Thinking of Connie

Its funny how often I go between my more personal posts. I look back and see in August, I was hoping for life to hurry up and pass me by... and here, in October the sentiments remain. Sometimes I want to make sure my life has counted for something so much... that I cram every experience I find benficial in. So far what hasn't killed me has made me stronger... but Matt would say that my personality type sees it that way. However, 3 years ago I had a boss who reminded me to "enjoy the journey". Recently I've been spending time once a month with a new friend, Teri Hill, and she encouraged the same. It would be such a waste to fill life with experiences if they didn't have any meaning. If I didn't have time to process them, and find the lessons to be learned, to better prepare for tomorrow, but more importantly- to enjoy today.

My memory haunts me, and I've been thinking a lot about Connie lately. I think this is one event in my life that I'm trying to really take apart... to understand it's significance. Having met Connie over the phone because she was interested in helping at the Children's Home, we ended up meeting for lunch twice. Then it was 9 something at night when I got a call on my cell phone. I answered, and she shared she was at the movies with her husband and son. Her son hadn't been told the news yet, but Connie, in her early 40s, Connie, running 3 miles a day... Connie felt she had no one to turn to, and called me to tell the news she got that day - pancreatic cancer.

Several years ago I had a time in life where you ask those questions of why. I was the one student who was dropped from the intern program, with it went my funding for school. At the same time my dad was receiving diagnosis after diagnosis, all begining when I left from home. I felt in some way that the timing had something to do with why he was sick. To make up for the loss of funding, I graduate from college a year early, missing out on the fun with my friends of a senior year. Matt and I got married, and as we landed in Miami from our honeymoon, I called my mom to tell her we were back. It was in the Miami Airport that I found out my mom had found a lump three weeks before the wedding, and it was breast cancer. Meanwhile I lived 6 hours away in OKC, feeling paralized to help my parents. I remember the long drives in the car when all is silent, and I poured out my heart to God. I wondered what good comes from illness, and why this happened to my devout family, who had done so much to live right, even though we never had it easy. I couldn't see what good could come from this. There were days you had to put on the smile, because everyone was so busy in their normal lives, and I craved what it was like to have normal circumstances.

Today, I can't say it all makes sense. But I now have a gratitude for my experience. I would have never had a clue of what the depths can feel like. I never would have known to be so grateful for health, for life, and another day to live for what we take as normal. I try to live each day in love, so that if there's that one person who is going through that valley, and putting on the face, perhaps I can meet that person and meet them face to face in whatever their circumstance. I want to be hope.

I used to have aspirations for leadership, and those visions were about me. I have days that I get sidetracked, but I hope my life is about love. I hope its about lifting others up, and I can't help but wonder- did that come across to Connie?

Connie and I got together often throughout her illness. I saw from a bystandars perspective how she'd. be in so much pain, on so much morphine, and the dumb waiter at Cheddars never knew and couldn't realize how important it was to serve this woman her glass of water, how important it was to cater to her needs. I didn't desserve to be brought so closely to her inner circle, but she let me. I remember the call in early December. I could barely make out that it was Connie's voice, but she needed me. Matt and I jumped in the car. as we got stuck at a light, and Ambulance whizzed by, and I knew we were heading to the same place. Matt waited in the car, as I went in. As the paramedics worked on Connie, she was in such agony and I held her hand. I prayed by her side. She thought she was going to die, and she called me. They took her in the ambulance and I got her things, locked her house, and called her husband to meet us at the hospital. They finally let me back into her room to be with her. She couldn't get comfortable, and I'll never forget that feeling. She just moaned, she ached. There was no relief in sight, and the doctors would come in, state the obvious " you have pancreatic cancer, and it's one of the most painful cancers, and it's only going to get worse. There's nothing we can do, you should have called hospice". I'm not a violent person, but I could have jumped out of my chair as she writhed in pain. Instead, I got up. She had given up on Chemo, so what little hair had grown in, I began to play with and gentle touched her head, her hair, and she said it felt so good. Randy made it to the hospital. I brought him up to speed, and knew I needed to leave to make a work function in a few hours. That was the last time I saw Connie. For the first time in my life, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt- it's a see you later, and for the first time I fully felt heaven was real.

So as I'm determining what direction my life will take, I have to reconcile this experience to my worldview. Did it matter at that moment my leadership skills? No. What mattered is that I loved.



I think that's all I can do for tonight.