A story popped into my head last night as I was trying to settle down.  Most of the time it is in the quiet darkness of late night that I can find my sanctuary, my peace for the day.  A summation of everything that has happened and possibly a look into tomorrow.  For most of last week I had not found it.  My sanctuary was being elusive, my anxiety was going full-bore, and I was tired.

As I was finding my way, a term, or phase, I am not sure what to call it popped into my head.  It came from a story about Tammy.  This isn’t uncommon.  I spend hours contemplating things and all of a sudden the static clears and it all comes into focus.  This past week was a very hard week and my focus was definitely off.

To set the stage imagine a college girls basketball team huddled up around their coach.  The coach is breathing fire and trying to make a point and gain control of her newly acquired team.

She says, “… and we won’t have any more of that whoopty $h!t happening on this basketball court.”

Everyone, and Tammy for sure knew who she was talking to.  Tammy got the message loud and clear.  We are supposed to play fundamental basketball, period.

Now you have to understand.  Tammy was not a flashy player.  She didn’t showboat or make any kind of scene.  She was just unconventional.  Most of her life she always played against the boys in the basketball games at recess, gym class, or any pick-up game she could come across.  The boys didn’t take it easy on her, and every chance they got they would swat her ball across the court.  If you have ever played cards with Tammy you know this did not go over very well.  She was to competitive to lose.  So over time she learned to go over them, around them, under them, or if completely necessary, through them.  It wasn’t always fundamental, but after a lot of practice it was very effective.  Especially when she went to college and was playing against girls that could be much bigger than her.  The best example of this was in a game where she had the ball near the free throw line,  she had went down on one knee in the fray.  No one was open, she didn’t have a dribble left.  The conventional thing to do would be to call a timeout or something like that.  The unconventional thing to do is to shoot from your knee and swish it.  I’ll give you one guess as to what she did.

So as the story goes, the team had their first game and it was going terrible.  Tammy was not scoring, as a result the game was being lost.  The coach called a timeout and told her, “I don’t care what you have to do, or how you do it, just start scoring.”  Tammy heard her loud and clear.  She started playing her game and the term “whoopty $h!it” will be the basketball lore forever.

Last Sunday night Tammy could not get her pain under control.  Around eleven I convinced her that we needed to go to the ER so that they could help her get it under control.  The short version of the story is that three more areas were found with cancer in them.  Her right femur, her right shoulder, and a spot around her sternum.  The tumor on her adrenal gland is also acting up and causing problems for her kidney.  She stayed in the hospital until Wednesday morning, and then we flew the coop so that she could get to doctors appointments and ultimately her first round of radiation on her shoulder.  The news didn’t completely surprise us, but yes, it really sucks.  She is feeling better now, with new pain medicine and is getting back to normal.

So most of the week I have been putting this update off.  I had to make my peace with it, and this time it was just really hard to do.  I want to rip all of the cancer out of her, and ring all their necks, but I can’t.  I can’t take her pain away.  I can’t make it all better.  I can just watch, hoping for the best.

So in my contemplation last night “whoopty $h!t,” pops into my brain.  We all know that Tammy’s cancer journey has been unconventional.  Most of her side effects are opposite of what is normal.  She is out of statistics.  She is an outlier.  This year she has come back from tumors, surgeries, and anything else that has popped up.  She has found a way over it, around it, under it, or if necessary through it.  My brain says, “you need to be afraid.”  Because of her heart, my heart says, “everything is going to be ok.”  finally,  I found my peace.