Incline

She steps up to the mic and affirms we're here to celebrate life.  I catch myself welling up as the word life catches in her throat.  She's up on the stage clutching those nearest and dearest to her, looking out at her community; the group of family and friends who are becoming known to each other for no other reason than for knowing her.  They've brought food and flowers, music and memories to this majestic clearing in the trees. They sing like the musicians in the band with their words of love and joy. They warm like the fire blazing heat through the crisp mountain air. They sparkle like the lights strung across the evergreens soaring high into the sky.

She wonders what she's done to deserve it all; this path of switchbacks life keeps asking her to navigate.  And at the same time she grips the wheel firmly with both hands, marveling at all she's learning with every turn she braves.

These challenges life forces us to stare down, they aren't the occasional rough patch on an otherwise smooth and predictable course.  They are everyday opportunities to develop our true selves we have no choice but to accept. And unfortunately they are sometimes doled out to us in the dirtiest of jobs.

When we accept that we are all broken in one way or another, some of us more visibly and publicly than others, and that hairpin turns aren't here to get into the way of life, but rather are the way of life, all sorts of magic happens.  We no longer need to worry about what if.  We don't need to wallow in the self pity of why me.  When we expect that the road will be harrowing at times we can focus on learning how to drive it.  An incredibly huge and wonderful ask not only because it takes courage, but help unlocking  it.

She says her feistiness only gets her so far.  For the rest she credits her community.  She learns to ask for what she needs, relieving countless pairs of idle hands earnest to be put to work.  She places a huge chunk of her hard fought business into the care of others, knowing she may never get it back. She comes to the slow realization that life is not temporarily altered for this blip on the radar screen, but forever altered as a new way of being.

The awkward, unwanted glow of cancer places her in this spotlight.  And she is able to use this place to acknowledge we all need each other, no matter the magnitude, credibility or celebrity of our brokenness, to fuel us through whatever life hands us.  She celebrates the power this community of giving helps her find in herself as she braces for another hairpin turn. This is glorious and treacherous life in the mountains.  This is life.