Wisdom Beyond Words.

From the time that we found out my mom's diagnosis, J and I have been very deliberate in how we talk about it in front of the kids. Obviously we are well aware that we can't keep things a secret forever. They know my mom (whom they switch between calling by her name, at times call her Grandma and other times Gammi) is sick. That she's been sick for awhile now, and that she'll probably be sick for a long time.

M has asked several times if my mom is contagious and we've reassured her countless times now that she's not, yet in her six year old mind this is the only way she can make sense of any sort of sickness.

As my mom gets ready to start her third round of chemo she's lost her hair now. Knowing that she'd be seeing the kids I mentioned it a couple days ago while they colored. Very casually I brought up that the medicine my mom is taking makes her hair fall out.

T, being a very quick and concrete thinker, asked why the doctor couldn't give her a medicine to make her hair grow back.

I think that's a fair question, don't you?

Sunday morning we went to the early service at church with my parents. Yes, the early service. My dad has always loved going to the early service first thing on a Sunday morning, and while our family typically is lucky to make it to the latest service I wanted to attend with my parents.

So we went to the very traditional, very early service where we were quite possibly the youngest attenders attending. That is all besides the point though.

My mom was wearing a very nice scarf over her head and neither T nor M said anything about it.

T and M did a great job during the service and I know that most of the time the sermons and even some of the songs fly right over their little heads.

Pastor Hawkinson was filling in for the pastors that were at the Annual Meeting in Portland, and it was actually my first time hearing him preach. He gave a great sermon, and even as people left church they were talking and exuding the words of the morning.

Driving home a little while later M asked me if my mom had any hair underneath her scarf.

"No, there's not any hair."

T jumped in the conversation, "When will it grow back?"

"It may never grow back."

And M, ever so sweetly and seriously replied, "It will grow back in heaven. It will be even more beautiful then."

I could feel my eyes filling with tears as I nodded and smiled back at her.

"It's just like that man said at church; the past was great but the future will be even better."

A more wiser and appropriate thing could not have crossed her lips. (That man, obviously being Pastor Hawkinson)

And again I am reminded, by a six year old, what this life is all about.