After waiting for 3 months for a biopsy of my thyroid due to suspicious and possibly cancerous nodules, I finally got one done earlier this month. I am celebrating that while also frustrated that more waiting is required before I find out my results. While I wait, I wrestle with all the thoughts of my impending demise! I don’t think I am alone in imagining worst-case scenarios when the possibility of cancer is present – most of us have our own personal losses related to this disease.
It is hard to rest in the unknown; I think most of us tend to borrow trouble from tomorrow.
So, I’m here, trying not to fill this present moment with all that could be. And I’m back again to being mindful, noticing, and savoring what I have in my hands today.
A glimpse of today as I write — our unusually mild winter has suddenly turned Jekyll and Hyde on us and now we are experiencing a record-breaking cold snap. It makes for a lovely excuse to hibernate with a good book and a cup of something hot in my hands, while snuggled under one of the furry throws in my house which are typically for decorative purposes only.
A veil of ice crystals has fallen over the land and sky. All is softened by ice fog all morning. In the afternoon the sun blazes and the sky is an expanse of perfect blue. It looks inviting, but it is in fact dangerous as skin can freeze in as little as 5 minutes without layers of goose down or something similar – think the Michelin man and you can visualize what we all look like in this weather!
I am happy to come back and report a negative biopsy and the weather has improved.
Along with times of waiting, come periods of lament, a call to God to fix things, and times when words fail us. I have been thinking of the ways our body prays for us even when we cannot access language for our feelings.
Our postures, our pains, our tears, and our groans all communicate clearly to God, who, in some mystical way, also lives inside our skin.
Our faith is not all in our heads it also includes our bodies where God also resides.
The sigh released from your lips at the sight of the airbrushed sky at dawn is a kind of prayer.
In the words of Mary Oliver from Morning Poem,
“Each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning.
Whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not you ever dared to pray.”
The tear that forms when pain becomes too much is prayer.
Curled in fetal position, all I could do was moan. The pain that wracked my body was unrelenting and I had no inner resources to form words, to call out. I was suffering an appendicitis attack in a mountain chalet in the middle of the cloud forest of Costa Rica. Help came and I was carried both bodily and spiritually.
Pulling the covers around you like a cocoon, settling under a weighted blanket forms a wordless prayer.
I talked to a mom recently who was weighted with news over her child. She reached out to talk, not knowing if she could fully trust that I would hear her and deal tenderly with her story. Over zoom I watched as she wrapped her arms around herself, gathering courage to be vulnerable, holding onto herself in fear that she might break. Her posture was a prayer against her shattering. I cannot help but think that Jesus stood behind her and wrapped his arms around her too.
The deep exhale that escapes your body at the sight of beauty is prayer.
Around every corner in Jasper National Park, we were presented with a vista that took our breath away. The snow-capped peaks jagged were highlighted against an impossibly blue sky, streaks of the gold of larches are threaded through the green of the pine and spruce forests blanketing the lower slopes. The week my friend and I toured the Canadian Rockies was a time when sighs escaped my lips regularly. At one point my friend turned to me and said I sounded like I was eating a delicious meal – the moans of pleasure were wordless expressions of being overwhelmed with the beauty and the majesty of the mountains — I was not even conscious I was doing this. I found myself speechless; my body was articulating on my behalf.
The pressing weight in your chest at the images of bombed-out homes and tiny bodies being buried, this too is prayer.
The woman with the bleeding issue came to Jesus without words. In the years previous each payment made to doctors; each bloody rag washed was perhaps a cry for healing – a prayer unspoken. Her hand extended and reaching for the edge of Jesus’ garment was a prayer he heard and valued.
A cross formed from clay and molded to my hand sometimes accompanies me. Grasping it in times of turbulence and anxiety becomes another type of inaudible prayer. Like the woman reaching for Jesus’ robe, I reach for his reassuring presence with me.
Maybe our most honest and true prayers are the wordless ones.
So, if you cannot find words to form into petitions, let your body pray for you. When the weight of what you are facing, or the overwhelming beauty is too much to voice, do not worry, your body is already doing the praying.
As the light returns to our part of the world,
And all nature begins to awaken,
may you experience renewed hope,
signs of resurrection,
and a renaissance of joy.
While waiting, wordless prayers are sometimes all we can manage. I also have to think that God in his mercy sends us beauty at these times to remind us of his goodness. That and friends. He sends friends to pray for us and with us and listen to us as we wait. And, they are there when we get answers to rejoice with us or to keep on praying.
Here's to finding more beauty to heal the wounds inflicted by the waiting.