D-Day

I’ve sat down to write this post at least a thousand times this week. Okay, maybe four but it’s been every bit as exhausting. For the first time in a long time I find myself at a loss for words. Two years ago today, everything changed. We discovered that neuroblastom (intentional non-capitalization) had invaded our daughter’s body once again. Stage IV, we were but a grueling statistic. There was no cure, just a treatment that sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t.

On June 25th, 2012 the seams of my well controlled life began to rapidly unravel before my eyes. In no time I had only a pile of fabric, a pile of thread and instructions that would take a year and a half to read through. The problem was, I was no seamstress. Though I had brought my children into this world, I was not the maker of life. And the one that was gave me no guarantees.

Over the weeks and months to come, I would learn to lay my daughter at the foot of the cross and walk way. It would take time. It would take discipline. But ultimately it would teach me the only way to live during this season. On hard days I would crawl back and reclaim her. And on even harder days the Lord would beckon me back to a place of surrender once again.

Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined the horror we were living was really my own. And never could I have imagined the horror would ever end. But it did. The tide would settle and all would go back to the way it should have been all along. My daughter, with flowing hair and sparkling blue eyes would complete treatment. Would complete kindergarten. She would grow. She would live. She would overcome.

Today, I look back on the past two years still feeling broken. I look forward not knowing quite how to put one foot in front of the other. But I look up with amazement and thanksgiving and I never, ever look down. I have learned to love in a way that is not my own. I have learned to live from a place I did not know possible. To live fully in the moment, truly engaged and never for granted.

I used to think of June 25th as our D-Day. The day the enemy returned and the ultimate battle began. It was a day of destruction and devestation. I mean, isn’t that what the ‘D’ in D-Day stands for anyway? No. Actually, the ‘D’ doesn’t stand for any of those things, it is merely an aliteration for the word ‘Day’. The ‘D’ in D-Day literally just means ‘Day.’ Well, that’s interesting.

I’ve been studying definitions of the word DAY and just this morning I finally found one that resignated with my spirit:

DAY (n) :’the interval of light between two successive nights.’

And then I got it. June 25th, 2012 was not the day the cancer came back. It was only the day it was discovered. It was the day the darkness that had invaded her body again was illuminated. It was the day between the darkness that was cancer invading her body and the darkness that we lived in killing it. Since it was the day we found out it existed, it was actually the day her deliverance could finally begin. June 25th, 2012 was our Day of Deliverance.

Tomorrow I will turn thirty-five and I can only hope I have lived the darkest days of my life already. The other night when Izzy learned how old I would be she gasped. “Thirty Five! God has let you live a long time,” she said with the innocence of a child and wisdom of someone who was not. Oh, that she might be so blessed to live such a long time too.

Happy Deliverance Day to you today. Blessings on you always and LIFE for Izzy!

“Moses answered the people, “Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the LORD will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still.”  Exodus 14:13-14