I remember the first time I ever passed through the Appalachians. I was eleven. I was born in the shadows of the towering Rockies, living nestled in the suburbs of Denver. My dad had joined the Navy when I was eight, and we had led vagabond lives since- first one house, then another, as he completed his training. The training completed, he headed out on his first assignment. We, in turn, returned to Colorado for a time, to visit with family, to tie up many loose ends, and begin our new Navy life in earnest. We drove across the country to head to the new place on the East Coast. The endless, monotonous flatlands of Kansas lulled my siblings and I into sleep as my mother drove. Missouri and Arkansas didn’t make much of an impression on me, except for when we crossed the mighty Mississippi River as we crossed into Tennessee. We’d manage about a state a day, finally pulling in to collapse into sleep in some hole in the wall motel off an exit. Tennessee itself took a very long day and I remember drowsing through most of the afternoon with heat and boredom.

She shook me awake not too long after we passed through mid-state.  Look, Joy. Look at the mountains in the distance. I distinctly remember being pretty annoyed at being woken for what, in my eleven year old mind, looked distinctly like foothills. I told my mother so, in annoyed, sleepy voice, and she laughed. I was under-awed by those ancient and bowed mountains, covered with green. They had no granite peaks, no snow caps, no startling thousand foot drops, no aspens. They weren’t mountains. They weren’t home. 

I wouldn’t remember much about the Appalachians for many years, except for the occasional times we passed back through them on our way out West over the years on vacation. I preferred the more northern route through West Virginia and Kentucky, Ohio, when we did go, because the mountains were higher there. It wasn’t and couldn’t be my beloved Rockies, but at least the views were better.

My teenage years were very restless ones. I had lived on the East Coast for nearly ten years, but I was still an outsider. The rest of my family adapted well to the new challenges, or at least, they seemed to. I felt rootless. I would pay very little attention on those long car trips, always aching to cross the Colorado line, always straining my eyes to watch how the land would begin to fold slowly, and then more suddenly and shockingly, as we made the trek into Denver and back out again, headed for my Grandparents. Those mountains were my home.

Until they weren’t anymore.

It happened all of the sudden, the last family trip we took together before I would head off to college.

There was a ridge on the outskirts that I loved topping that last night of travelling. We always seemed to get into Colorado late in the afternoons and would be hitting the outskirts at twilight. It was always a beautiful sight to me, the twinkling lights of the city, the gray green foothills behind, the sun setting behind those dark sentinels of granite. It was how I knew I was almost there. Until the last time. The last time, we made that curve, topped that hill, and the scene laid out below was alien. Denver had quite literally moved up the foothills, obliterating them- there was no divide between urban and wild anymore. Everywhere there was dust, as years and years of drought had taken toll. The aspens were scraggly, and the Rockies had this horrible scarred appearance to them, shorn and naked as they were of vegetation that particular year. I kept telling myself I was too old to cry, they were just stupid mountains, but oh I wanted to, so badly. It was such a shock. It had also been many years since I had been there, and I realized in a rush that Colorado would likely never be my home again, and it hadn’t been for quite a few years. I just hadn’t realized it until that moment.

The years that followed that Colorado trip were some of the scariest, most tumultuous years of my life, as it is for all teenagers that are turning adults faster than they can keep up with it. I would make some disastrous and not-so-disastrous decisions in those years, all fueled by the fact that I felt I had no ties, no roots. I can see that all now. It’s always easier to see the reasons, looking back.

I would eventually find myself tucked into another fold of mountains- the Appalachians- when I began college. I resented them for it, for their rounded, smoky, blue-ness. I’d occasionally beg my friend turned boyfriend turned fiance to drive me up to Sam’s Gap in North Carolina so that I could gaze out over miles and miles of quiet peaks and imagine that they were just a bit rockier, a bit grayer.

When the whole world would crash down around our shoulders, my husband and I would make a long looping trip up into the Highlands that straddle three states, all hills and valleys and winding mountain roads. We’d drive and talk and breathe and stop and just stare at the majesty laid out below us. Before I even realized it, those mountains became more home to me than any home I had known previously. Now, my roots lie deep in those ancient hills. My children were born under their stars. There is a piece of wilderness there that has been woven into my blood- I’ve made love in those hills, I’ve buried a child there. The dirt and the cosmos of the place echo in my veins. I may not be there right now, living at a river delta on the East Coast, but my soul walks those hills every night as I sleep. My ancient hills. My home.

Every four or five months or so, the pull gets too strong, and we load up and make the days trip, spend a week. Sure, we could go on a ‘proper’ vacation, but we’d rather go home. Rather be with those we love. Fill up the tank, so to speak. It’s usually a crazy jumble of things and not very vacation-y at all- helping friends move, helping aging parents fix house things they can’t anymore, those sort of things- but we don’t mind. We belong here and they belong to us and it’s home. Do we wish we could plan it better sometimes? Sure. But the harrum-scarrum of it is half the fun. We come home oddly refreshed, when you consider what we’re up to when we’re up there, and we can carry on for a while longer. Until we can’t anymore, and those mountains call us back with their beautiful, ancient, come-home song. Beautiful mountains that they are, bowed by age. I hope I learn their song well.

“I’ve come to believe that in the very midst of the burning dumpster fire of the Not-Yet the practice of cultivating joy and happiness, noticing the good and the beautiful and the true and the pure isn’t an act of betrayal of our solidarity but instead a very real act of prophesy and invitation to the Soon-Coming-And-Right-Now-Already of the Kingdom of God. We are sowing seeds of faithfulness to the way it will be, for the vision of the world we want to see come to pass, world without end.”[…]”In a way, it reminds me of stories my Granny used to tell me of the war years, how they made every effort to keep things as normal as possible to keep not only their own spirits up but because they believed it would demoralize the enemy, how even the regular ordinary beautiful things became not less important because of their suffering but even more important.” – Sarah Bessey

I’ve thought a lot about fear lately. It’s hard not to miss its effects in an election year, in a hot, oppressive summer that bakes the ground to barrenness. There’s a lot of epithets that get slung ’round by this person and that person, our tilt a whirl media frothing at the mouth. Fear’s ugly fangs seem quite obvious in that context. Less apparent though, is how fear slithers about our ankles, tripping us up at the first sign of trouble in our daily walking out of our lives, our purpose. How it crushes you until you can barely breathe. It’s insidiously quiet and categorically destructive.

I’m looking over the wreckage and it’s sobering.

I wish our American health system had better words for things, better bedside manner. Learned how to talk to the humans sitting behind the diagnosis. Learned to talk about the hope instead of the fear, learned to talk holistically instead of systematically.

We’ve had no fewer than twenty seven major medical events in the last few years (and more than a smattering of major life events separate from that, financial reversals, etc):

Feb 2008- James- Bladder cancer scare
Aug 2008- Joy- miscarriage, loss of a child, surgery
Nov 2008- James hospitalized- pneumonia- four days
July 2009- James hospitalized- pneumonia- one week
Jan 2010- Lorelei hosptialized- staph infection (eye)- one week
Nov 2010- Joy hospitalized- pneumonia- two and a half weeks
Feb 2014- Ellianna hospitalized- mononucleosis- one week
June 2014- Ellianna diagnosed with Iron Deficiency Anemia- biopsy-cancer scare
Aug 2014-  Ellianna diagnosed with Celiacs
Sept 2014- Josiah hospitalized- GI Issues- one week- biopsy- cancer scare
Jan 2015- Josiah hospitalized- GI Issues- five days
Jan 2015- Ellianna begins iron platelet/plasma infusions/transfusions
Mar 2015- Josiah hospitalized- GI Issues- one week
Mar 2015- Ellianna finishes iron transfusions
Apr 2015- Josiah hospitalized- GI Issues- four days
Apr 2015- James- knee injury
May 2015- Joy- cancer scare– masses found and removed
Oct 2015- Joy- ER- Kidney malfunction
June 2015- Josiah- cecostemy tube surgery- four days
Nov 2015- James- back injury
Jan 2016- Josiah- ER Visit- Cecostemy tube complications- 30 hours
Feb 2016- Josiah- more nerve damage discovered (GI)
Mar 2016- Josiah- Sedated MRI
Apr 2016- Josiah- exploratory surgery- outpatient
June 2016- Ellianna- Periodic fever syndrome diagnosed (UVA Trip)
June 2016- Lorelei- anaphylactic reaction- ER
July 2016- Josiah- arm through a plate glass window- Two ERs, Two ambulance rides.

An average of three or more major medical events each YEAR.

Of all those, maybe five or six of them happened in such a way that we knew what was happening and felt comfortable with both the treatment and what the doctors were telling us; that is, while the news may have been bad, the doctors laid it out clearly in a comprehensive way that did not solicit fear or many unanswered questions.

I highlighted cancer scare for a reason. We have had friends and family near and dear to us be diagnosed with cancer. We’ve watched as friends have died of cancer. We’ve watched our extended family go through a very long journey with a child with cancer. Cancer is scary for a reason- if it isn’t fatal, it is a long, protracted suffering that might lead to healing or might not. When that word gets pulled out of the ether in a medical office, the connotation is clearly and dreadfully highlighted. When the word biopsy is mentioned, it, too, has a frightening connotation. And friends, our medical establishment brings the word up far too often, far too quickly, often out of context. I don’t say that lightly.

Having been subjected to a cancer scare four times now, it’s the worst four to six weeks of your life. You walk into an office and think that sure, you’re sick, but everything is okay and the doctor will figure out what to do, and then five seconds into the discussion, “We think it might be cancer” blindsides you. It’s bad enough when it is yourself. It’s another thing entirely when it’s your child. I can’t express to you the terror that rolls down your spine and makes you break out in a cold sweat. Our American medical system needs to have a better approach to health care, period, and we especially need to talk about how to talk about illness in a holistic way. Period.

When I look over that list, so many things war for my attention. I see the wreckage fear has played. I see just as clearly every single place God was faithful to us, where God provided for us when we thought we couldn’t handle one. more. thing. They present to me in a synergistic way. I couldn’t separate the two opposing viewpoints if I tried. I see why both my husband and I struggle with anxiety, a PTSD of sorts when it comes to medical things and mail boxes (where those awful, dreadful bills come from). It wasn’t all in my head; it really happened. It defines so much of who we are now, so much of who we’ve become, our relationships with each other, and our friendships.

I see how fear has been driving me to run. 

I’m tired of running.

I needed closure. I needed to turn to the next chapter. Our current reality probably won’t change much any time soon, but I needed to take a step back and re-focus my attentions. I spent time going through all of my social media (including this blog) and archived vast swaths of our story from the last few years. I read back through one hundred and forty blog entries in which I basically said the same thing over and over.  I’m scared.

It is a very raw, very precious story that needs to belong to just us now. Sharing our story at the time was the absolutely right thing to do, and it is just as absolutely right now that it returns into privacy. I don’t know what I’ll do with it, if anything, in the months and years ahead. Maybe it just gets kept for our children when they get older. Maybe I write a proper book, like people have been encouraging me to do for years. I don’t know. But I need the closure here. I need this to be my safe space once again, where I can be myself, not completely subsumed and defined by this medical tiltawhirl. We are working on a path forward, and I can’t focus on the things I need to do if I’m constantly looking backwards. It’s over. It’s done. We have two chronically ill kids. The financial wreckage of the last three years will take years to put to rights. This changed our life. But it is not who we are. It is not who I am. I will not be defined by fear.

I’m not scared anymore. I’m done.

I’m using normal as a defense against the Enemy. He has no power here, and I will combat him with all the things that bring life to me and death to him: the sound of my child’s laughter, the way a paint brush moving across a page fills the whole sky with hope. The beautiful, the true, the pure.

I’m moving on.