Ale La (Go There)

in·ter·ces·sion /ˌin(t)ərˈseSHən/ noun - the action of intervening on behalf of another Last week, before flying out to California, I was awake in the middle of the night, feeling my baby move inside my growing belly bump and crying into a pillow. My friend Megan had just been told that the doctors thought her baby boy had cancer. This precious boy has eyes that light up when he smiles at you. He is the epitome of an almost three year old; he is learning to share, he loves being in any kind of water, and would watch episodes of Dinosaur King on repeat for hours if you let him. Cancer. I can’t even process that word when it is attached to Lester, and now the diagnosis has been confirmed as Acute Myeloid Leukemia. And so I pray, and in my prayers I invite other people to pray with me, but what those prayers look like might not be what you would expect. What I think of as prayer has changed a lot over the past 7 years. I used to think that ...

“You are dust and to dust you shall return, repent and believe in the gospel.” Wednesday was my first time kneeling and receiving ashes on my forehead, and I felt an unexpected prickle of tears in my eyes to hear the words of the benediction spoken over me. I felt like staying there, knees to the floor, and letting some of the tears fall freely, but instead got up to make space for the next person who was coming forward to kneel down. I am not given much to thinking about my personal sins and failings. I know that I have them, I just don’t usually give them the space and attention they deserve. You see, I really like thinking that I am Right , and sometimes I am smacked in the face with the deeper repercussions of this mentality. Last November, we were talking to my brother Michael on FaceTime and he asked what the biggest change had been since we got married. Without thinking I blurted out, “I don’t get to be right all the time!” Michael had a long laugh...

I came home last night after another day of hospice work tired and worn. The emotion always seems to hit me after I leave a death, after hugging the family, after calling everyone who needs to know, and after all the paperwork has been turned in at the office. Afterwards, my thoughts take a different shape. I think about breath and the still silence in the room after it is gone, and I think about the difference that I have seen in some rooms, full of peace and tears and quiet, versus others, full of bargaining and fighting and struggle. Fear of death seems to be a part of what makes these scenes so different from each other. I had a patient once who would ask me with every visit, “What do you think about god?” She told me that she was convinced that there would not be enough space for her soul in the universe after she died, and that she didn’t think that God was big enough to hold “all the souls of the people and animals that have ever existed.” She pictured all of ...

Grandma Penny is not my Grandma. But she is grandmother to several of my dear friends and great-grandmother to baby Lester, who calls me Tia, so that makes me feel as though we are related. On a deeper level, Grandma Penny is also a kind of spiritual grandmother. She and her husband led a Bible study that my parents went to when they were young, and so many of my memories of going to church growing up have her in the background with her hands raised and head bowed. We love so many of the same people, and, for so long, I have watched her love the same God. Last November we were at baby Lester’s first birthday party, and there were many conversations swirling through the air. I had just come from the kitchen with my plate of food and sat down in a likely, out-of-the-way corner of the room. I was ready to eat quietly and watch all the people for a little bit when Grandma Penny suddenly reached across the inches of blue carpet that separated us and put her hand on my knee. “How ...

A week and a half ago we lost my precious nieces. Fiona Kate and Guenevere Anne were born at 24 weeks, and were only with us only for a day.  It has been devastating to walk through this time together. But we are together, as a family and as a community, so that is a comfort. It also has reminded me of how little I know, as a nurse and as a person, and how many questions I still have.  I wrote this as a part of my processing and read it at the memorial service last Saturday.  Love to all, Amanda I’ve told a lot of people that I don’t have words this week. The questions “How are you?” or “How are your brother and sister in law doing?” don’t seem to have any real answers. Tired. Shocked. Numb. Broken. We could try some of those words. But, they don’t seem to fit, and neither do the things that we say to try and feel better, because the truth is that words cannot touch this pain. It seems that my “prayer life” is mirroring my real life, and I al...