Roses from Ashes, Part 1

There are a few experiential moments in life that are larger than life; they influence our perspective and color our choices. One for me happened just a few days ago when I went with my stepdaughter Erica to a cancer center. Erica is undergoing treatment for breast cancer just months after her own mother's death to lung cancer, and the day following her chemotherapy I accompanied her to the infusion room where she received a follow-up shot. (Living three thousand miles away, I have not been a part of her cancer path, but I did share a few short days with her over our Christmas break. She is a brave and inspiring woman.)

The twenty minutes I spent in that room changed me more than a thousand chapel sermons about compassion ever could. Every few feet around the perimeter another dear human being sat in a recliner, linked by IV tubing to chemotherapy medications. Most were sleeping; a few were reading. Only one woman spoke to me, a leukemia patient who had been undergoing treatment for seven years. She smiled at me, explaining that she hoped her hair would last long enough this time to donate to Locks of Love. I didn't dare invade anyone else's privacy enough to look very closely, but I wondered about each of them. Who would conquer their cancer? Who would fail? What important or routine events in their lives were disturbed by the relentless slowness of cancer care? The contrast of the drip-by-drip medication and the fatigue all around me with the cars speeding obliquely past just twenty feet away on the highway was startling. Just moments before I had been one of those fast cars. Now, whenever I pass I cancer treatment center I will bow my head a little and pray.