When You Are Blindsided By Tsunami Joy

"Yippee!"

the memo line reads on the email from my mom.

I know my mom has a doctor's appointment that day, where she will be told the results of her PET scan, a test run after two months of chemo for her adenocarcinoma. Earlier this fall Mom was told she had full lymph node involvement from her neck to her pelvis.

I am hoping the lymph nodes have shrunk in size.

I click to open the email. It reads:

"The PET scan report says 'Excellent Treatment Response.'

All sites of previous cancer are gone....

Thank you again for your prayers for us. Thank you, Lord, for your healing."

GONE! All previous sites of cancer GONE.

I read the email again. And again.

Then I bow my head into my hands and cry.  Happy, gulping tears.

Because sometimes life hands you wave upon wave of bad news: 

when the doctor says your dad has cancer, when your friends says that she has cancer, when a friend's spouse has cancer and when your mom calls to say she has cancer too.

And the waves pound you one after another and you just absorb it all into your skin and you wonder how long...really...you can stand,

so when a miracle comes out of nowhere and hits you smack in the chest, blindsiding you with unleashable force,

there is no way to control the tsunami joy that explodes right out of you.

Can I just say that in the past few months I have sometimes had a hard time believing in miracles? In answered prayer?  I say the words, that I believe, but the wave upon wave reality clouds the way to that hope. And I know that sometimes the miracles we see will be on the other side.

But today, I see my dad walking around two years after his diagnosis and the doctor giving him six months and I see my mom, wearing her headscarves and holding a paper that says, "Extreme Positive Response,"

and "All previous sites of cancer gone,"

and I know, with no shadows,

that miracles still walk among us.

I can only bow my head and say, "Yippee!"

___________________

"Happy Birthday" is a victory march after you've been diagnosed with cancer. Would you join me and my parents in that song?

Happy 77th Birthday, Mom!