Why altars?

“Fabulous! Wonderful! Stupendous! So pleased for both of you! Bless you both! Enjoy a celebration of a successful and God-led journey through the desert. You may not have reached Canaan yet but an altar of thanksgiving is called for!”

(My mom's email at the culmination of a long stay in Boston where my husband was being treated for acute lymphoblastic leukemia, as we were on our way home.)

We had spent most of the past six months in Boston where my husband had received high doses of aggressive chemotherapy. He’d spent four weeks in an isolation pod in Brigham and Women’s Hospital; he’d lost almost twenty-five pounds battling an E. coli infection; he’d gone from riding in a wheel chair to walking two miles - and back to the wheel chair; he’d had blood transfusions and an anaphylactic reaction.

We’d seen the leaves appear on the trees in May, watched the Swan boats in the summer and seen the leaves change colour and fall off in the Autumn; we’d experienced two snowfalls! Norm’s hair fell out and grew in again – then fell out again; we learned what bone marrow biopsies were, what intrathecal chemotherapy meant and what brain radiation was like; we learned how to flush PICC lines, give injections and administer antibiotics through a line; we became super organized with multi-coloured pill boxes and got used to phone alarms going off several times a day; we became experts at using antibacterial cleaners, always carried hand sanitizer and Norm finally learned the right way to wear a mask!

And now we were home for the final phase. Norm had just started what would be a recurring, continuous twenty-eight day cycle of oral and infusion chemotherapy – a phase that would last eighteen months. May 2016 was our Canaan.

..................

Today - in August 2015 - we are back in Boston. We've been here for nearly 6 weeks already and our Canaan has moved. 

On June 29th we were once again on an air ambulance. The leukemia had recurred in the central nervous system and everything had changed. 

Familiar place, some familiar procedures, some totally different procedures - and now, in the distance, the hope of a miracle match and a stem cell transplant. 

I re-read my mom's email this past week and wondered how, in the middle of this roller coaster of emotions, we could build altars of thanksgiving. 

How can I manage to "take each day at a time", enjoy each day to its fullest and find blessings in everything? 

How can I build an altar each day when I keep thinking about everything in the "transplant binder"? When I worry about how we'll manage to be away from home for what might be a long time? When I'm scared? 

I'm sitting here on Sabbath evening thinking about all of this - and writing my thoughts to myself so I can re-read them. If I write down all the blessings, all the reasons to be grateful to God, all the little joys that happen each day, I can build altars - stone by stone - as we continue to cross this long desert that is leukemia.

So... today was a good day. My sister is visiting for two days! We walked and talked and laughed together, all three of us; we talked to my mom through the miracle of technology, 3000 miles and 5 hours away; we enjoyed cool breezes, sunshine and a lovely dinner in the evening. I didn't cry at all today. Small stones perhaps, but polished ones! 

I will build altars "giving thanks in all circumstances" and I will remember that God is still leading us through the desert and that Canaan still lies ahead.