhere in the near future.

A few nights ago, Ari drew that picture that you see here. James and I were quite surprised by it. Its not as though he has spent hours staring at pictures of ships and water, but somehow, he used a really unique persective to capture this scene. He did this entirely by himself with no help from us. There are even tropical-like fish swimming in the water. He was very pleased to hear that I would put it up on the blog for the whole world to see.

James took the other picture of Ari one night when he woke him up to go to the bathroom. He is totally asleep in this picture, but it seems that before he fell asleep that night, he took the time to tie a pair of socks around his feet. True child logic for you.

Last night we were invited to go out for Karoke with our Chinese teachers and some friends who are leaving Beijing. This is a truely favorite pastime in China. Everyone sings karoke (they call it KTV) and they take it very seriously. Sometimes when there were a few too many selections of extremely slow and sentimental Chinese songs, it was a little boring, but we spruced it up for ourselves with our own selections. James and I sang a dramatic duet of "A Whole New World" , "Sweet Home Alabama" and some Beatles songs. Our friends selected "Hey Jude" and felt that I was the most logical person to sing that song. Jude danced at the front of the room for the whole song.

Recently we have had a number of expat friends leave for their home countries, and it is a bit strange to see them leave. This is especially in light of the fact that we have another 20 months before we will see our Home and Native Land. I admit that it has made me a little on the homesick side, and it doesn't help that we have had smuggy weather for a week straight. Tomorrow I fly to Chengdu for the day, but it is usually just as bad there as far as air quality goes. Last week, James was in South Korea and I wanted to cry when I saw all of his pictures of clean air and open spaces. Oh to be surrounded by feilds again!

On the bright side we are not entirely without reminders of home! In fact, as I write my sister Tannis and her husband Carlos are driving to Vancouver where they will depart for Beijing this Saturday. Hurray! It seems a little hard to believe.

We are truly excited to have them come as this is our first family visit. It couldn't come at a better time! We've been fighting a bit of the blues lately and welcome the chance to be with some family again and show them our world. They have strict instructions to buy several Kgs of Tim Horton's coffee, some fresh Honey Glazed Donuts and fresh Fruit Explosion muffins from the Tim Hortons at the Vancouver airport before they leave. Granted that 12 hours on the plane will make them a little less fresh, but who cares about that! Yikes, does that ever sound like it is from a Tim Hortons comercial! For the record, I did work for them while I was in high school, so maybe I owe them this free advertising.

Along with them, we also eagerly await the arrival of James' guitar, maple syrup, vanilla, Canadian Smarties, rhubarb (if it doesn't get confiscated!), Canadian gifts for our friends, books, and much more. We anticipate many happy evenings of playing Settlers and eating popcorn, a visit to a water park, sightseeing (of course), and just some good and fun conversations. We have a lot to do and I think that the time will go by very fast.

In closing, I must shamefacedly admit that I completely forgot that today is Canada Day. As trivial as it sounds, I actually do feel a little cheated that I have been deprived of my annual shot of patriotism. Canada grows quite dear to my heart these days and right now it seems very far away.

Chinese perceptions of Canada are very interesting. The other day a total stranger said to me, "You Canadians don't lock your doors when you leave the house." I was quick to correct her. "Actually we do. Of course we do!." The response was instant, "No you don't, because there are so few people in Canada, and you don't have bad people." At times like this, I wish I could climb into their heads and see exactly what they imagine when they think about Canada. I also thought it was interesting during this conversation that the lady felt so free to tell me exactly what state I leave my doors in when I leave the house.

Enough for now! Be expecting a fashion blog sometime in the near future. What I really wish I could do is post the Chinese fashion shows that are always played on the bus. Now those are interesting! The most recent ones have had muscular men dipped in silver paint to look like Greek statues. Very very dramatic!

Smuggy Dayz

2010-06-22T05:02:00.000-05:00

Muggy + Smoggy = Smuggy

How can I describe summer days in Beijing? Smuggy. How can I describe the way that smuggy weather makes you feel? Smuggy. I pulled the above picture off the web, but it's a pretty good depiction of a bad day in Beijing.

Smog is something that we have become more or less accustomed to. If I can see the building next to our apartment I often won't even notice that it is smoggy out (they call it "fog" here, there is no word for smog). I had a friend say to me recently, "I heard that in Canada it doesn't get foggy like this." I confirmed the rumor. Then she asked me to look out the window and asked if I would consider that day's weather to be foggy. The fact that I even had to consider it when the edges of all the buildings were unclear, shows how normal this has become.

However, summer time takes it to a new level. In winter, it is often very dry and there may be a wind blowing. Wind is the key to relieving smog. It simply blows the smog away to another place and voila, you have semi blue skies. Rain sometimes works, but it is less reliable than wind. By contrast to winter, summer time is humid and all of the moisture in the air can trap the smog over the city for days on end.

We are all familiar with muggy days where it is grey outside but very humid and very hot. However it becomes far worse when you feel like the sky ends just above your head and then closes thickly and motionlessly around your sweaty body in 35C weather. It has the capacity to make you feel really, really gross and affect your mood. Last week was one where every day was smuggy and where the whole family was moody and headachy. It wasn't really an option to go outside because of the air, but the boys had their usual amount of energy. Today was moderately bad, but then the wind came! Hurray!

The sad truth is that if you are going to live in Beijing, this is the price that must be paid. I comfort myself with the thought that some people have lived with it for their entire lives while I must only withstand a mere three years. If I want to enjoy my time here then I can't spend hours feeling bothered by this. Nonetheless... there are just some really bad days (daze).

I think that my reunion with fresh air will be a truly amazing experience!

The Tragic Life of Seafood

2010-06-17T09:47:00.002-05:00

This fish right here is a very classic example of the tragic life of seafood here in China. Technically, I shouldn't refer to this particular fellow as "food", but regardless of that fact, food or un-food sea creatures alike all seem to meet the same horrible fate here. For your size reference, this fish is a good 15 inches long and quite fat.

As James and I peacefully ate our lunch at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant the other day, we were startled by the sound of a wild thrashing and clattering. We looked over to see this fish in the midst of his death throws on the floor of the restaurant. He had just thrown himself out of his tiny aquarium (a shared home with nine others just like him), and knocked himself in the head on the table next to the aquarium. As he thrashed about on the floor, he traveled further away from the aquarium. James and I watched him twitch for a few seconds before informing the waitress of what had just happened. She calmly walked over to the fish, picked him up with her bare serving hand, plopped him back in the tank and went back to her serving duties.

James and I watched him skeptically as he floated belly up above his unenthusiastic friends who were lining the bottom of the tank. He failed to revive and his body eventually sunk lower and lower in the tank until he rested ontop of the other still-living fish. The other fish and the waitress were equally oblivious to the situation and I had to wonder how it would take before he was discovered.

This actually happens fairly frequently here. I have wittnessed this same thing on a number of occasions. Once I was at the grocery store when a fish that was for sale threw himself so far out of his tank that he landed in the middle of the aisle of people (can you imagine how gross it would have been to be unexpectedly hit by a flapping, wet, dirty fish when you are innocently doing you are doing your grocery shopping?). All of the customers, including myself, stopped and formed a circle around the fish, watching with mild interest as he flailed wildly. Eventually he stopped and we all went on our ways. However, I was curious to see how long it would take for a worker to pick the fish up off the floor, so I hung around the area for a while. It took at least five minutes for someone to come and get him.

You also often see turtles for sale in shallow buckets on the floor at the market. They range in size from silver dollar size to frizbee size. They are stacked two or three high in these low buckets and inevitably there are escapees that emerge at about ten minute intervals. It is very interesting to watch them. You could employ someone full time just making sure that the turtles don't get away (or just buy a bigger bucket). But since they don't have someone doing that, the turtles meet other alternative ends. For example they often die in the sludge troughs that form in the cracks in the concrete, or you might discover you were about to step on a comletely dried and desicated turtle somewhere (this happened to me the other day). I always feel sorry for these poor turtles. They probably think that they are making a daring escape back to the beach where they were born only to end up in Chinese foot traffic!

However, I'm not sure if I feel worse for these sea creatures, or for the ones that get sold into golf ball sized key chains! It is fashionable for girls (especially between 15 and 25) to have a gold fish or a live turtle in a ball that hangs on your keys or off your cellphone. I can't imagine they last very long, especially when you consider what it would be like to be bound to a set of keys. The clanking that would echo in the water as the keys get shoved in the dark purse. The volume, the vibrations and the lights of the cellphone. The swinging and dangling. And that is all not to mention the non-oxygenated environment. Did they invent anaerobic fish? The more I think about it, the more I hope that they die very quickly.

On a new topic, my friend here in Beijing took me glasses shopping. What a new and different experience it was! My experience of glasses shopping has always been extremely frustrating and irritating. Firstly, buying glasses when you can't see yourself in them and don't have contacts is a guarentee for a bad purchase. Secondly, they are very expensive. Third, you need to have the doctor check your eyes which means waiting for an appointment. Well, all three of these problems were non existant here. Beijing has me sold on its eyewear! We went to a massive warehouse that was filled with only glasses outlets. Dozens and dozens of competitors.

The first pair I saw were the ones I bought. To some people this is foolhardy, but when you hate shopping all day as much as I do it's a bonus. They examined my eyes right then and there. As for price, my friend only had to hint at us leaving after the first quote before they gave me it to me for a third of the price they origanlly asked. She also bargarined pretty hard. To summarize, I got a decent pair of prescription sunglasses (savings splurge) for around $35 including the lenses. You would pay at least ten times that amount in Canada. All of my memories of glasses shopping in Canada fizzled away into nothing. That being said, I will not be surprised if they break. However, I do consider myself to be a seasoned glasses wearer (17 years), and so I do have some idea of quality. Going with friends who can bargain is a great idea. The above is a picture of the two of us on the subway. We have a lot of fun together!

This is just a cute picture of the boys in the bath. You can see that Jude's head wound has progressed to red scar (which looks better or worse depending on whether he is crying or not!)

Excuses, Birthdays and Festivals

2010-06-13T05:39:00.003-05:00

So I know it has been a while since posting, but I have been battling a number of blogging problems. They may not seem like problems, but here they are!

1) We finally have a proxy which allows me to blog on blogger instead of emailing the website. I was so excited about finally being able to make the blog look nice that I haven't wanted to blog until I have time to add all kinds of pictures and do some nice formatting. Well, my sad discovery as I have kept putting it off is that I have actually just become lazy! Why do fancy formatting when you can blame your bad formatting on having to email? Well, now I have no excuse!

2) I was also waiting until I had some more interesting pictures to put up here. But alas, my easiest form of taking pictures (my cellphone) died in a cup of water in the somewhat recent past. You may suspect (and rightly so) that there is a story behind this cellphone/cup of water combo. But having had to explain the situation to James and live through his endless clever jokes, I will keep the details minimal. Husbands can be quite ruthless when it comes to their wives and electronics. I will only say that at least my story is not as embarassing as my friend's (who dropped her cellphone in a Chinese public squat toilet! Imagine explaining that to a husband!). My new phone is much cheaper (James being reluctant to spend much on a "doomed" phone) and does not have picture capabilites. Suffice it to say that it is much harder to lug around a sizeable camera AND still take discrete photos.

3) Its been a very busy two weeks

4) I sometimes wonder if our news or my strange thoughts are all that interesting!

Now that I have written out my excuses, here is our lineup of newsworthy news.

Ari celebrated his fifth birthday last Tuesday, June 8. We roasted chicken wings, boiled jiaozi, layered a blackforest cake and invited his two newest heros for supper, his Australian and New Zealand English teachers. Unfortunately James only took a video and no pictures. Ari recieved a number of gifts. One of the more notable was our Chinese neighbors who randomly called us and asked what Ari's shoe size was, then showed up half an hour later with a new pair of expensive silver-bullet looking shoes for him. We were appreciative of course, but I knew that if I didn't quickly repay them back someway, we might be looking at offending them. So, the next day I promptly went to buy their daughter a Disney Princess toy camera. Waste no time!

Aiyi bought him a train that drives by itself and has sensors to know when to turn to avoid hitting something. The thing is about 1.5 feet long and maybe six inches tall and four inches wide. Such toys she buys! However, I suspect that it was less costly then Jude's car.

Recently the boys have experieced a bit of success at hiding toys under their pillows when they go to bed so that they can play with them "unbeknownst" to us. I don't always think to check their pillows before putting them to bed. Well, the other night as I put Jude in his bed, I paused to wonder why his pillow was sitting at a 45 degree angle. I moved the pillow and sure enough, there was the massive train and Jude with a very cute and mischeivious smile. I think he knew it was probably a lost cause when he hid it since he didn't even protest when I took it away, but even that small slice of hope must have been enough to inspire it. He must be a "glass half full" kind of guy!

This Wednesday is a national holiday for the Dragon Boat Festival. Last week, I started hearing mutterings about having Monday through Wednesday off at Ari's school. It seemed to me that the school would have officially notified us for such a long holiday. However since they have been known to post small square notices in Chinese characters on the huge gate and not provide a translation for us illiterate folk, I decided to ask his teacher.

So this is how it goes. Because Wedesday is a holiday, the school decided to have regular schooldays on the Saturday and Sunday beforehand so that they can instead take Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday off. So essentially the kids work for seven days straight just so that they can have three days off straight. If we have a Wednesday holiday in Canada, everyone thinks its great because you only have to work two 2-day stints and then it is the weekend again. It seems a little presumptuous to me to assume that everyone in the country wants to have school (or go to work for that matter) on the weekend when this is normally not the case. Oh well, if that is how they do it, then they can go ahead. In our case it just means that Ari gets a 5-day holiday! James and I were not about to give up our weekend relaxation after a busy week just to cart Ari around when his school decides to hold class on the weekend. Have fun guys!

Another piece of news. Ari taught himself to whistle... I wish I were as excited about it as he is. It is our new constant companion! At least he hasn't started whistling BINGO... yet.

That is all for now!

Community is a beautiful word

2010-05-30T21:17:00.001-05:00

This week has been an interesting one. James is gone for a total of ten days (three more to go) under somewhat exceptional circumstances. It was stressful for me as we were preparing for him to go and certainly also in the first few days. But something beautiful has happened amidst the strain... Community.

I have been reflecting back to over a year ago when it was the first time James had to travel for an extended period of time, leaving me alone with the boys. On this very blog, I counted down the days. That time was extremely stressful and extremely lonely for me. We had only been in China for a month and a half and we only knew one other family (our MCC co-volunteers). They helped me a great deal and as much as they were able. But it is hard to fill the gap of being alone in the dark house after the boys go to bed at 8:00 for days on end. Additionally, back then I was extremely reluctant to admit that I was having a hard time. I figured that it was better to deal with it alone, than to have people feel sorry for me, thereby making me feel even worse. I know without a doubt that God helped me through that time and I grew because of it, but there was a definite emptiness that can only be filled by community (not just a few people).

So much has changed in the time since then. Even though these are the most stressful circumstances that James has been gone under, I feel surrounded by people who care about me. Part of it is because we know a lot more people, but another part is that I have chosen to open up about my struggle. Pretending to be strong sucks. Surprisingly, I have found that opening up about my struggle has released mounds of pressure and has, in itself, strengthened me. I have let go of the struggle and joy has come in its place. My Chinese friends have helped me and supported me. My expat friends have been spending a lot of time around our house, playing with the boys or having a meal with us. I have a friend, Sarah, who is living with me and we have spent late nights just chatting with each other (or watching Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman!). My family has written to encourage me. My MCC co-volunteer has listened to me break down at the office. It has been a humbling experience for me to receive all these different forms of help, but I feel that they are absolutely God sent.

God is certainly the one who maintains me in this time. I'm learning that instead of just trying to draw strength from him, I can tell him about exactly what is bothering me, and strength comes from that. If he continues to be with me right now, then I do not have to worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow will eventually become now. Another good thing is that James was able to call me four days ago, when he normally does not have access to phones. He is also is discovering the benefits of community, having randomly found a group of Canadians to spend his evenings with.

Even though I do not savor this situation, I feel very blessed and I feel very provided for. On Saturday night I had a girl party. We made cinnamon buns and painted our toenails and spent the whole evening laughing. I haven't had so much fun in years! I think I sounded like I was 14 again from all of my laughing, but I couldn't believe how light I felt afterwards. Crying can help relieve pressure, but laughing can too. Its the proverbial "good medicine".

It has also been wonderful having Sarah here with me. Just having her here keeps me accountable for the way that I treat the boys. I sometimes find that when James is gone, I have a much shorter temper than usual with the boys, since I take out my frustrations on them. If there is no one to hear me yell at them, then it is almost as if it didn't happen ...but then I feel guilty. With her here, I have to be more patient and creative than usual. Not only am I getting along with them better, I also don't have the crushingly guilty feeling of being a bad parent.

Three more days.

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good... His love endures forever.

Friends: Paving the Way for Foreigners

2010-05-18T20:52:00.001-05:00

I never really claimed to love the TV show Friends before we came to China, but I have to admit that the show has found a special place in my heart since being here. A special place of irritation!

Friends practically has a cult here in China. Every single episode has been translated into Chinese subtitles. As such, anyone who wants to, can dive into American pop culture and assume that it is a reliable source of information for North American morals and traditions. Christmas, Thanksgiving etc. I can't even count the number of times that I have been in the middle of explaining something of my culture to someone when they interrupt me and say "Hey its like Friends!". Then they go on to describe some ridiculous thing that Joey did once upon a time or a horrible song that Pheobe sang, and it usually ends with a direct quote (or song). It makes me feel like I am back in high school and all the boys in my class are quoting scene after scene of Monty Python and the Holy Grail (usually competing to see who has the silliest accent). If I mention that my sister is named Rachel, there is an instant spark and I hear "Rachel Green!".

From Friends has come a plethora of information about a wide variety of topics. Jewish religious practices, North America office relationships, food, dating practices and much much more etc.

Of course we all know that it is also very popular in North America. If you mention a particular episode of Friends to any random North American person, chances are they have seen it. Everyone (including me) knows that Ross' first wife was a lesbian, his second marriage lasted a few days and he and Rachel got married when they were drunk.

The irritation of course comes when people assume that Friends is an accurate representation of all North Americans. Because Friends jokes casually and opening about having a threesome, I have had people assume that I talk about threesomes like I would talk about the weather. People have also assumed that I would probably have a special appreciation for extremely crude jokes (and justify having heard that joke on Friends). While North Americans do tell jokes like this, there still are rules about who, what, and where those types of jokes are told. For example, it makes me a little uncomfortable when the male teacher that I have been assigned tells those jokes during a one-on-one class. Telling a sexual joke to a married woman when you are alone with her in a small room would be a faux pas in our culture (and certainly also in Chinese culture), but that part is not shown on Friends.

Friends also promotes this attitude that stupidity is funny (which pretty much sums up Pheobe and Joey's characters).

Anyway, the Friends cult has grown to such an extent that a cafe, built to exactly resemble the one on the show, has recently been opened here in Beijing. I've seen people get so excited about it that they jump up and down with little shrieks. Apparently it is packed at all times.

I'm not annoyed at any one person or thing in particle. I'm not trying to lambast the show itself. I don't care the the TV show exists. Like most shows, I can choose not to watch it if I don't like it. I also don't care that Chinese people like it. I'm quite ready to admit that it can be very funny at times. What I don't like is that I am instantly associated with it and that there are many assumptions made about me based upon it.

So there's my little rant, up where everyone can see it.

Here is a little humor for you before I sign off. The other day I was in a touchy mood and found myself continuously pouring instructions upon Ari's head (not unlike the woman in the book of Proverbs that is referred to as a continual drip!). He became less and less responsive to me as the day went by. Later on when I went to apologize to him, his response was, "Yeah Mommy, you know, if you didn't tell me so many things, my ears wouldn't want to stop listening to you." I had to chuckle at that.