An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.  MLK, Jr.

I’m not sure if I’m haunted or inspired.  

• 20 years and I’m still trying to figure out living.
• 20 years since my leukemia diagnosis in September of 2000.
• 20 years of grasping at my sense of self in the midst of chronic limitations. 
• 20 years of a tenacious spirit learning to dance in fragile body.

How can I rise above my personal cancer and be a part of treating malignancies that face all humanity?

This question has been weighing on my mind since last September.  I needed to rise up for my journey of Chronic Hope in order to clarify my identity.  

20 years later, there is clarity to rise.  But rising above is not a climb.  

It’s a descent. 

My challenge, quarantined in 2020, has been to listen, lament, and repent of injustice in myself and in our culture.  To weep with those who weep and mourn with those who mourn.  I really wanted to just take action.  But I had not stopped to consider the lack in my understanding of justice and society.  And how justice for all reflects the heart of God.

There is a lot of humble stillness and lowly heart work involved in rising.  Nothing glorious or stunning.  Just quiet, dark, quarantined heart work.

If the world had not shut down in a global pandemic, would I have done that work?  

I don’t exactly know how to take action, but one thing has become clear: 

If I don’t take action, something in me will die.  Or will never have the chance to truly live.  

So, from this humbler and haunted place I desperately seek to learn in community from those who are taking action. To join. To grow.  To serve.  I thought the vulnerable and the marginalized needed me.  It turns out, we need each other.

Rising above is not mine to achieve.  Starting to live is not mine to map out.  

Mine is to quietly join the labors of love.  

• To learn from those who weary their hearts and dirty their hands for the plight of others.  
• To allow the plight of the vulnerable to be felt deeply and personally.  
• To understand how to do justly, because I cannot truly love mercy without it.  Mercy accompanies justice.
• Ultimately, to surrender the sense of self I’ve worked so hard to grasp.

Mine is the work of vulnerable humility.

Rising belongs to the Divine Hand that is strong and wise enough to lift me up in due time.

Just curious… what are the daunting malignancies you’ve been called to rise above?