Miracles

Sometimes you can get bad news, especially a scary medical diagnosis, about someone you love. It stops you. It grips your heart like a cold, clammy fist pulsing the fear through every vein in your body. Our human tendency is to ask, "Why?"

This scenario happened to us this week when a dear friend and even-though-he's-not-blood-related family member (he's family to us) was diagnosed with stomach cancer. And then the miracles started to occur:

Thanks to the diligence of his wife, he saw a doctor and it was caught early.
It has not spread.
Deep-seated family wounds that seemed super important are now irrelevant and the healing has begun.

I don't need to know why; I'm just grateful to witness the miracle.

Another Loss

We woke up this morning to the news that Patrick Swayze lost his battle with pancreatic cancer. Not a shock to anyone but sad nonetheless.

His two big movie roles, Dirty Dancing and Ghost, remain two of my I-can-watch-it-over-and-over favorites. Especially Dirty Dancing. You know I love almost any form of dancing. Who would not have wanted to be Baby in that movie?

He seemed to be very humble about his weaknesses: smoking and drinking. He was passionate about his work and many causes. He seemed genuinely in love with his wife of over 30 years.

It will make me a little sad the next time I watch one of his movies.

Sisterhood

In the media blitz and subsequent judgement of Elizabeth Edwards' choice to write and speak of her husband's betrayal, an important point was lost in the criticism: women should not do that to other women.I've watched a couple of interviews and I've read an excerpt of the book, Resilience. We can all debate whether she should have left him -- probably not considering her health situation and their young children. We can argue about this possibly being a public flogging of him -- probably so; it is her story to tell.The puzzler (among many) is why would a woman intentionally do this to another woman? If she wanted a meaningless sexual encounter with a public figure, she could've targeted a single man. If she was longing for a husband, hearth and children, why seek that by destroying what another woman has spent decades building and nurturing?
A lot of the content is too sappy for me. The affair part is a stabbing reminder that a man she thought she knew took his clothes off for a woman with no respect for herself or the sisterhood of women.