News! Downpour!

Driving the kids home from school/daycare today, I got the call on my cell phone— I pulled the car off to the side of the road— Kyle’s biopsy pathology results were in: “benign growth on lymph node.” Five words. Sitting there with the hazard lights on, and looking at my three precious ones in the rearview mirror, I heard those five words. As my friend Robin said not long after: “you must feel like your world was just handed back to you.” Yes. Except that we’re some of the lucky ones: it was never actually taken away from us. And so, it is a huge sigh of relief— Braydon was out late tonight with work, but cried hard when he finally got home, letting all his angst flow out with those tears and a glass of white wine (it was so good to see). And I can suddenly take a deep breath again (that ten pound brick that had been weighing on my chest was instantaneously lifted with five words). We have the honor and the privilege of continuing on with life as we know it. We are deeply grateful and feel like we just dodged a bullet. But we’re not ‘celebrating’ it tonight, at least not in any festive way; it would just feel so wrong to do that; so many families got the opposite news tonight. Going through this these past couple weeks has been a truly solemn experience, and I cannot even imagine how horrific it must be for parents whose kids are gravely ill.

When we arrived home I pulled the car into the garage and the three kids poured out of the backseat for scooter-and-bicycle-riding and chalk-writing and ball-bouncing like they do every day. And literally, within 30 seconds of their arrival into the driveway, a torrential downpour hit. There had been some foreboding clouds on our drive home, but never did we expect the pouring-down-rain that ensued. The three of them jumped for joy and spent the next 30 minutes running, scootering, and screaming through the pouring-down-rain, stomping in the quickly-formed-puddles, and catching humungous raindrops on their tongues. By the time the rain let up they were drenched and muddy and I had texted and emailed Kyle’s news to the important members of our innermost circle. Things like this (the sudden downpour at that particular moment on this particular day) happen way too often in my life for me to think they are pure coincidence. I am convinced that there is much more to all of this than meets the eye. Tonight, we give thanks for the good life that we’ve been afforded. And, we feel so much compassion for people everywhere whose worlds are taken away from them as quickly as it takes to hear five words or less.

Thanks to everyone for checking in on us. As always, thanks for reading. ~hbj