An Epic Life

 I was watching a video clip of Anna Lapwood performing at Sir Albert Hall. She wrote an extra piece for their presentation of music from The Lion King, and when she played it I was transported back to the morning we walked into the Oncology center at University of Arizona. It was to be the first day of Marie's bone-marrow transplant journey, and they were playing Lion King on the speakers in the waiting area. I remember clearly how the music lifted me up to a special plane I rarely experience. Hearing the music again today--so many years later--I began to cry. There was no defending against the swell of emotions, repressed, ignored, bargained-against for so many years in order to be present, to companion her. Everything that's happened since that day has happened in the context and reality of cancer. Marie lived a tremendous journey, most of it impossible to share. But I only realized today, in the flow of the music, that the moment we walked into the hospital, our lives became epic...

    I think a lot about the meanings of life (there are many) and how we must learn to flow from event to event much like a canoe in a violent river. It's not always about accomplishing things; most times it's about surviving. Marie survived until her natural end. When she left, I continued maintaining my composure, downplaying her death and its impact on me, and ignoring the thousands ways I dip and dodge. After all, who wants to wind up piled on the rocks? The question keeps coming back: did my life have meaning...?

    We tend to value ourselves with prejudice and even ignorance. We allow others to say what's important: money, power over others, and "being right". Time on The River has taught me that the real values are mercy, self-understanding and knowledge of God, who alone sets our value. In many ways the world has been wrong about these things, and it will continue to be wrong. So each of us needs to look at ourselves with some intensity, and to stand against the appraisals of the world. The only opinion about our value that matters is our own opinion. 

    Are we teaching children to find their true value...?