Category: Hope

Family, Gratitude, Hope, Intentionality, Personal Reflection

Birthday Lilacs and Sister Walks

Carrie Sue Barnes

Today is my sister’s birthday and I woke up with a familiar ache in my heart. Something I’ve learned about grief is it’s not all that accurate to say it gets easier with time. Rather, the spaces between the difficult moments gradually grow larger.

It’s been a good while since I’ve had an especially emotional day of grief, but when it came today, it felt much like so many days crammed into the last three years. Today arrived with the same instantly recognizable longing for my sister–to hear her voice and laugh, to see her smile, to know she is here and will be here tomorrow.

Stepping outside with my Bible as the day began, I spotted the new blossoms in my bed of irises. Somehow their purple and white petals brought my mind round to Cheryl’s red and pink rose bushes. I sat down to read and pray but my thoughts remained unsettled, and I soon found myself standing in front of the flowers again. I caught the odor of lilacs from the bush a few feet away. The first bunches of blossoms had opened and the scent pulled me closer.

Cheryl loved lilacs as much as I do. I gave up blinking away my tears and inhaled the gorgeous scent. In my mind’s eye, I could see the text I would’ve sent with a photo.

The lilacs bloomed for your birthday! They smell heavenly.

How I wanted to send that text.

The tears came and went through the day. I confided in a friend who knows the pain of losing family to terrible cancer battles, and pushing through the workdays despite the distraction of that pain. I glanced through favorite photos and smiled at her smile. Cheryl hovered in my thoughts in each hour, sometimes in the foreground and sometimes in the back. When evening came and my kids were settled at their dad’s for the night, the restlessness crowded me in the quiet of my home. You know, that restlessness that comes with a longing that can’t be eased.

Take a walk.

The suggestion rose over the mental noise. I wanted a walk with Cheryl though.

Cheryl loved walks. I loved walking with Cheryl. I think we all did. Walking with Cheryl meant talking with Cheryl. She rarely pushed the pace because, I suppose, if you were out of breath you couldn’t be talking. Cheryl didn’t do much small talk. A little perhaps, but it’d pass quickly and the rest was spent on the real stuff. That’s not to say every conversation was intense, but every conversation was intentional. Cheryl knew what mattered and didn’t pretend otherwise. She treated time with you as a valuable part of her day. She listened. She drew you out. On a walk was a natural time to do all of that.

As I walked tonight, I thought how it’d be if she were at my side. We’d comment on the proud orange poppies swaying in the dim twilight. Marveling at the sunset, we might voice a scripture verse or worship song brought to mind by the beauty. She would ask questions that got to the heart of whatever burdened my shoulders. Walks with Cheryl were a treasure.

I want another. I want to end it in my front yard where we can smell the lilacs. But I’m thankful the lilacs are here. I’m grateful for each walk that we had. I’m eager for the walks we’ll take again someday.

I know the walks with her have not run out. There’s only more space in between them.

Friendship, Faith, Hope, Personal Reflection, Prayer

On the Way Home

Carrie Sue Barnes

God and I had a hard talk today. Driving home on Highway 43, I railed and prayed and wept for my dear friends and their newly arisen hardships. What a cross is cancer.

I alternated between asking for mercy and a miracle, and voicing demands to know why and how.

Then came a truth that got me through oh so many dark days in the last few years. It cut across my thoughts in a clear voice.

“The Lord God stands in your future.”

My mind quieted and I repeated that truth to myself.

It is not why and how that can bring peace. It is only the truth that God stands in my future; that He stands in my friends’ futures. The Holy Spirit led my thoughts from there.

God stands in all of it – in every period of our lives. Each stretch of the road is a piece of the journey that can lead to Him. To Heaven and our fullness of life for eternity. Only He sees from beginning to end, and where this present piece fits into the whole.

Because of who He is, we can trust Him with the whole thing. Past, present, future can be entrusted to His hands. He, in turn, entrusts a piece back to us. He holds that piece with us. That piece is now. It is the most present part of the present stage of our lives. It is today.

“I give you today. I ask you to bear it, yes, but it only. I give you the joys and sorrows, the tasks and fruits of today. And just as I have not yet given you the time of tomorrow, I have not given you the work of tomorrow. Those worries, wants, and crosses are still in my hands. I stand in your future, a beacon and a fortress. I hold your future. I hold it lovingly in the palm of my hand. There is a refuge there in my hands, even now.”

The Lord God stands in my future. I declare it. I claim it for them and for myself.

“Thou holdest my lot.” (Psalm 16:5b)

“The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.” (Psalm 18:2)

“In Him my heart trusts.” (Psalm 28:7b)

Please pray for the Tim and Erin Viau family as they undertake this battle with Tim’s glioblastoma.

If you are interested in supporting the Viaus in additional ways, please consider donating toward their needs during this time of treatments and recovery. https://gofund.me/b8a4b42d
Faith, Hope, Personal Reflection, Prayer

Surrender

Carrie Sue Barnes

“Cause you know just what we need before we say a word.”

I drove to Sheboygan today loudly singing songs in between talking to the Holy Spirit. I swear I could feel my sister praying for me from heaven. One of her favorites started playing, “Good, Good Father” by Chris Tomlin, and when these lyrics reached my ears, they looped round my mind a few times while the song continued on unheard. He already knows, I thought. He is in control.

It was a moment of surrender, which isn’t the easiest for any of us, I’d say, especially in the traumatic times.

Whether we believe in God as I do or the universe or nature or any other power above us, we all have a pull inside us to surrender. To give up an impossible attempt at being in control. We chase the relief of letting go. The peace of that surrender calls to us– peace that is oh so hard to make our own.

For a moment there, that peace rushed in and filled cracks and wounds and voids. Filled them whole. And even as that tide of healing slipped back out, it left all those places coated in the sweet holy water of real peace. And there was just a little more strength in me. A little more calm. A little more faith.

I am nearer to who I am trying to be, and even nearer to who I already am underneath the layers of alteration. I am nearer now than yesterday and last week and last month and last decade. That is all I’ll seek each day. That’s some of the daily bread I ask of my Father.



Some days it’s hard to feel any progress. Some days have me skidding downhill. Then some days the light down the path grows clearly brighter and bigger, and I know deep down that I’m moving toward it.

Faith, Hope, Personal Reflection, Scripture

Loud Fears and Quiet Desires – New Year’s 2021

Carrie Sue Barnes

I spent all of yesterday, New Year’s Eve, trying to concoct a meaningful way to spend the final day of 2020. My inability to land on anything had me avoiding most possible activities and instead hiding with my nose in a book for as much of the day as possible. Now, that’s a pretty darn good way to spend a day, but that isn’t what I truly wanted for myself in the final 24 hours of the year we’d endured.

I wanted to conquer an unfinished home project. I wanted to exercise. I wanted to write more of a new story. I wanted… to not feel frozen by the fear that the coming year will look no different from (or worse than) the one ending.

That’s really how I spent yesterday: frozen. My thoughts ran a ponderous path about resolutions and expectations for 2021 and I discovered I was afraid. I am afraid. I’m afraid to make any resolutions that will set me up for further disappointment in myself. I’m afraid to name particular goals only to see the year pass without reaching them. I’m afraid to pin any hope on the expectation that 2021 will be better.

The truth is, I’ve never been gung-ho about resolutions and yearly goals for drastic changes. So I’ve tried to tell myself this doesn’t matter. As the past year has felt different than others in so many ways, though, so does this marking of the new year. There’s a longing for change, for better, that is pressing in on me.

Now, here we are. New Year’s Day. I woke up still feeling afraid to link any goal to the timeline of this year. The certainty of disappointment is a leech, draining my typical optimism and difficult to remove once it’s latched on.

The reason I ended up here, typing up a blog post about plans for the new year while still afraid to make any plans for the new year, is the intuition that I am not alone. 2020 brought me grief and loneliness, undesired changes and scrapped plans. It stole the balance I’d previously (imperfectly) achieved. I feel like I’ve been stumbling through week after week, instead of walking upright with at least a partial view of the path before me. I’m not alone in that, right?

This is the point in the inspirational blog post when I should point out that “God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather of power and love and self-control” (2 Timothy 1:7) and that God’s “grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). That’s how it might have read if I was writing it on other New Year’s mornings. I’d have wrapped it up there, built up by the words of scripture and moving forward with my hope firmly anchored in Him.

It’s ok if you’re not there, if the moving forward in hope part isn’t ready to happen yet. Maybe that’s what I really came here to say. Wherever you are right now, you can work with it. God can work with it. The calendar doesn’t have any say in God’s timeline. I’m grateful for that this New Year’s morning.

When the fears fall silent and I listen closely enough, I can hear the desires of my heart. Though I am afraid to admit them, there are some very particular goals I long to fulfill this year. There are specific changes called for in my life.

I will listen to those desires of my heart more than the fear lodging there. That’s the only resolution to share. Pursuing their voice over lesser noises might be the key to every way in which I can make 2021 better than 2020.

Faith, Family, Hope, Personal Reflection

Power Lines and Parabola Trees

Carrie Sue Barnes

Up the road from my childhood home are Parabola Trees. That isn’t their proper name, of course. My siblings and I dubbed them as such when I was in junior high or younger. They used to be quite ordinary, common trees, on the edge of an ordinary front yard along an ordinary country road.

Then it was noticed that the trees were growing beneath the power lines. In fact, the leaves at the top of the trees might have touched the lines if they stood on their tip toes. Something had to be done. Instead of trimming the whole top of each tree though, the powers-that-be decided to cut out the branches most directly beneath the power lines. The result was a deep and vacant U in the center of the tree. An upturned tunnel. Thus the name, Parabola Trees. It proved a lasting solution, as that empty space has never filled back up with new growth.

It feels a bit like my sister’s cancer is sawing into our family like they did to those trees. Core branches being cut out. The threat of creating an empty space that cannot regrow.

A daughter, a sister, an aunt, a grandmother. A friend. A giver. Core branches.

It also feels as if our prayers for a miracle are like begging the city workers to stop sawing and then petitioning them to move the power line rather than trim the tree. It’s a petition that’s difficult to expect to succeed, rendered even more unlikely if the workers were already as far along as the cancer in the cutting.

We petition anyway. We ask, and we believe in our cause. Reaching out to everyone we know, we encourage them to take up the same petition. We are certain there is power in the numbers dedicated to the cause. We keep asking, and we keep believing because, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord” (Isaiah 55:8).

We know that if He chooses, He can move the power line and leave the tree intact.

It’s Cheryl’s 54th birthday today. I enjoyed some time with her and others in my family for the first time in months. Celebrating with her today, praising God that she reached this birthday, leaves me longing for certainty that she will reach the next one and the next and more.

I’ll wrap up these thoughts by sharing what I wrote in Cheryl’s card today, repeating to myself again that we do believe.

Happy birthday, Cheryl. You are a warrior in the truest sense, fighting relentlessly with faith in your battle and hope in the success of it. We love you and we believe in what the Lord can do.

20200530_202911.jpg

Family, Hope, Personal Reflection

Teatime

Carrie Sue Barnes

Sometimes you have to sit down with a cup of tea and lemon cookies, pretending the table that stands in your kitchen was still in its former home. You have to see your grandmother sitting across from you at that table, her table. Her hand is holding yours besides the lazy susan that always stood on that tabletop, filled with jams and butter and spoons and honey. Sometimes you have to hear her ask if you’re ok. Sometimes you have to admit you’re not, as her warm, wrinkled fingers squeeze yours.

I’m doing some self-caring this afternoon. It’s been an angry-sad, sad-angry day. One of those where it’s hard to tell which is the stronger emotion. The yoga mat is coming out as soon as I’m done working. I’m promising myself I will sit down to relax with my husband after the kids are in bed, no matter how many dirty dishes need washing.

I think the best thing my husband has done for me in this hills-and-valleys journey through my sister’s cancer battle is encourage me to feel whatever I’m feeling. No pretending it’s better than it is, or pushing to change those feelings.

I’m feeling them. The feelings lead to thoughts. Before I started typing this, I was thinking about lilacs. Lilacs are the flower and the scent most intimately linked in my mind with the women in my family, including my grandmother. And my sister Cheryl. Then I thought about how another association they both share in my mind is birds. Birds outside kitchen windows, in feeders and houses and garden baths.

My thoughts are rambling now and so am I.

Those hallmarks in my memory are set for life, I believe. I also believe they were lovingly picked by God to be The Beautiful in amongst The Difficult when I think of these dear women.

My hope is to call to mind the former more often than the latter.

Faith, Family, Hope, Personal Reflection, Prayer

We Don’t Know

Carrie Sue Barnes

I don’t want to write this post. I don’t feel like writing it.

I thought about writing it immediately after reading my sister’s message Friday night. I thought about writing it first thing Saturday morning, when I saw other family members’ social media posts. I wrote it in my head while I made breakfast for my kids. Still, I avoided sitting down at my computer and typing it out. Instead, I scrawled out some notes I didn’t want to lose, and went for a run.

I ran and I thought.

I thought about what I’ll feel toward God if the cancer takes my sister in the end. I thought about the anger I’ll experience. Would I feel it toward Him? Toward everything? Or maybe toward nothing, a fiery arrow of anger with no target for release?

I thought about timing, wishing pointlessly that I could tell God my preferences and they’d be taken into account with weight equal to His wisdom. Timing. If the cancer has returned, if her remission is slipping away, why is it happening during a pandemic? When we can’t be with each other? When hospital stays are endured alone, with no visitors? Timing. Her second grandchild is on the way. Growing, developing, taking shape in her daughter’s womb. A gift. A rainbow baby. I have some things to say to Him about timing.

This post sat in my head the remainder of yesterday but I knew I needed to write it this morning. Sunday morning, barren of congregations gathered to worship and pray as one. This is exactly when I should write it.

The reason to write is simple: to ask all of you to pray for my sister’s healing from lymphoma. Simple, and something I’ve done several times already. Why the avoidance, then?

I didn’t want to write it because it feels too much like admitting defeat. Feelings can lie though. They’re masters at it. Asking for prayers is not admitting defeat. It’s admitting faith.

Due to 35 days straight of low grade fevers, and being bedridden for much of that time, they have tested Cheryl for any possible explanation for her symptoms. The only one reasonably left is that the cancer is relapsing. The doctors have admitted this to be the case and she will undergo new scans and biopsies to check the truth of it.

We don’t know yet if the cancer is growing again.

We don’t know yet if God has a miracle for Cheryl.

I’m going to stop getting ahead of myself and admit that just as much as I don’t know the former, I don’t know the latter either. So, I ask you to pray. I ask you to believe in your prayers. I’ll do the same.

Screenshot_20200328-084659_Facebook.jpg
Cheryl and her husband Tom, March 2020