Welcome. This blog offers reflections on the gifts that grace our lives, even in the midst of stage IV cancer diagnoses or other lousy circumstances that come our way. Thank you for visiting.
Space in the Psalms for Being Undone by Serious Illness
At their best, religions comfort and support people in the face of suffering. But sometimes the reasons religions offer for suffering can make things worse. If religious communities are to be places where those who suffer are able to communicate the truth of their reality and receive the support...
How Talking about Illness-related Trauma Makes Healing More Possible
Each of our lives bear the marks of suffering. And when we face intense experiences of suffering, we crave explanations for the “Why?”—answers for why things happen the way they do. Knowing why reassures us that we live in an orderly world that operates according to understandable laws. We want...
Illness, Trauma, and Glimpsing Resurrection
By the time I was diagnosed with metastatic cancer in December 2008, the cancer had spread from breast to bones, fracturing two vertebrae and camping out in my pelvis and hips. Intense treatment regimen made me even sicker, forcing a trip to the ER and a New Year’s Eve in the hospital talking with...
Room Enough in the Season
(These are remarks Deanna gave at the 2017 Nordic American Thanksgiving Breakfast, November 21, 2017, in Bloomington, MN) For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven. . . . a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance (Eccl. 3.1, 4) We...
Encourage Each Other with These Words
This post is the sermon I preached this past Sunday at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Knoxville, Tennessee, where a classmate of mine from Vanderbilt, the Rev. Dr. Buran Phillips, is pastor. After the second service, Buran and a lovely 13 year old assisting minister draped a prayer shawl made...
Die Like We’re Living
One of the last times I visited my Grandmother at the Care Center where she lived, staff members wheeled her hall-mate out on a gurney. “We all come here to die,” my Grandmother said matter-of-factly after her sheet-covered neighbor passed from view. She was right: residents in her wing of the...
Borning Cry: Great Grandmother Edition
In December my Grandmother passed away, a month shy of her ninety-fifth birthday. On her birthday weekend in January, her entire family—joined by many friends—gathered to celebrate her life. At the memorial service, the eldest of the nineteen great grandchildren, Linnea Peterson, who I’m also...
Living Out Loud into the Future with Lisa Adams
I have stage IV breast cancer and I blog about it. But I’m not the only one—with the disease or with a blog. Lisa Adams, metastatic breast cancer patient and blogger with a national profile, recently became a touchstone for national debate about the use of social media in publicly chronicling a...
Live Like We’re Dying
When I was diagnosed with stage IV cancer, I started preparing to die. Granted, we should all “live like we’re dying” as singer Kris Allen reminds us, but an aggressive diagnosis ups the urgency on doing just that. I went back to teaching even though I could barely stand up because I wanted to be...
A Tribute to Amma
Last summer, when Amma was diagnosed with advanced stage lung cancer, my elder daughter wrote this tribute: First there were butterfly crackers and squares of cheese at the kitchen table. Amma spoke Tamil and I didn't understand, but I knew she got out the crackers and that she cut the squares of...