You Got This…(?)

Four weeks post-op. No cancer. No girlie parts on the inside. My tummy full of foreign objects is now a cave of emptiness (or so I imagine). I’ve had 2 follow up Doctor visits and I keep hearing how great I’m doing. I think a doctor’s point of view has a much wider contextual range than I do for my own life, and therefore I can consider an evaluation of “great” to be true and motivating, even though I feel like I’ll never jog again. My husband has a different view of “great” and he’s still counting the weeks as if they were months. 😉

The cramming together of a radical hysterectomy along with my firstborn son’s college graduation seems like too much to capture, and I’m sure that’s the source of my procrastination (and this garbled mess). These last few weeks I fought freakishly to be able-bodied for the commencement and family graduation activities. As it was, I was not my whole self, but I was there.

Today, a week later, I feel like Maria on top of the Austrian Alps (cue helicopter).

Pushing through pain and brokenness toward the love of God, we have the most exciting and blessed experience. It’s just plain crazy.

Wading through divorce ten years past, I was steeped in selfishness and misguided seeking, intentional independence and controlled perfection. Yet through that mess, my whole family is today and forever changed by this powerful new current of seeking God’s will for our life. Ten years ago we wouldn’t have imagined such a current, guiding Erik to Multnomah University – Steve’s alma mater, Steve’s parents’ alma mater. It’s stunning to ponder in this moment the reality of the impact of this whole season. It’s scandalous grace.

Erik’s powerful experience at Multnomah and with the basketball team has transformed his heart and taken him around the world. Riley and Jack see this place and sense the uniquely special environment. “I want to come here too,” floats softly around the car. Our whole family has unified around this celebration.

All because of divorce? No, that’s not the beginning or the end. Living through career shifts and family moves, highs and lows of financial security, seasons of confusion and facing all manner of death. The hits don’t stop coming, but we seek to find purpose. At this time of graduation, this walk through physical changes, I see more and more clearly how we live out our daily blessings by seeing the bigger purpose as we briefly look back. Blending without breaking. Thriving because the submitted life is more invigorating and the possibilities are greater.

Our kids probably can’t see it all like we can.  Heck, I didn’t see it when I was 38. But my kids will learn to see it sooner than I did.

The challenging commencement speaker spoke with great encouragement, and appropriate mystery, to a room full of ambitious and fearful grads facing a world of unknowns: “You got this, because God’s got you.”

True indeed.