I’d been feeling as if something was up for more than a year. I kept getting sick, and I don’t get sick often. I’d had lots of tests and blood work, but nothing showed up in the results. In March 2014, I switched doctors for a second opinion. My new doctor, Dr. Levy, did another round of testing and decided I was borderline in a lot of areas; she wanted to do one more test, a biopsy “just to make sure.”
As I answered the call, I heard it in her voice before she told me the results. I had uterine cancer. Because I didn’t have any of the normal symptoms, the fact that she did a biopsy is a miracle in itself, because all of my other doctors said they’d never have done one. Miracle No. 1: I changed doctors.
Miracle No. 2: New doctor did a biopsy and found the cancer early.
Yet, was it early? Was the cancer contained? Or were all the other aches and pains I had just more cancer invading my body? Was I actually dying and no one else knew?
I got the phone call on Thursday, setup was on Sunday, and the conference ran Monday through Thursday. I needed every minute before the conference began in order to try to wrap my head around the news that I had the thing I dreaded most. Cancer! I made it through the days OK; but every night I spent in terror, wondering what might happen and if God was really on my side. Did I really believe all those things I told my students and my church all those years? Did I really believe God had my back? Was the disease all over me? Was it worse than the doctors thought? Fear and terror became my nightly companions.
Cancer played into my abnormal fear of death and dying. I am one of those people who really likes life on earth. I am not one who is eagerly waiting for heaven and wishing Jesus would hurry up and return or take me home. I always say I have so much more living to do and so much more I want to do for God and His kingdom. I don’t want to die, and I don’t do pain—I have no pain threshold at all. Plus, I really hate—hate and fear—hospitals and surgery, especially the anesthesia. So the monster of fear became the emotion that drove all my actions. I pictured my fear as Jabba the Hutt, and my anxiety was Salacious Crumb, laughing at me from his shoulder.
Then, after the conference, I froze. I couldn’t get on a plane and fly back to California. Instead, my amazing husband got on a plane and flew to Nashville, where I felt I had backup: old friends and family to support me. We did the surgery and spent the summer recovering there. Because the doctors wanted to follow me for five years, we decided to make the move permanent in November. Miracle No. 3 is that Rob got on that plane. He hates humidity and the South in the summer in general.
What did I learn when my life was interrupted?
I needed backup, and I needed it from people I could trust, people who weren’t going to give me Bibley, pat answers and cliches. I felt very private about my illness. I couldn’t drop the bomb on Facebook as some people do. Instead, I created a private Facebook page called Lilly’s Prayer Peeps, and Rob was the one who posted most of the updates and prayer requests because I didn’t have the energy.
All I could do post-surgery to feel better was watch every season of “The Big Bang Theory.” It was my laughter therapy. I was frustrated that I didn’t feel better faster and frustrated by people who wanted me to be better than I was. I learned that my fear shut me down and didn’t allow for rest or for recovery. I didn’t recover half as fast as I wanted. I truly needed to have my friends pray when I could not. I needed the community to stand in and pray for me, to be close to Jesus for me when I couldn’t find the way. When I was struggling, I knew I could message the prayer peeps and they’d pray. Good friends encouraged me through text messages, phone calls, art supplies, chocolate and ice cream. They allowed me to have the space to heal and didn’t require me to put on a Christian happy face and wear my smile. Thankfully, they took the time to ask me what I needed rather than think they already knew. Even those who found out later about my cancer honored my privacy and understood why I couldn’t tell everyone. I learned that I don’t have to fake it, that I don’t have to fake how I feel or be better than I am.
However, sometimes I feel I’m a fraud, and I feel guilty. About the time I found out I had cancer, I found out that a friend from Seattle was fighting pancreatic cancer, and a former student from my youth group was fighting his second round of leukemia and was having a bone marrow transplant. What do I do with the fact that I had cancer but didn’t need chemo or radiation? My cancer was early stage 2, not horrific stage 4. I felt guilty that I was getting better while they might not be. Why did I deserve healing? Honestly, I still am struggling with the fact that although I didn’t have horrific cancer, I still had cancer and it still changed my life.
When I started to feel sorry for myself during my recovery, I prayed for those friends in the midst of their bigger battles. I decided to do something with the negative emotions. I used them to move me to pray for others. I still have those friends on my prayer wall in my kitchen, and I pray for them along with many other friends in the midst of illness and the hard things of life.
I had not planned on being in Nashville for the summer or moving there, and cancer surgery definitely wasn’t on my list of things to do! I was planning on hosting Thinplace gatherings on my porch in California and working on my book. I wasn’t planning on dealing with physical therapy and having zero energy or motivation. I needed to regroup and get back to the things that connect me to God.
In the midst of my fear and pain, I honestly couldn’t find God. God had to find me and remind of the role of Thinplace in my life. Thinplace is the Celtic Christian word for the place where heaven and earth touch, where the veil between heaven and earth is thin. It’s the place where you feel closest to God. For the Celtic Christians it was often at the wild edges of the sea, at the ocean, or where the mountains and the forest met or on faraway islands such as Iona and Lindesfarne. That’s where they built their monasteries and their churches. That’s where they helped others and themselves connect with God.
In the midst of grief and pain we all need thinplaces, places where we connect with Jesus. We need places where we find joy, where we can rest and become new. For some of us, our thinplace is a place such as the beach or the mountains. For others, it’s an action where we find peace and connection such as going for a run, hiking in the woods, painting, singing and or playing songs, baking or cooking, building or making something with our hands. These all can be thinplaces that draw us to God. We all need to take the time to build in margin and build thinplaces into our regular lives. So when the crap hits the fan, or when the doctor calls, or when another kind of tragedy strikes, we can cling to Jesus and not lose hope.
Here are a few thinplace things you might develop into practices. Each of these thinplaces was a leaping off point, something God used to connect with me and remind me of Him. These helped me connect with Jesus in the midst of my life interruption.
Get creative. Do something you love! I spent a lot of time drawing…crayons and paper helped me express my pain and fear. Your first step might mean taking the time to rediscover what you like to do.
Be in nature. Get outside; take a walk. Watch and look for beauty. Beauty matters. Look out over a vista, such as the ocean, Lake Michigan or the Cascade Mountains in Washington State. There is something out there bigger than you, bigger than your fear, bigger than your pain. Or you might find beauty in art or music. Beauty is healing.
Laugh. Being around people who make life lighter really helps—and there’s always “The Big Bang Theory”!
Choose a theme song. I chose a song to be my theme song. For me “Let It Go!” from Frozen, “My Deliverer” by Rich Mullins, “Blessed Be Your Name” by Matt Redmond, and “10,000 Reasons” all helped.
Choose a symbol of hope and prayer. For some of us, a symbol would be better than a song. Cardinals (red birds) were my symbol of hope. When I saw them in the yard, I felt it was God’s message to me that life would be OK—a bird of hope. Pick something that gives you hope and helps you believe.
Do something for someone else. Pray for other people. When I was bemoaning my situation, it helped to pray for people who were suffering, too. Allow other people to pray for you, because if you are like me, you might not be able to pray at all for yourself.
Rest. This might seem redundant, but it’s not. So few of us really rest, really breathe; and we all eventually find out that it’s not enough. Begin now to take rest seriously. Plan real no-phone, no-computer, down-time consistently. Let yourself be alone for an extended time. Allow yourself to recover from the pain you currently are experiencing. Learn silence, solitude and Sabbath. They will save your life.
After more than a year, I finally can embrace being cancer-free and am just beginning to experience the gift of life again. I feel as if my soul is resurrecting and beginning again. I want to be my bouncy Tigger self again, but I’m not. I don’t have much margin, extra energy or emotions for people or events. I still get really scared when I have an unexplained ache or pain that the cancer might be back. Sometimes I feel emotionally numb due to all the changes of the past months. I want to write again, produce again; but I feel rather fallow. I am learning that is OK, too. There are seasons for lots of productivity, and there are seasons to receive the gift of being rather than doing. This is hard, especially when I’ve been a great producer all my life. However, I am giving myself permission to be where I am. God is still good. God is still with me and still loves me, though I feel broken, stagnant. In the midst of it all, I believe God still wants me to do my thing…to curate, create worship experiences, help people connect with God and find their thinplace, often right in the middle of their pain.
Lilly Lewin is a worship curator, speaker, author, artist and founder of Thinplace, a pilgrimage of discovery and creativity, and FreeRangeWorship.com She creates sacred spaces (prayer experiences) for a living and helps make church less boring. Her passion is to help people of all ages engage God with all their senses and bring art and artists back to church. She’s currently on pilgrimage in Nashville, Tennessee. She’s on the lookout for a great latte, dark chocolate and Graeter’s Ice Cream.
