Hope

Finding hope during challenging times

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It’s Friday, so normally this would be a fashion post, but considering the state of the world today, writing about clothing seems frivolous and I just couldn’t get my mind (or my heart) around the idea. These days, I just want to wear my favourite jeans and coziest sweaters on repeat.

It’s also the end of the month, so I should be writing a book review, but that isn’t happening either. Oh, I’ve been reading. In fact, I’ve been reading quite a bit, but I’ve been escaping into frivolous, fluffy novels, not the sort of thing that I would bother to review or recommend. 

As I was leaving my doctor’s office yesterday (more about that in a future post), I decided to stop at a thrift store on my way home. I immediately spotted this and it ended up being my only purchase. I’m not sure where it will eventually end up in my newly renovated home, but for now it’s in a spot where I see it every time I enter the kitchen.

You might remember that, for the second year in a row, hope is my one word for the year and if there’s ever a time when we need hope I think it might be now. So how do we find hope and hang onto it amidst the barrage of negative occurrences in the world around us today? One way of doing this is to focus on what is good and right in our day to day experiences. This doesn’t mean living with our heads in the sand, but it might mean less time watching the news or scrolling the internet. 

According to Wikipedia, hope is “an optimistic state of mind”. It’s a glass half full attitude. It’s being able to imagine positive outcomes and when possible, acting to achieve them. That’s what I want the new sign in my kitchen to remind me of.

Like the puddles on the street and the water dribbling out of our downspouts remind me that the long cold winter is almost over and spring is coming, I want to be reminded that there are still more people in the world who want equity and justice than those who are fighting for the opposite. Believing that gives me hope.     

What gives you hope today? 

One word for 2025

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Happy New Year!

For each of the past eight years I’ve chosen one word to inspire or guide me in the new year as well as a scripture verse to go along with it, but this year will be different. Instead of choosing a new word for 2025, I’m going to keep my one word for 2024 for another year.

Hope!

Hope has been such a significant and meaningful word for me for the past year that I’m not ready to let it go and focus on another.

The New Oxford American Dictionary defines hope as “a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen”. That meaning is definitely part of the reason that I originally chose it as my one word. There are many things that I hope for in 2025. I hope that my family is healthy and happy. I hope that my own health remains stable and that hubby and I can make the trips that we are planning. I hope that the renos on our house that will begin in a couple of weeks turn out well. Yes, I hope for many things, but there is a hope that is so much greater than any of these.

The Biblical word hope is much more than just wishful thinking. From the Hebrew word tikvah, it’s an expectation, a certainty, a strong expression of faith. It’s confidence that God is who He says He is and can do what He says He will do. That’s the hope that I hold fast to; a hope that doesn’t depend on my circumstances.

Last year, I had a difficult time choosing a Bible verse to go along with my one word because there were so many possibilities. I finally settled on two of them. Romans 5:13 says “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” and the first part of Hebrews 6:19 reads “We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.”  This year, even though I’m keeping my one word for another year, I decided to choose a different verse to go with it. Again, I pondered several possibilities and finally chose Romans 12:12. 

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What do you hope for in 2025?

Have you chosen a word for the new year? 

When the church disappoints

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This topic has been weighing heavily on my heart for the past couple of days. I don’t know whether I’ll be able to do it justice or not, but since writing is the best way I know to process heavy things and I need to get this off my chest, I’ll give it my best.

I know I’m not the only one feeling completely disheartened by the results of this week’s election in the US. There is no question that we are living in difficult times. What disturbs me most and what has prompted me to write this post is the fact that the election was won with the support of so many so-called evangelical Christians.

There was a time when I might have used that term to describe myself, but I no longer do. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not abandoning my faith. I’m still a Christian although the term that I prefer is Christ-follower. I will not, however, call myself an evangelical Christian. There is no way that I can possibly identify with the overwhelming number of evangelicals who bow down in adoration to a convicted felon, a racist, a misogynist, a liar. How is it that they can possibly believe that God is pleased with their choice? How can they have been so deceived?

Scripture tells us that, as Christians, we are to be “the pleasing aroma of Christ” (2 Corinthians 2:15-16), but frankly, something smells really bad right now!

The Christian church has a long history of going wrong. From the slaughter of Jews and the destruction of their communities during the Crusades to the devastating effect of church-run residential schools on our Indigenous population in the past century, the church has missed the mark in big ways and small.

There’s a common saying amongst believers that the reason there are no perfect churches is that there are no perfect people. That’s true, of course. The church is a collection of sinners, of failures, of flawed human beings, but I think that sometimes we like to use that truth to excuse the inexcusable.

I know that I’m painting the church with a broad brush here. Certainly there are individual congregations or individuals within congregations that are as disappointed as I am with the outcome of the recent election. So how do we respond? What do we do when the church disappoints?

Do we bail out? Do we turn our backs on the church and walk away? Hebrews 10:24-25 advises us to “consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another“. If there’s ever a time when we need encouragement, it’s now!  So no, I don’t advise abandoning the church altogether. We’re living in a post Christian era. Clearly the recent election outcome is just one more sign that society is moving farther and farther away from the teachings of Jesus. Whether it’s in a formal church setting or some other kind of gathering, we need one another.

Personally, I will pray and I will continue to nurture my own relationship with Christ, the all-sufficient one. After all, the church is not the saviour of the world and whether or not he would agree, the president-elect isn’t either. That is solely Jesus’ role.

Colossians 3:15 tells us to “let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful.” (italics are mine) We can fight our disappointment with gratitude remembering that even in the midst of a world that seems so wrong, we have much to be thankful for.

And finally, let’s not give in to fear. One of my favourite verses, Isaiah 41:10, says, “So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”

As the Jim Bailey song says, “I don’t know what the future holds, but I know who holds the future”. In days that seem dark, that gives me a glimmer of hope.

Book of the month – September 2024

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Hope for the Best, Plan for the Rest

Dr. Sammy Winemaker and Dr. Hsien Seow

Screenshot 2024-09-09 at 11.49.03 AMBeing diagnosed with a life-changing illness can be completely overwhelming. In Hope for the Best, Plan for the Rest, Drs. Sammy Winemaker and Hsien Seow offer a valuable guide to help patients and families deal with their new reality. Combining their decades of palliative care research and experience caring for seriously ill patients and harnessing the advice of thousands of patients, they offer 7 keys for navigating a life-changing diagnosis. With real-life stories, tips, and exercises, these compassionate experts empower patients with practical tools to help them successfully navigate the health care system with knowledge and confidence.

The 7 Keys:

  1. Walk Two Roads. Hope for the best, and plan for the rest. Toggle between being realistic and being hopeful.
  2. Zoom Out. Understand the big picture of your illness and what might lie ahead.
  3. Know Your Style. Review your past patterns for insights into how you will journey through your illness. Identify your coping strategies and your ways of processing information.
  4. Customize Your Order. Communicate your wishes, values, and beliefs to help tailor your care plan to your preferences.
  5. Anticipate Ripple Effects. Recognize that those caring for you will also need to be supported.
  6. Connect the Dots. Play a central role in coordinating your care (or identify someone who can).
  7. Invite Yourself. Speak up. Initiate conversations about what to expect and advocate for yourself.

These 7 keys are not steps or stages to be followed in a particular order, but are meant to be blended together and used as needed. After devoting one chapter to each of the keys, the writers wrap up with a chapter entitled Putting It All Together and then two final chapters that deal in more detail with the late and end stages of disease and the actual process of dying. They caution their readers to read those two chapters only if they feel comfortable doing so. The book would be a complete and helpful tool without them, but personally I found both chapters informative and reassuring.

This book, published in 2023, wasn’t available ten years earlier when I received my first cancer diagnosis. Looking back, I think that over time I implemented most of the keys either intuitively or through bits and pieces of advice that I received along the way, but how much better it would have been to have a book like this one to guide my way. It’s a book about hope (my one word for 2024) in the face of uncertainty. It’s about living well, being fully informed, and getting the best care available. It’s about being a whole person and not just a patient. It’s a call for patient-led, patient-centred health care.

Not really a fashion post

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logo-by-samI expected the blog to be quieter than usual over the summer months. In fact, I warned you about that at the end of this post back in June. I didn’t expect it to be totally silent for the past three weeks though! The fact that we’ve only been home for a total of six days during that time has had much to do with that, but there’s also been the thought that I don’t want to write and post simply for the sake of writing and posting. I don’t want to contribute to the “noise” of social media unless I actually have something worth saying.

When I introduced Fashion Friday back in March of 2016, I wondered how long I’d be able to keep it going. How soon would I run out of things to write about? More than eight years later, I’m actually surprised that it’s lasted this long! While I’m not ready to retire the topic yet, I do admit that I’m finding it more and more difficult to come up with new and interesting content. This might mean some changes to the blog in coming months, but at the moment that’s just something I’m mulling over. In the meantime, there will be a real Fashion Friday post next week that will look at some trends for fall.

One thing I tend to steer away from on the blog is politics. As a Canadian, I’m watching from the sidelines as the campaign south of our border unfolds, but I realize that its outcome affects all of us. We’re part of a global community.

I was especially inspired by former first lady Michelle Obama’s emotional, but fiery speech at the DNC in Chicago on Tuesday. If you haven’t watched her speech, it’s well worth tuning in for the entire 20 minutes here. Hope is indeed making a comeback! Hope is my one word for 2024 and for me it has been an especially meaningful one.

While this isn’t really a fashion post, I must make mention of the stunning outfit that Michelle Obama chose for her speech. There was clearly symbolism in the futuristic design of the midnight blue MONSE Resort 2025 Crisscross Jacket and Tuxedo Pant as she spoke about hope for the future of her nation.  “In 77 days, we have the power to turn our country away from the fear, division, and smallness of the past. We have the power to marry our hope with our action.”

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Clothe me in peace, hope, and inner strength

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This will not be a fashion post in the traditional sense. I won’t be showing you an outfit today or giving any style advice. I’ve held off on writing an update about my health since undergoing the TheraSphere treatment on my liver on March 11 because I needed time to wrestle with what’s been happening. Time to figure out how to “wear” the latest news.

The treatment itself went very well. I was in and out of the hospital in approximately eight hours and walked away feeling pretty good. A CT scan following the treatment showed that the vast majority of the radioactive microspheres that were injected during the treatment had been deposited on target at the site of the largest tumour on my liver while a minimal amount had reached a second smaller tumour and surrounding tissue. This was exactly what was hoped for. 

Had that been all that the scan showed, I would have weathered the post treatment fatigue and mild nausea with ease, but unfortunately, it also showed a nodule elsewhere in my abdomen that has grown significantly since a previous scan five months ago. That raises concerns that the cancer has spread. Knowing the importance of being proactive and advocating for myself, I contacted my specialist’s office as soon as I read the scan report and was able to have a phone consult with her earlier this week. She is going to refer my case to the medical oncology team asking them to review my file and make recommendations. 

So how do I deal with all of this? 

I feel a bit like I did at the beginning of this journey over 10 years ago. Once again, I’m facing a huge unknown. At that time, I prayed for strength to walk this pathway with grace and I continue to ask for that. In my morning prayer time this week, I’ve been meditating on a snippet of scripture from 2 Peter 2:19. “… a man is slave to whatever has mastered him.” Whatever happens, I do not want to become a slave to fear! 

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You may remember that my one word for 2024 is hope. This beautiful graphic, which I found on Rare Disease Day, perfectly combines my word with the zebra ribbon representing rare diseases and more specifically, neuroendocrine cancer (NETS) which, though no longer considered rare, is definitely not well-known. Though the pathway may become rough, I am not giving up hope!  

Clothe me in peace, hope, and inner strength.

Let that be my style! 

One word for 2024

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At the beginning of each year since 2017, I’ve chosen one word to inspire or guide me throughout the new year as well as a scripture verse to go along with it. My word for 2023 was contentment and the Bible verse, Philippians 4:12b. “I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.” I wanted to be able to say with the apostle Paul that I had learned to be content regardless of my circumstances. 

Everything went pretty well for about eight months. In late March, hubby came through his prostate surgery well. We had a good summer season. We camped, hiked, kayaked and played lots of golf. Everything seemed to be going well and contentment came easily. Then things started to unravel. I worried about a close family member who was going through a very difficult time. Hubby and I encountered more issues with our health and life seemed to become a long series of trips to the city for medical appointments. I no longer came to the end of a day with a feeling of quiet happiness and satisfaction. Instead, I was stressed! Tense! I berated myself for having had the audacity to choose a word like contentment! How could I possibly be content in my present circumstances? Thankfully, time, prayer, wise counsel, and an excellent massage therapist helped get me back on track. Now that the year has ended, I think I can say that I’ve come closer to being able to be content in any and every situation. I’m definitely still a work in progress though! 

It was during this dark time that I settled on my one word for 2024. 

Hope! 

The New Oxford American Dictionary defines hope as “a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen”. That meaning is definitely part of the reason that I chose hope as my word for the new year. I hope that 2024 is a good year for all of us. I hope that my family is happy and healthy. I hope that the embolization that I’ll be having to tackle the tumour on my liver is successful and that my cancer doesn’t grow or spread any further. I hope that hubby and I can travel more in the coming year (and not just to medical appointments!) Yes, I hope for many things, but there is a hope that is so much greater than any of these. 

This year, while my word came to me easily, choosing a scripture verse to go with it was more difficult because there were so many possibilities. I finally settled on two of them, Romans 15:13 and Hebrews 6:19a.

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

and

“We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.” 

The Biblical word hope is so much more than just wishful thinking. From the Hebrew word tikvah, it’s an expectation and a strong expression of faith. It’s a certainty that we can hold fast to. It’s confidence that God is who He says He is and can do what He says He will do. My hope, my certainty, is that some glorious day when the trials of this life are over, I will see Him face-to-face. He guaranteed it! This hope gives me strength to face whatever happens between now and then. It isn’t dependent on my circumstances. As I learn to depend more and more on this tikvah hope, the contentment that I yearned for in 2023 should become more and more real in my life!

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What do you hope for in 2024?

Have you chosen a word for the new year? 

 

Book of the month – April 2023

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From the Ashes

Jesse Thistle

9781982101213This month’s book was a difficult read because of the content, but at the same time, it was difficult to put down!

Abandoned at the age of 3, Jesse Thistle and his two older brothers were taken into care by the Saskatchewan Children’s Aid Society. After a short time in foster care, they were raised by their paternal grandparents in Brampton, Ontario. In his teens, struggling with the effects of generational trauma and loss as well as his identity as an Indigenous youth, Jesse succumbed to a self-destructive cycle of drug and alcohol addiction and petty crime that eventually led to a decade of homelessness.

Finally, realizing that he was going to die if he didn’t turn his life around, Jesse entered Harvest House, a residential rehab centre and began his healing journey. Today he is a husband, a father, an assistant professor at York University, and is working on his PhD. Once a high school dropout, he won a Governor General’s Academic Medal in 2016 and is a Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation Scholar and a Vanier Scholar. He is also the author of the Definition of Indigenous Homelessness in Canada, published through the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness.

It was never Jesse’s intention to write a memoir. The fourth step in his addiction recovery program involved writing a “fearless moral inventory” as part of making sense of all that had happened to him. In 2016, the Toronto Star published a profile of him that led to Simon & Schuster approaching him about a potential book deal. Fleshing out that original moral inventory became the book in which, through both poetry and prose, he details devastatingly painful scenes with brutal honesty and bluntness. It is, at times, a gut-wrenching read, but it is also a story of resilience and hope. As I read it, I couldn’t help thinking of all the other Jesses living on our streets and in our prisons. Every one of them has a story, but not all will end well.

One such story is that of Jesse’s father.

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Cyril “Sonny” Thistle, who was born April 3, 1954, was last seen in 1981 in Brampton, Ontario, near McLaughlin Road and Queen Street East. At the time he went missing, he was described as having a fair complexion, light brown hair, a thick moustache, and a gap between his top two front teeth. He was 26 years old.

The Thistle family has been trying to locate Sonny for several years, without any success. Jesse and his brothers desperately want to know what happened to their father.

Anyone with information on Thistle is asked to contact investigators at 905-453-2121 ext. 2233. Anonymous information may also be submitted by calling Peel Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477) or by visiting www.peelcrimestoppers.ca.

Hitting the Covid-19 wall

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Do you feel like you’ve hit a wall where Covid-19 is concerned? Have you simply had enough with all the restrictions imposed by the pandemic? I know I have!

I admit that as retirees, we’ve had it easier than many. We don’t have jobs or a business to worry about or children at home. My father, our last remaining parent, passed away ten days before the World Health Organization declared the rapidly spreading coronavirus outbreak a pandemic, so we don’t have elderly parents in care facilities to worry about. Nevertheless, I’ve definitely hit the proverbial wall. Like many others, I’m tired and frustrated.

Experts tell us that this isn’t unusual. Dr. Aisha Ahmad, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto who has has conducted fieldwork on conflict dynamics in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Lebanon, Mali, and Kenya, recently summed it up this way: “The 6 month mark in any sustained crisis is always difficult. We have all adjusted to this “new normal”, but might now feel like we’re running out of steam. Yet, at best, we are only 1/3 the way through this marathon. How can we keep going? First, in my experience, this is a very normal time to struggle or slump. I always hit a wall 6 months into a tough assignment in a disaster zone. The desire to “get away” or “make it stop” is intense. I’ve done this many times, and at 6 months, it’s like clockwork.”

With the pandemic dragging on and no end in sight, it’s easy to become discouraged. In our part of the world summer is over. The days are getting shorter and the hours of darkness longer. We’ve enjoyed beautiful fall weather throughout the month of September, but the long cold winter is just around the corner. People will soon feel more shut in than ever. Add to that the fact that Thanksgiving is almost upon us (we celebrate it in October in Canada) and not long after that, Christmas. Those are times when families usually come together to celebrate, but much of the spread of Covid-19 over the summer has been the result of family gatherings. There’s a lot of uncertainty in many families about how to observe these holidays this year. 

One of my greatest sources of frustration is the urge to travel. It may not make sense to a lot of people, but wanderlust (a deep, uncontrollable desire to travel and explore the world) is real. With interprovincial travel discouraged and international borders closed, I’m beginning to feel trapped. Yesterday, I jumped in the vehicle and drove down country roads just to try to appease that feeling! 

Then there’s frustration over the divisiveness of this thing. With more than 1 million deaths due to Covid worldwide, there are still those who believe that it’s a hoax or a conspiracy cooked up by “the” government to take control of our lives. I still haven’t figured out which government they’re referring to or why they think that all the governments of the world would come together to destroy their own economies! I was actually told yesterday that it’s all a plot to derail the upcoming election in the United States! What ever happened to calamity drawing people together? It certainly hasn’t happened this time! 

Anyway, enough of my ranting! Thankfully, Dr. Ahmad also offers hope. “This is my first pandemic, but not my first 6 month wall. So, what can I share to help you? First, the wall is real and normal. And frankly, it’s not productive to try to ram your head through it. It will break naturally in about 4-6 weeks if you ride it out.” I sure hope she’s right! 

In the meantime, what can we do to help alleviate that hitting the wall feeling? Nicole Haughton, a registered psychologist based in Toronto, suggests that that maintaining a proper diet, exercising regularly, going out for fresh air, and engaging in spiritual practices or mindful meditation can be beneficial to mental health during this time.

For me, writing about my feelings is cathartic, but here are a few other suggestions:

  • Give yourself something to look forward to. I can’t plan a major trip right now, but I can plan an overnight getaway for our upcoming anniversary. 
  • Step back from social media and limit the amount of news you consume. I definitely need to take this one to heart!
  • Clean out or reorganize something. It could be the kitchen cupboards, a closet, a filing cabinet, or the garage. The simple act of bringing organization to chaos where we’re able to can be very freeing. I did a lot of this back in the early days of Covid-19, but it’s been awhile. Now it’s time to do my seasonal wardrobe switch and reorganize my closet for winter. Having some “new” clothes to wear might also be a pick me up. 
  • Start a gratitude journal. It’s easy to spiral into negativity, but even in these strange and somewhat difficult days, we all have much to be thankful for.  

Finally, psychologist, Dr. Heather McLean, asks her clients to rate themselves on this scale and tells them, “If you see you are on the low end of any of these these, get busy and problem solve, think outside the box, and ask others for help on how to fix it.” 

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Though the pandemic is likely going to be with us much longer than anyone hoped or predicted, I do trust that it will come to an end. For now, I just need to focus on getting through this blasted six month wall instead of bashing my head against it!

The dots keep disappearing!

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My life is broken into 6 month, 3 month, and 28 day units with a treatment every 6 months, a scan every 3 months, and an injection every 28 days. Last Tuesday, was treatment day followed by a scan early the next morning. I usually get the results right away, but this time the doctor wasn’t going to be in until later in the day and because no one was expecting anything worrisome, it was suggested that I not wait around to talk with him. Instead, I got the results over the phone today and they were definitely worth waiting for!

Six months ago, we heard the good news that one of the five tumours that I had at diagnosis was no longer showing up on the scan. There were only four black dots instead of five. This time, apparently there are only three! Another one seems to have disappeared! The primary (original) tumour in my colon as well as one of the three on my liver are no longer visible! That doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re gone. They could be, but what we do know for sure is that, at the very least, they’re so dead that they are no longer absorbing any of the radioactive substance that I’m treated with! In addition, two of the remaining three tumours are smaller than they were 6 months ago! That’s a lot of exclamation marks, but that’s a lot of good news!

My cancer is still considered incurable but when we spoke with the doctor prior to Tuesday’s treatment, he did tell us that people who get as far as I have (8 treatments) with this kind of success seem to have a very good chance of living a quality life for a long time. That’s a pretty vague prognosis, but it’s about the best they can say at this point and it’s good enough for me. It’s called hope; a lot more hope than I had a couple of years ago!

I would be remiss not to mention that though I have utmost appreciation for the medical advances that have brought us to this point and for those who are involved in providing my care, I also serve a miracle working God “who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine” and I give him full credit and glory for today’s good news! (Ephesians 3:20)