In a recent post, I celebrated and honored the life of my youngest daughter, who is a survivor of childhood cancer, by sharing Mondays with Kelsey and Other Small Miracles. In this post I said that there was so much more to the story than could ever fit into a few pages. Indeed, the story requires a book because, really, it's not just about Kelsey . . . it's about our family's journey that affected each one of us in such a profoundly personal way that, surely, it changed the trajectory of what our lives would have been. And in doing so, it created more stories . . . and heroes. My oldest daughter, Brittany Leigh, is most certainly one of them.

Ask anybody and they'll tell you that tragedy creates heroes. When catastrophic events shake and shatter the very foundation of everything we know, and we find ourselves navigating strange new worlds, aspects of our personalities emerge to help us survive. And in the case of heroes, to thrive. There is no doubt that Cancer kids are heroes -- not just because of what happens to them, but what they become in spite of it. Some leave their inspiration, their smiles, their inexplicable strength of spirit behind, while others live on to grace this present world and change it with their lion hearts. 

But there are other ways to get there . . . there's another kind of hero. Imagine you are forced to sift through feelings of fear and abandonment when compassion and self-sacrifice is the expectation. Now imagine it when you are five, or seven, or maybe ten years old and for years, the subtle message that you've been interpreting to mean "It's not about me" becomes internalized. Such is the life of a cancer sibling.  Such was the life of my Brittany. Imagine you are five years old, teaching your little sister how to ride a tricycle, about to get your own training wheels off and getting ready for kindergarten. It's high summer and you live on the beach and play in the woods and you're part of a family where everything is fair and equal. And then one sunny morning your mom takes your sister to the doctor and later you watch her fly away over your house in a helicopter. With her goes everything sure and stable in your world. The bike is abandoned, the sand and sun are replaced with sterile hospital halls, kindergarten will have to wait. . . and the focus of everyone's attention has shifted in a bewildering direction that seems to have very little to do with you. Who would you become if this were your foundation? What choices would you make for your own life? And how would your struggle for your own identity and your place in the world work in a family where the very survival of someone else must always take precedence? 

Of course everybody's story is different, but I can tell you a part of Brittany's. I say a part because she is more than qualified to tell her own. Among all the heroic roles she took on along the course of her journey was that of a writer . . . Go to her website Little Mountain Momma and she'll tell you all about it. But there's an awful lot she doesn't say that I'll tell you about . . . because true heroes are humble, and their stories often require a mother's perspective . . . 

One of the first things Brittany did when she realized the gravity of her sister's situation on that bright July morning in 1991 was hand over her teddy bear. It had been placed in her own hospital bassinet on the day she was born, and it had become a part of her. I had stood blinking in a haze of shock as the attendants loaded my baby onto a helicopter that had no room for me, and they had to remind me to kiss her good bye. But five year old Brittany had the presence of mind to make sure that Kelsey had a part of her to carry with her wherever she went. Kelsey still owns the teddy bear with the pale yellow rosebud patterned pajamas and nightcap that is older than she is.

As Brittany grew in compassion and intuition, she became the kind of kid that would stop on the soccer field to help up an opponent who had tripped . . . the kind of kid who watched my face to catch any fleeting emotion that she could soothe. It was unnerving when I would have a thought and she would say something like, "I know, Momma . . . I don't want her to die, either" or "I'm scared, too." It made me angry, too, but not at her. I just wanted her to be a kid and I was angry at the circumstances that made her say such things. Her art therapist told me that she was angry, too, but I didn't want to believe that a heavy black crayon could tell that story. So we became divided in our anger and our fear. It was part of our journey.

In early summer of 1992, Brittany broke her arm and sported a hot pink cast for the next four weeks (this is actually a favorite family story). On a balmy, clear night we sat at the top of a gently sloping incline to watch the fireflies blink, and the girls got the idea to roll down the hill. In a freak occurrence, Britty rolled funny over her wrist and broke it.  She basked in the glory of attention for only a few days before the attention shifted back to her sister. As fate would have it, Kelsey Brooke began running a fever late one night, which for Cancer kids, requires a mandatory trip to the ER . . . and in our house, that was a family affair. The all clear was given and it was back home to bed. As we were tucking them both back in -- Brittany on her top bunk and Kelsey on the inverted lower, Kelsey lamented her circumstances with, "I hate having a fever" at which point Brittany saw fit to reclaim her territory in the spotlight. She leaned upside down way over the bar of her bed, looked hard at her sister, and said, "Be QUIET, Kelsey . . . I have a BROKEN ARM and that's BETTER than a fever!" It was one of the greatest lines ever spoken.

And so she found her voice and used it often to assert herself. But when she was thirteen she surprised us with it again. One day she asked for voice lessons. Now I have never been one to discourage any endeavor by my girls, but it seemed an odd request and I remember the conversation clearly. "Honey, we don't sing. I don't sing. Daddy doesn't sing . . . nobody in our family sings . . . do you think you can sing?" But she would not be deterred, so I dubiously paid for voice lessons, dropping her off with a voice coach from our church every Wednesday afternoon, thinking nothing would come of it . . . until her voice coach announced a few months later that she would be putting her on stage in church. . . Wait. What? I'll always remember the feeling and the thoughts that came over me when those first few clear, powerful notes of Amy Grant's God is in Control rolled over the  sanctuary, belted out by my tiny, ice-blue eyed daughter . . . He surely is, and this girl can do anything she puts her mind to. 

Not long after that, she found one of her life's ministries that also directed her career path. She began working at Waltonwood Senior Living Center and began connecting with the residents there in a way that was arguably rare for someone so young. I have a theory about that that we've had very little discussion about, but it's one that I don't think Brittany would argue with. I think that our God, in all His infinite wisdom can and will and does work out everything . . . every circumstance in our lives for our good and for His glory (Romans 8:28) . . . and I think that my daughter is able to deeply connect to the displacement that the elderly often feel because of her own early circumstances. Brittany truly loves "old people". From wrinkles to dementia to orneriness, nothing has ever deterred her. From the time she was fifteen, she has listened to their stories, taught them computer skills, planned and oversaw activities for them, and sat with them while they are dying. It's a remarkable gift to the world that she has woven into the fabric of her life between motherhood and . . . well, everything else . . . 

Beyond her compassion for people, another truly remarkable trait I admire in my daughter is her determination. She will be the first to tell you that life doesn't always turn out like you plan, but it's certainly not for lack of trying on her part (actually, one of the running themes and the purpose of her blog is to be real and provide a venue where young mothers can connect in their collective imperfections). After Brittany graduated from Moody Bible Institute in Chicago (with a degree in family ministries with a concentration in geriatrics), she planned her next step. She would run a marathon in October and get pregnant in November. I remember thinking . . . I may have said it out loud . . . that neither of those endeavors is as easy as they sound . . . but I should have known better. In 2008, Brittany ran her first 26.2 through the streets of Chicago and then gave birth to her first child the following July, 2009 (yes, that would put the conception in November;) Not long after, she asserted herself into a leap of faith decision for her little family in moving west to Colorado. Her husband had graduated with a counseling degree from Moody and had only managed to succeed (I'm being proudly facetious) in moving up the corporate ladder of Starbuck's to a position that afforded them a remarkable standard of living for such a young couple living in the city. Brittany wasn't having it. She pushed for a move that would allow him to finish his graduate studies for marriage counseling at Denver Seminary. One day she called me from her cell phone as she was training for the the DC marathon from the top of a mountain. She happened to catch the Denver marathon and inserted herself into it for training . . . but once she reached her 18th mile, she just kept going, and finished the Denver marathon just a few weeks before the DC marathon. Oh, and then, in a calculated decision, she got pregnant with my grandson. 

As I said in my previous blog, this is just a small part of the story . . . this one about a girl who refused to accept that life wasn't about her. In spite of all this, Brittany often laments to me her memories of herself as a little girl. She remembers a single mindedness that, to her, amounted to being a pest. It sometimes seems that no amount of reassurance can dispel this thought. I don't remember it and I don't see it that way. I remember a kid who had trouble in math, but managed to pass it while carrying home an armload academic awards for reading and writing with some citizenship awards. I remember a role model for her little sister (we don't EVER lie down with a boy and no kissing below the neck). I remember a kid who never gave up on anything she wanted, whether it was to get a new Snow White deluxe edition backpack to begin third grade or a chance to work for the whole summer as a camp counselor in Northern Michigan at fifteen. I remember a kid that loved her sister and showered her with kindness and compassion and never once demonstrated mean-ness or resentment towards her. I remember a kid, and I know a young woman whom God equipped with everything she would need to make it through life, no matter how messy (one of her favorite expressions) it gets. 

Last week I had the privilege of keeping my six year old granddaughter, Mackenzie for an extended amount of time and discovered that, undoubtedly, she has inherited the same eyes, the same golden hair, and the same drive and single-mindedness when she decides that there is something that she wants. She has also inherited the same heart of gold as her momma. She is beautiful and brilliant and relentless and I wished her on my daughter because I have seen the bigger picture. I can't wait to see everything she becomes, because, as life has taught me so far, I am surrounded by heroes.

Twenty-four years ago today, I very nearly lost my youngest daughter, Kelsey Brooke, to Cancer. The disease had silently been ravaging her tiny body over time in such a myriad of confusing ways that by the time she was officially diagnosed, on a Monday morning in the middle of July, it was almost too late. 

As I held her on my lap while a different doctor than the previous three explained, sad-eyed and regretful, how dire her circumstances had  become, clarity flooded over me, penetrating the numbing shock that was allowing a silent trail of tears to flow steadily even as I held myself together. It was not a sudden growth spurt that was causing the pain in her knees or excessive sleepiness. She had not been fighting a virus by which a healthy immune system would prevail over time. She had not been experiencing episodes of fleeting loss of consciousness due to the breath-holding, strong willed assertion of toddler syndrome. And there was a reason that the blood had seeped through the band-aids of her skinned knees when she fell off her tricycle . . . even as it saturated the cotton beneath the band-aid where a simple blood test had confirmed an expedited diagnosis thirty minutes before. It was Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, and my little girl was dying. 

She did not die, of course, as evidenced by the picture (above) of her praying over all of Romania in 2011 on a year long missions trip that would take her to a dozen countries on three continents. And there is more to the story than can be told in just a few pages. But people ask questions. And sometimes they stare hard after I answer a few, and after what I don't say. Like did she lose her hair? Yes. It came out in strands and clumps, and once as I was kneeling over the side of her to change the dressing on her chest catheter after a bath, a section of it stayed behind, caught under my knee on the floor as she got up to scamper off, a bare spot on the side of her head. Soon the bare spots became too painful to look at, and we just shaved her head. That was painful, too. But then it was over. Another question is how did you know? And I talk about the doctor's appointments. But the truth is that I knew. I just refused to entertain my own intuition. There was a moment in the midst of all the doctor's appointments and the common answers that my own voice echoed in my head one night after I had put her to bed. She kept getting out of bed, which was very uncharacteristic of her. And she had cried, and said, "But, Mommy, something's biting me." It was an odd statement, but stranger yet was my voice, the crystal clear thought that said "she has Cancer." And I was so horrified by it that I refused to answer, refused to acknowledge. But I knew. I was a young mother, and I knew nothing about Cancer, had never been around anyone who had it enough to know what I knew, but I knew. It was the voice that made me take her back to the doctor again. And again. And there is my least favorite question -- one that has always seemed ridiculously absurd to me, and that admittedly I get less and less as my friend set gets wiser: How could you possibly have have done that? . . . lived through that? How do you not do what's given to you to do? How do you stop living at the prospect that your child might not? You live harder, fight harder, love harder. And maybe I'm not qualified to say this, but I'll dare: If you lose the fight . . . if you lose your child . . . You have loved and lived and fought with all your heart could stand. And that's something that will carry you the whole rest of their life . . . and yours.

But here's another story I want to tell you. It's one that happened long before there was ever a need to answer those questions, and I think that it matters so much more. Soon after those initial moments in the doctor's office, somewhere in the haze, I remembered a day three years earlier when I had dedicated my daughter to Jesus Christ, recognizing His sovereign will in the life of the tiny little miracle that He had given to me . . . and "gave her back". . . promising her life to Him. It's a dance we Christian mommas have been doing with our God since before Samuel was raised in the temple: acknowledging our frailty and our weaknesses as human beings and asking for the grace to perform such a holy task. In other words, In case I screw this up, you've got my back, right, Lord? . . . That Sunday morning, she was exactly three weeks old, and what we knew about her so far was that she loved to sleep. Indeed, beyond her initial and frantic bug-eyed "put me back" anger in the ensuing moments after she was born, we had hardly seen her awake. She even nursed sleeping. But on this Sunday morning, I answered an altar call, carrying my sleeping baby to the foot of the cross with me. And as I prayed over her, supported by one arm over the steps of the altar and with the other holding her tiny-ness in its crook, something made me look down at her. She was looking up at me, wide-eyed and focused, complicit, almost . . . wise and knowing. I remembered this, and It occurred to me that He was asking me to make good on that promise . . . and although I stood firm, I did what any mother would have done. I begged, But, oh, God, please, please, can't I keep her? And I did. And we did.

Right this very minute, I can hear her outside my window playing with her niece, my granddaughter, who is visiting from Colorado. With my husband and my son in law, they are laughing and drawing giant sidewalk chalk pictures of Michigan and Colorado and all things in between. It's an ordinary thing, but it's a small miracle to me.  Since January, my semi-retirement sabbatical has allowed me to spend Mondays with Kelsey in a kettle bell class. It's been brutal on this middle aged body that has been accustomed to spending a ridiculous amount of the day at a desk behind a computer. But a few Mondays ago, I got a particular joy as I lay in a puddle of my own sweat and a failed attempt at push-ups to look over and see her in a perfect plank, grinning widely at me . . . another ordinary miracle.  I went back this past Monday with Kelsey, her sister, Brittany, and Mackenzie. I felt stronger that morning, surrounded by more miracles. I'll never stop thinking of them that way, because when you very nearly lose one child, the wonder of them all . . . the very wonder of the world, even, is magnified. I feel it strongest every July. Happy Middle of July.

Welcome to July. By popular connotation, it's the middle of summer. It's ice blue popsicles and sunsets over baseball diamonds. It's watery prisms and cool Merlot under balmy moonlight  and tomatoes fresh from the garden. Depending on where you're from, July can mean different things . . . sunkist freedom and starburst fireworks . . .warm . . . hot, repressive hot. In the midwest, it's lake pontoons and lightning bugs and earthy bonfires. Depending on who you are, July can mean different things -- weddings and anniversaries, birthdays. For teachers, it's sleep. I get that. I get all of it, really. For my family, July is all of that and more. Every time the hottest month of the year comes around, we're reminded in a million ways how blessed we are . . . through profound joy and gratitude, through remembrances of grief and redemption . . . and the expectation that life, in all its glory, will just keep coming in the microcosm that has become us. 

Below is a lengthier explanation of "us" in a blog that I wrote three years ago . . . this will be the third year I've posted it, and I'm okay with that. It seems like a perfect way to kick off July. I'm early this year, but something tells me that you'll be hearing more from me this month. You can probably count on it. I'm okay with that, too.

The Middle of July (2012)

Today is July 15th.  The  middle of July. My husband and I casually noted this fact in an exchange last night while sitting quietly by our carefully crafted backyard fire on a balmy evening beneath the vivid glow of a bright quarter moon. Tomorrow is July 15th.  It's the Middle of July. Fireflies blinked in magical cadence all around us. It was, by anybody's standards, a perfect mid-summer moment, pristine and peaceful, a backdrop for silent introspection. But the thoughts that passed between us in this small, seemingly mundane discovery of what tomorrow is evoked a noisy myriad of emotion and memory that will forever and powerfully connect us, and by extension, our daughters, and our sons-in-law, and our grandchildren. . . anybody who ever belongs to us. . . 

Because, you see, as irrelevant and as random as the middle of July seems to other people, we have come to expect that things happen to us in the middle of July. Life-changing Before and After things. Tragic and Triumphant. Earthshattering and Elating. Sweet and Serendipitous. The very essense of Life and Death have played out on our proverbial doorstep as we are blinking in the sunlight of the Dog Days of summer. There have been things to shout from the mountaintops and things so deeply personal and painful that we'll hold onto them until it's time to tell our stories.

Among some of the defining moments of of our lives are the following. . . Our youngest daughter, Kelsey Brooke, was diagnosed with Leukemia on July 15th, 1991. . .  Our oldest daughter, Brittany Leigh, met her husband, Jeremy, on July 13th at a Christian summer camp when they were both 13 years old and they married eight years later on July 15th . . .  One winter in between, my lifelong optimism was suddenly shattered when I unexpectedly plunged into a deep and sustaining depression that didn't let up until the following year on a mid-summer afternoon as I was drifting on a jet-ski in the Gulf of Mexico and was just as suddenly engulfed in a pod of very happy and very playful dolphins who invaded my space so thoroughly that each one seemed to commune with me eyeball to eyeball.  I was so moved by the experience that I immediately began to heal . . . A summer day that followed brought the news that my brother's son, just a few months older than our youngest daughter, had succumbed to some secret, unbearable pain that caused him to end his own life at eighteen years old. Just before recieving the phone call, my husband and I had been snorkeling off the coast of Florida, enraptured by the sight of brightly colored marine life casting shadows just below us as the sun reflected watery patterns and prisms of light over our heads. My memories of that day will be forever marked by flashes of sunlight, a miasma of colorful shadows, and profound anguish. It was July 17th . . . On July 9th, 2009, our first daughter gave birth to her first daughter, and the exquisite joy that we all felt was replaced by confusion and helplessness as in the weeks and months that followed, our Brittany sank deeper and deeper into the throes of post-partum depression until at her lowest point, she questioned her ability to be a mother . . . Three years later, on a mid-July afternoon, her beautiful and brave demonstration of resilience was recognized nationally when a talk show host out of Chicago called to say she had been following her poignant and prolific blog on the subject of post-partum depression, and she was invited to be a featured guest on the show. The same afternoon that I listened from my Detroit office as my oldest daughter encouraged women all over the world in a phone interview from Colorado that aired from Chicago, I was also waiting for my youngest daughter to come home. She was boarding a plane from Malaysia that very day, coming home from a year long missions trip that had spanned three continents and eleven countries. It was the end of July, but we had made it through the middle.  

These are things that, of course, happen to other people and other families, connecting them in space and time, every single day, all around us, all year long. . . but strangely enough, we are blessed and cursed. . . and blessed. . . over and over. . . in the middle of July. We have come to expect it. Not with any trepidation or even any sense of superstition. It is just simply who we are.  So much so that a few years ago my husband felt compelled to own our story by getting a tattoo of a calendar page of July 15th stamped on his right arm. Below it is the famous Dickens caption: It was the best of times, It was the worst of times. So much so that a few years ago, I felt compelled to tell our story by beginning my first novel entitled The Middle of July. It opens with occurence of a mystically true and terrible storm that I witnessed when I was 14 years old that that is an apt analogy of what happens in the collision of  powerful forces - good and bad -  that shape our lives.  It happened on July 15th, 1980.  

Our quiet introspection by the fire last night marked our return from visiting Brittany and Jeremy in Colorado. We celebrated Mackenzie's fourth birthday while we were there, and held our three week old grandson, Levi, for the very first time. Brittany and I made plans for Kelsey's bridal shower and her wedding this fall to our new son, Kyle Miller. This day, in particular, marks a season of grace and blessings and celebration for our family. But whatever tomorrow brings, or next July, or the next, we recognize the gift of life and healing and hope. And we will always celebrate the Middle of July, honoring it as time that represents the story of our lives. Happy Anniversary to Brittany and Jeremy. Happy We're So Glad You're Alive Day to Kelsey Brooke. Happy Birthday to our darling granddaughter. Welcome to the world, Levi Kyler. Happy We Made It Through All the Darkness in Between Day. Happy Tomorrow for whatever God, in his infinite wisdom and mercy and grace, chooses to bless our family with. Happy Middle of July.