1 post tagged “sisters' recovery from breast cancer”
You Will Be Healed!
First published in Unity Magazine, July 2000
When my sister Debra called that July 1997, I cried. She had found a cancerous lump in her left breast and was coming to Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute for care. We hadn’t spoken meaningfully to each other in over twenty years. I’d argued with my parents back then and she had taken their side. She was right, but I felt she had deserted me when I needed her most. I had never really forgiven her, even though we had patched things up over the years. The “dead moose” in our corner was simply ignored. But, with both parents now gone, her call brought me back to what’s truly important in a family: We are there for one another. We have an opportunity to “rub rough stones smooth” and be for one another a healing of our deepest wounds. I was living in Maine at the time but immediately offered to meet her in Boston and stay with her through her arduous six-month recovery regimen.
I remember meeting her at the airport upon her arrival. It was as if God had wiped out all the years of hurt and all the lost love between us and had replaced us with our vulnerable and loving true Selves. We cried. But mostly we were filled with joy that God had—in this most peculiar way—brought us back to each other.
We were scared. But her courage and spirit were more alive than I had seen them in her since childhood. Where we were kids, she had been the neighborhood leader in all our games. Three years older than I am, she climbed trees higher, ran faster, fought harder than any of us in our neighborhood. I idolized her and mimicked many of her attributes. However, years of hard work, a broken marriage, and the deaths of our parents and many of her dearest friends had taken a toll on her. Now, for the first time in many years, I saw her transform herself as God worked a miracle through her.
After getting over the “sticker shock” of rental housing prices, we embraced the excitement of being in Boston, a historical gold mine of our nation’s earliest birthing battles. We delighted in its cobblestone walks, its Freedom Trail and Commons. We traveled to nearby sites in Concord and Lexington. We visited the Salem Witch Museum and the mansions in Newport, Rhode Island.
We frequently stayed in touch with our older sister who was maintaining the family businesses on Mackinac Island in Michigan. Coming from the Midwest, where it’s a day’s journey to get out of the state, we laughed to think that we had traveled through Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island—all in the space of a few hours. It seemed as if every day held a special delight—God’s blessing—and we intended to receive it all. Because it appeared that we may have just a short time left together, we became very present and alive. We learned that every moment is precious. It’s funny how God calls us to our faith, recalls us or challenges us to deepen it. We are so valuable to God that nothing is spared to call us to our perfection.
Along with my other sister, Debra attended Unity Church in Naples, Florida, during their winter season. So when she came to Boston, her first insistence was that we find the Unity Church. Being geographically challenged by Boston’s winding “cow paths,” one-way roads, and often-unmarked streets, I put off her request and took her instead to a church I knew. After about three weeks, my guilt overcame me, and I finally pulled out the Yellow Pages and telephoned Christ Church Unity of Brookline. God’s magic is so complete. The church was a short block from our apartment! We could literally see it when we were looking out our window!
On the first day we attended, Reverend Thomas Newman (Reverend Tom) was speaking. The sermon was about healing. As if God had acted to deepen our belief and to help us grow in courage and experience true reconciliation, at one point Reverend Tom looked directly at my sister and me. We were sitting several rows back from the pulpit. He said, “You will be healed.” We cried. But we already knew it was true. God had brought us back together, and the love that surpasses all understanding was ours. This time we both knew it.
It’s been (ten) years since that time, and my sister’s “clear” reports continue. She has made a number of major life changes. She has sold her business. She dabbles in drawing and other creative expressions. (She took several adult-education art classes in Boston when she was undergoing chemotherapy!) She sees the richness of every day—indeed, God is alive in her.
A continuing legacy of her choice to come to Boston for care is that twice a year she travels here, often with our older sister, for checkups. We have found a treasure in the “three of us.” Although laced with some underlying tension we feel while we are awaiting test results, every trip is an opportunity to be together, to laugh, to remember, to celebrate, to be present to the God within one another. I can never again forget the truth of those magnificent words “For nothing will be impossible with God.” (Lk.1:37).
