Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view. We live in a culture that extols rugged individualism and a philosophy of life that says you can accomplish anything you set your mind to. And we infer that includes beating your own death. It is little wonder, then, that people are unprepared when an illness, like cancer, strikes with its potential threat of death. The result is a crisis of great proportions: one must confront not only biological death, but squarely what it means not to be alive. – Jimmie C. Holland, Sheldon Lewis, The Human Side of Cancer
We have a saying at our house. “We only write on the calendar in pencil.”
It started during Bruce’s leukemia journey. We knew for at least a full year, because of his rigorous treatment and the infection risks that all-too-often materialized into the real, terrifying thing, commitments would be on hold. Plans last-minute. Appointments cancelled. Opportunities unrealized. We lived life on a tightrope. Maybe more like in a box.
We continued that way of thinking when I was diagnosed with Stage 4 leiomyosarcoma. No guarantees. As it is for most everyone I know with sarcoma, life became measured in 2-3 month chunks between the scans. Don’t make a deposit on anything if you can’t afford to lose the money. Don’t start something that will take longer than two calendar months. Do not even think about “next year.” Stumbling blocks of uncertainty are strewn along the pathway. The vision into tomorrow is on a dark and shaded trail.
I was between the pencil and the chisel. Wanting desperately to make my life last way beyond my years. To say things, do things, be things, that will be remembered for a long time. But I was held back by the sad reality that I am dying. That life is too short. That regret is too real.
“Your legacy is your writing,” Bruce told me about a year ago when surgery to recovery to next surgery (with a lot of therapies in between) began to run together in an unbroken string. Low energy, discouragement and graphite-blackened appointment calendars were hardly the stuff of legacy-building.
And so, I put the pencil down. It all seemed too daunting, this idea that my writing was to be done with a chisel. A truth-telling, emotion-draining, life-capturing chisel? Hello! I am living with a terminal disease. I can not pick up a pencil without examining the eraser end first.
A couple of days ago, a high school classmate posted a picture of himself on Facebook, cat in his lap and the New York Times crossword puzzle on his knee. I remarked that I needed his cat to help me with my puzzling. (Our last of many cats died about the time cancer entered our lives, and it has fit into our new way of thinking to not commit to a cat.) Then someone else noted from the picture that he does his crossword puzzles in ink. With a pen! So he sees all his mistakes.
You are probably aware if you are a puzzler that the NYT puzzles get progressively more difficult through the week. I can do the Monday version with ease. By Wednesday, I put my eraser to good use. Thursday, I break into a sweat. And by Friday, my eraser breaks away from my pencil and I give up. You know that moment, right? Arggghh!
This dear, brave (and crossword-puzzle gifted) classmate noted that he had me beat by at least a day. But he admitted that his puzzle looked “pretty messy” on Friday, what with the ink and all.
Christ tells us to live this uncertain life without worry — with pen in hand. Not with a pencil and an eraser. It is the job of the Creator, through Christ’s redemption on the cross, to come after our doings and clean up the mess. Only He can erase yesterday. And he will. We need not worry.
And not in stone, for that is beyond our call, and our calling. Eternity is on God’s calendar, not ours. Again, we need not worry.
Pencil is the stuff of regret and uncommitment. Chisels are not tools of our work, but God’s. We are directed to write our lives in ink, boldly, honestly and in the moment. God will turn those things of legacy over to stone, and with full grace, erase the rest without a trace. How freeing is that?
We need only live between the pencil and the chisel to understand how to live in the dying — which begins on the day we are born. We can commit wildly and without fear today and God will make of our lives something for forever.
Now, time for me to go pick up a pen, the NYT Friday puzzle, and, maybe, a cat?
Until our next jog, God willing.
Vicki
“Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.” John 15:2 (NKJV)