PlazaJen: Passion Knit

Through all the tumult and the strife
I hear its music ringing,
It sounds an echo in my soul.
How can I keep from singing?

While though the tempest loudly roars,
I hear the truth, it liveth.
And though the darkness ’round me close,
Songs in the night it giveth.

No storm can shake my inmost calm,
While to that rock I’m clinging.
Since love is lord of heaven and earth
How can I keep from singing?


I have tears streaming down my face right now & for once, they are such tears of joy, a release of pent-up energy I have ignored this week, for I have a bigger hope, a confirmed hope, such a raucously joyful hope, it feels like my heart will explode from my chest and light the night sky with a thousand raining stars.

My father saw another doctor today, in Madison. I learned that his previous doctor had only seen four cases LIKE his cancer before, none in the past five years (until he showed up.) This doctor? My dad was his fourth patient TODAY with his kind of cancer. It's very rare, but they have a protocol they follow (Yes, James, protocol, just like CTU on "24") and it has a 75% success rate in prolonging life. This particular doctor has a patient who presented with identical-to-worse symptoms like my father's - and is still kickin' it a year and a half later. And all of this before we even touch the basket called "Alternative Therapies", like stem cell and whatnot. The doom and gloom is still there, but it has been banished to a corner. They have two kinds of chemo he will take, and he starts next Thursday. He's still going to Mayo on Monday, because why wouldn't you, and then if it ever reaches a point he needs to get in there, they have everything, he's been there, the process accellerates. We all know there is caution, there is no cure, this isn't a ten-year reprieve. But when you're staring at two months and it feels like you've suddenly been given a task in Hades, to fill a pot with water using a sieve, the notion of a year, the notion of solutions and hope, feels like the desperation has been reduced. (You know, when I was a kid and read about that Hades task, I always imagined I'd line the sieve with moss, to make it retain a little bit of water. Always looking for an end-run, even around death...)

The lyrics above are from an Enya song, and because I have a permanent jukebox in my head that associates songs with how I'm feeling, I kept hearing the line "How can I keep from singing" in my head all night & I decided to look up the lyrics to see if the rest was a fit. I'm just so very, very grateful that today, we were given a rock to cling to, and the storm around us seems to have calmed. I know the waters will churn again, and I recognize the odds, and know we have no guarantees. But if I've learned one thing in the past four weeks, which is exactly how long it has been, today, I have learned that the things we think are important and the things that truly are important are often different. The petty bullshit of friends who've let me down, who've dropped out of my life, all that choppy stuff that consumed the irritated part of my mind, I've discovered how quickly I divested those stocks, and put my energy & love into what's most important to me. I thank you, too, for continuing to read - I noticed a drop once Ye Olde Cancer Story hit here, and those people just want Fun Jen, to be entertained, but that's not life, or at least not my blog. My blog's as real as I can be in written form, without getting my ass fired or calling out people by name who piss me off. And tonight, I give you a photo I took when we were at my dad's two weeks ago, a picture I've greedily kept only to myself, for what it represented, for what it signified - he still has his hair, we had spent a wonderful weekend together - and my god, I just love him so much. What the hell, here's two:





I cannot keep from singing.