Update: Great News!

My mammogram results are in, and I am fine. No worries. Hakuna Matata...
Was there any doubt? Well...
I did get a fright on Halloween. No, not a trick or treater dressed as a vampire, though that might've done it. I found a lump on my left frontsett. Breast. I found a lump on my left breast. I know. It would have been more honest of me to include that on yesterday's post, but it would have ruined the funny. The funny was important to me. I think being able to see the humor in situations that are difficult is a gift. Okay, I know, humor is not one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit listed in the Bible, but it has been a precious gift to me anyway.
Besides. By Sunday, I knew I was okay. Don't ask me how. I just knew. Yes. I know I could have emailed you, and you would have prayed for me. But I knew I was okay. I can't explain how I knew, but I did. I still went to the doctor, who felt the lump and decided I needed a mammogram and made an appointment for me that day. I wasn't surprised. I figured that since I had turned forty in September, it wasn't an overreaction, even though I had come to believe I was fine. Now, it is true that my personality is such that I would wait until September 2, 1:30 am to have the mammogram at forty if I could, or at the very least, last appointment on September 1. Sometimes I'm a letter of the law sort of gal. I have to watch that.
I had a moment of melancholy driving through the forest preserves to get to my appointment. I have always loved autumn leaves. As a child, my parents used to take me to the woods, and I'd pick them, press them, and seal them in a book. I was never an artistic child, but I loved drawing trees, any season actually. I wasn't good at drawing them, I think because I always wanted to make them symetrical, so they never looked right. I chalked it up to the truth in the poem by Joyce Kilmer....

Trees

I THINK that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day, 5
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain. 10

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.


Anyways, I thought how sad it would be if I never saw another autumn, never enjoyed such beautiful color again...

And I heard God laugh. I do believe I did. Not a derisive sort, but the kindly laugh of a Father who is amused by his child's lack of imagination as He prepares wonderful things for her for when she comes home...
He promised me that if I thought these trees were beautiful, I'd be amazed one day at the trees in Heaven. And I had to laugh, too.



P.S. I am sorry if I caused any offense with "Go ahead, picture it" when joking about the brochure. I guess I got carried away. Forgive me?