All Shall Be Well
As I write this, tomorrow, July 9, marks one year since I was told I had cancer.
It seems impossible that a year has already passed. So much has happened since then—months of treatment, healing that continues even now, and a journey I never would have chosen. But what stays with me most isn’t the fear. It’s the surprising peace I found in the midst of it all.
A phrase kept returning to me, borrowed from a mystic who’d once been sure she was dying too: All shall be well. A mantra. The crazy part is that I believed it. It stayed with me for months.
Only recently has it begun to ebb. I find myself longing for that deep sense of God’s presence that carried me through those months. And my instinct hasn’t been toward greater introspection or longer hours of prayer. It’s been toward joy. I crave lightness and beauty and laughter.
Which may be exactly why this summer feels extraordinary. Sometimes I catch myself doing something utterly ordinary and think: I almost missed this.
I danced in my kitchen last week. No occasion—a song came on while I was doing dishes and I just moved. Both of my kids will dance with me on occasion. In fact, Oscar almost demands we do the “crazy dance” to celebrate great news. That evening, I danced alone, and it was wonderful.
Bruce and I drove to Bear Lake to watch Oscar on stage in The Ballad of Butch and Sundance at the Pickleville Theater. I laughed until I cried—the good kind. I watched Bruce watch him, pure unguarded joy on his face, and sitting beside the man I’ve been married to for twenty-seven years, I thought: look at this life we have built!
We camped in our Transit van that night. I felt like a kid.
Adele makes me laugh in a way almost no one else does—a particular kind of ridiculous, built over twenty-five years together, that I hope I never take for granted.
I came home to a community that had kept growing without me. The women who gather each month had deepened their connection to one another and to God. It was beautiful—and a little humbling—to see how faithfully they had carried that ministry in my absence.
This summer we’ve expanded it further with a retreat that was as full of laughter as it was of quiet. As the leader, I never fully get to experience those gatherings the way the women do. I’m holding the space rather than resting in it. But I spent a long time this past year on the receiving end of connection, of care, of God’s persistent presence. Now I get to be one of the people offering those gifts to others. There is deep joy in that work.
We’ll gather again in August, and once more in October. And further out still—next spring—there’s a road in Spain waiting to be walked. Not because I’m trying to leave something behind, but because I have something to walk toward.
A year ago, I didn’t know whether I’d get a summer like this one.
Now I find myself awed by the smallest things: music in my kitchen, the laughter of my adult children, all of you on Sunday mornings, the mountains that surround us, and the astonishing privilege of making plans for next spring.
This year, I get to play.
That is not a small thing.
