Opportunity Knocking

In heaven, I think we'll all be 22.

I can't wait to live with my Grandma in heaven, to see her in a body as alluring and free from infirmities as her spirit. I can't wait to go for a walk with her through some forest that looks a lot like the forests around here. I know we'll break into a sprint at some point, just for the fun of it, because we're both like that.

All things considered, Grandma is doing remarkably. She keeps improving. This amazes me. Even with entropy, even living in an aging body, even at 86, her body is still repairing, still improving. The human body is astounding.

I write that, and yet she still totters as she walks, puts a hand out to steady herself against the wall. Her heart-rate skyrockets and her oxygen sinks when she stands in the kitchen too long, tries to lift a pot off the stove. She is doing so well, but she's still sick. She still has an autoimmune disorder. Her body is still attacking itself, even as it repairs other parts of itself. Even her cells are double-minded. Aren't we all?

I selfishly want her here on earth with me. But I look at her suffering, know how much she misses her husband—the one she knew before the brain cancer changed his personality and swiftly took his life—and I want her in heaven. I find peace in my dual desires because they are both good, and because God is in control. It is His will that she remain on earth for now, even with all her pain.

I want ISIS justly dead, but I also want ISIS mercifully saved, and that is not contradictory.

My life is so boring and so small, but I say again, it has also never been more exciting and significant. So I get out of bed in the dark, out from under the warm covers, and force myself into the textbooks that I'm tired of having open on my lap. I always sit on the love-seat in the living room. There's room for two: me and the books fill it just fine.

Every day: school, cooking, dishes, odd jobs. They flow together, seamless, like some Rabbi's clothes were 2,000 years ago. I love what I am doing—I love school, and cooking (!), and dishes, and odd jobs. They are all my absolute favorite things. I just wish there were more people to share it all with, as it was happening. I wish my life were not so consumed by school so I could be more helpful around here, a little less stressed. But I will not wish school away. Every day school hands me tools that I can use to help people, and I'm being handed them for free and this almost reduces me to tears.

During last week's webinar, I watched the director of LU's MPH program get reduced to tears himself. He was telling us about this malaria vaccine that—after decades—is in the final stages of testing and might be available soon for the babies of the world. And he started crying just telling us about it. Maybe he was picturing all the kids he's seen in sub-Saharan Africa dying from it, thought of the ones who are just part of mortality statistics now...and to think that it could stop. He cried. I want a heart like that, even when I'm 60. 

School is opportunity that will arrive. Yet I live in arrived opportunity every day: Love wherever, whenever, with whatever. It's not saving babies from malaria, but it's still showing love in the way that I can right now: domesticity.

I'm thankful for so many fresh vegetables. The freezers are stocked, like usual. We also pull food from the recesses of the walk-in pantry. This week I ate extremely expired (1 - 5 years) tahini, cream cheese, peppers, beans—I can't remember what all. My GI tract is still inside of me, so I win.

The one thing we lack is chocolate. I should have remedied this by now. As it is, sometimes I am so desperate I nibble a bit at the chalky, bitter baking chocolate.

I'm tempted to curse the day I started liking chocolate, but I can't, because I was 19 and in San Lorenzo with 15 of my friends. You thank the good Lord every day for days like that; leave the cursing to the stressed-out moms in Walmart.