DYING TO LIVE

Calli is so tired.  She slept all day yesterday.  She has lost a lot of weight since this whole thing started bay in May, and has been on a steady weight loss since September.  The doctors put her on some steroids again, (YUCK!) she hates them, last time she took them for a long time and they gave her horrible acne, she gained weight, and got horrible purple stretchmarks.  This time, they promise she will only be on them for a little while.  They will help decrease the swelling in her cord, and they will make her gain weight- which is what they want!  For now, she is off all chemotherapy.  her blood pressure is back down to normal, which is good.


Last night, she was more alert, and was eating every 2 hours- little bites here and there!  YIPPIE!


While she slept all day, I did art therapy :)  Well...I did art in her room, and it was therapy to me.  First I got a bunch of old magazines and made a collage of some of Calli's most favorite things...it was fun and relaxing and she really liked it- it gave her something nice to look at when she was awake.

Then I made a sign for her door, and a reminder for all who walk in that "The best is yet to be," not the worst!!! 
I BELIEVE that each and every single day!

One of my closest friend's, Nea, sent me a scripture while we were on the way to the hospital- Psalms 121. It really spoke to me.

Psalm 121

1 I will lift up my eyes to the mountains;
From where shall my help come?
2 My help comes from the LORD,
Who made heaven and earth.
3 He will not allow your foot to slip;
He who keeps you will not slumber.
4 Behold, He who keeps Israel
Will neither slumber nor sleep.
5 The LORD is your keeper;
The LORD is your shade on your right hand.
6 The sun will not smite you by day,
Nor the moon by night.
7 The LORD will [a]protect you from all evil;
He will keep your soul.
8 The LORD will [b]guard your going out and your coming in
From this time forth and forever.

After reading this scripture, I thought of mountains, and then I thought of Scotland. I thought of almost three years ago, when I was in Scotalnd with Calli. That was the first time, I saw my child, my Callahan, in a different light. I was really sick, but she was SO alive! The people in her bell choir commented about how excited she was about every little thing. Each detail of a flower, or the hills, the sky, the mountains, the food, the cows, the cat, the smells- each thing excited her so greatly. One boy said that " I have never seen someone so excited about every little detail of life." I was seeing her in her element. Immersed in a culture, a place, a people, a history- I remember being in bed for several days so sick, as she explored the country and rang with her choir, and the first day I was able to get out, we were taking a bus trip to the highlands. The first mountain I came upon, I just wept. The awe and beauty, the majesty of those mountains....I was speechless.

I like this scripture as well, and wanted to remind Calli (as well as myself) of it.

Butteflies to me....represent change, free spirits- new freedom, new beginnings, flight- They have been an ongoing theme- that all started way back in Scotland, when we visited a hospice home for children who would not live out their teens.

There were butterflies and dragon flies hanging everywhere...it all kind of started there for me. When Calli was admitted for surgery, I wore butterfly earrings and a butterfly pin, not even realizing, that a butterfly was used very often for cancer pins- I had no clue then. As the days went by, people brought butterfly cards, balloons, and then we were admitteed to Oncology, and there are butterflies int he bathrooms, visiting rooms, on the walls and halls-

No one that we knew of, knew about the butterflies, yet they just kept coming, she got flowers with butterflies in them, and then my sister Abbe brought this mason jar- with a butterfly in it- except the butterfly was not real- but it could still flittter in the jar. It was amazing! I felt it was God's way of reminding me not to look at this cocoon, this our chrysalis..but to look beyond it- to the butterfly, to the end. It has to end to begin. He is with us in this....

Through the weeks that she was in the hospital, more and more and more butterfly cards, pictures, shirts and jars came- we were surrounded by butterflies. Then, I started to tell my friends, and we got even more butterfly pictures, and scriptures with butterflies on them. When we were discharged, it was butterfly season in my garden- and they were everywhere. Mike did not like it at first, he thought a "free spirit" meant that the people died...but I did not see it that way- well...I guess I did; but not physical death in the sense that he was thinking.

We all must die to live.

We must die to out old self, our old way of being and doing things- just as a caterpillar has no clue what is about to happen...it must embrace the change, the process that will make it free...make it beautiful, make it light and weightless....

When we lived in Monterey, California - we went to see the redwoods..there were monarchs everywhere amongst those huge trees that God formed. My sister Abbe, as well as Mike's aunt, Mary, brought Mason jars with Monarchs in them. Monarchs are the longest living butterfly.

May you see past a circumstance....see past the natural...see

HOPE, FREEDOM, FLIGHT, CHANGE, DEATH

TO LIVE IS CHRIST, TO DIE IS GAIN.

That catepillar, had to die, or appear dead, to gain, to change, to grow, to fulfill its purpose- it was created for worship- in its dying, in its flying, it was created to worship God-
to remind me, to Worship God, the creator of all things...the maker of Heaven and Earth.