harvest
Gratitude wells up,
flowing out well beyond words,
thanksgiving offered open-palmed to YHWH, Elohim, El Shaddai,
the lover of my soul,
the One who teaches me how to see,
the One who never lets me look away.
~*~
I admit it: Sometimes life hits me, smack in the middle of the day when I least expect it, and I stand there with tears gathering in my eyes, just trying to breathe.
Wednesday I am on my way out the door to school to pick up my kids, carrying too many things in my hands, when the UPS man comes walking my way, smiling, his arms full of packages.
“Can I put these in the garage for you?” He asks genially. Every time this man delivers something to our door he blesses me with his joy, and I doubt he has any idea. And it’s these gripping moments, the ones when I feel like I am suffocating, that make me think maybe I should tell him.
“Oh, that would be great. Thank you so much,” I say, returning the smile.
On the top of the stack, I recognize the white Styrofoam cube that always carries insulin packed inside on cold packs. Neon stickers on the outside warn that the contents should be refrigerated immediately upon receipt. They look stark, glaring, against so much white.
The UPS man walks the long way around the van and places the packages on a step stool near the back door so that I won’t have far to go to get them inside. He explains this pleasantly, his happy tone matter-of-fact, as though it just should be this way. I thank him again, lifting gratitude to God that there are still gentlemen in this world, and that there are still parents trying to raise their boys to be modern-day knights.
I stand there puzzling over the insulin.
“I didn’t order any insulin,” I’m thinking, and then, just like that, it hits me. This week, we transition Zoe’s insulin delivery to an insulin pump. The cube sits full of the vials we need to fill the pump reservoir.
I wave to the UPS driver (I really should ask his name next time) and stand there suddenly in tears.
I can’t believe my baby needs this stuff to live.
The thought comes and goes, a fleeting ache, the echo of a grief long set aside. I see Zoe’s face, those grey-blue eyes, the grin that every day grows more mature. And every so often, I am bruised by knowing what would happen if we were involved in some catastrophe that made it impossible for me to get medication for my children. I wonder, sometimes, what lengths I would go to to try to save them.
Most of the time these days, Zoe manages her diabetes as easily and as routinely as she showers, and dresses, and brushes her teeth. But every once in a while, a shadow crosses her face, and I open my arms for her.
The latest time, we stood in the hospital around a friend’s bed, talking to him about his condition, wishing him well, communicating our sorrow over his pain. In a light-hearted moment, he mentioned that hospital food had undergone some sort of upgrade, that every day he ordered his meals as though he were ordering room service in a hotel. He commented, chuckling over his surprise, that the food actually tasted pretty good.
Zoe had not stepped into a hospital since the day they released her newly diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, but this didn’t even occur to me as we stood there talking to our friend. I didn’t see it the way Zoe must have, quietly sitting against the wall, taking it all in—the bland walls, the cotton hospital gown, the white blanket wrapped around our friend’s legs, the sleepless look in his eyes. I commented that Zoe had gotten similar treatment, had enjoyed pre-ordering her meals when they had finally let her eat. I told our friends about those difficult first days, when Zoe could not sleep, when her starved body longed for food but we had to wait until the toxicity of diabetic ketoacidosis no longer threatened her.
I glanced Zoe’s way and smiled, looking for her to jump into the conversation, to share her experience, but she sat all in shadow, her eyes wide, her shoulders pressed against the wall.
When she caught my gaze, she crumbled. I reached for her, and our friends looked from me to Kevin, confused. I wrapped her tightly up, bending down and over her, as though my body could shield her from the memory. I remember the tears she shed those first days, as though I numbered them myself.
“I don’t want to have diabetes,” she mumbled into my shirt, pressing herself against me in the hospital, covering her face, her eyes. “I don’t need it.”
Sometimes there’s nothing to say. I just squeezed, patting her back the way I did when she cried on my shoulder as an infant and her body shuddered beneath my hand.
I smiled at our friends. “I think it just hit her—being here again, the conversation. She’ll be okay.”
We changed the subject, went on talking about other things, and I held my beautiful baby. My children’s lives have always been too big for my arms. But I hold them still, aware of my own weakness, praying that they will also feel the gentle power of the divine embrace, the strength of the only arms that will ever truly be able to carry them to safety.
I’m fairly certain that Zoe has no idea the number of people she blesses with her sweet smile, nor the souls she lifts by carrying her burdens with joy, nor the lives she touches by loving all the way past difference. As we left the hospital that day, I told her some of that, walking with my arm draped across her shoulders.
“I know it’s hard. And I know it stinks. But you are doing such a good job managing your diabetes, smiling anyway, living through. And God is using you to bless.”
Sometimes, when the burden of pilgrim-living feels too heavy, we all need to know that our effort is not in vain. God promises a harvest (Galatians 6:9…Don’t give up!), but sometimes the shadow makes the fruit so hard to see. If God allows difficulty, it will somehow produce a harvest. Always. Lately, God has spoken this truth over me a thousand different ways, with the reminder that sometimes the promise will be fulfilled long after I expect. Even if my body expires and I only get to see through the glistening clarity of glory, I will one day see (Hebrews 11: 13-16) all things redeemed.
I slit the tape on the edge of the Styrofoam cube with a knife, quickly lifting out the insulin, stowing the boxes in the refrigerator before I leave for school. As I tuck the vials away, I swallow my tears, offering thanks, as Zoe and I often do together, for medicine and technology and a time when people with diabetes can live healthy lives. I smile for Zoe, over all her excitement about her insulin pump, over the way that she has turned having “an electronic controller” into a joy.
All this reminds me of a letter my brother wrote to Zoe just a few months after her diagnosis. She keeps the typed page pinned to the bulletin board beside her bed. Many times, we’ve revisited together the blessing he passed on. I think of his words, my fingers on all those tiny, square boxes, lining them side by side in the cold.
Scott has diabetes too. He received his diagnosis at fourteen, back in the days when diabetics were not allowed to eat anything containing sucrose. I still remember the candy bars my mom special-ordered for him at the grocery store. They were called Un-Chocolate Bars, as though the removal of the sugar had also stripped away the need for creativity and marketing, as though some manufacturer created them while thinking, “Okay, but who will want to eat THESE??.” Scott’s diagnosis transformed the family diet. And in all these years since, I know he must’ve had times when the reality of his situation haunted him, when he couldn’t escape the shadow of remembered grief. He probably still has those moments. But these days, he sees his diagnosis as a blessing, and that’s what his letter to Zoe conveys.
“You know that God has ALL power,” he wrote to her. “That means that you didn’t accidentally get diabetes….You and I have been assigned this special training because God has something in mind for us that requires the special gifts that only going through something like diabetes can give us. I hope you will look forward to the day that God reveals His special reasons for this training.”
I close the refrigerator door, thinking about how desperately I anticipate that joy, the knowledge of what abundance will yet be harvested. Every day, I tend my plot in an eternal garden, tearing at the weeds, looking for the evidence of glory.
And I am witness to the faithfulness of a God who sees me.
Every day, even in the pouring rain, there’s a new harvest.
~*~
In honor of those we love who live with diabetes, Kevin will participate in a cycling race this weekend, the Tour de Cure. Donations to the American Diabetes Association can be given here, by those who wish to support the effort to find healing and prevention.
