the big 3-0

I married the best guy ever - thirty years ago today. 

My heart is ... full, thinking about this last year. 

Days and nights so difficult - watching Terry do the near-impossible - like sleep and eat. And the inescapable - suffering. So much that even now I can't think about the hardest days and nights in August and September without wincing. 

In three days Terry will have a PET scan. Positron Emission Tomography. It's when somebody sticks a needle, alive with a radio active tracer, into your vein. Then beams you through a somewhat magical ring which records what the tracer discovers. It just takes a few minutes. 

The PET is late Friday. Results are read by numerous doctors. Radiologists. Oncologists. ENTs. Surgeons. They pass them around electronically. And then they all have to talk about it. They are busy people. Monday is Christmas Eve. 

Last night I dreamed that scene from "Chariots of Fire" when Harold Abrahams stands at the starting line of his 100 meter Olympic race. Ten seconds from history. In the film he is almost overcome by the thought that all his years of mental and athletic preparation will be finished, rewarded by gold, or not, in a mere 10 seconds. His fear is that his sacrifice will be meaningless in loss.

I have heard that starting gun in my head all day.

I have also heard a still, small voice say it isn't so. The last 30 years, while relatively uneventful from the view of an outsider, have taken two people from lives of, well, two people and turned them into something else. And we are no where near finished. Winning gold is not the point, the living the 10 seconds is. The preparation and the sacrifice is. The joy of the race is. 

My full, robust, hardy, honest expectation is that cancer is gone forever from our lives. That all the other tests for the next 30 years (at least) will be perfectly clean and clear. 

But I am saying now...even. if. it. isn't. Even if there are more days and nights of suffering for the one who has become, somewhat unexpectedly, my hero, we will do it together. The "I do's" of two who really had no idea of what the cost would be 30 years ago are still "I do" and "I will" and "I covenant" and "I love you."

Not because we are anything special, but because God is good and faithful. And we are stubborn.