The end or the eye

When you do not know what comes next

I wrote this essay weeks ago, way before Hurricane Helene came on the radar. I hesitated to publish it today, knowing the pain is fresh in so many communities. But it also felt like a time to remember we are all connected by the earth and its suffering. So I offer these words with even more pressing prayers for relief and recovery, hope and healing. I’d also invite you to join me in supporting Catholic Charities in their targeted efforts after Helene.

---

In the middle of the second act of Hamilton, the main character stands alone on a dark stage and sings about the storm that blew apart his life: 

In the eye of a hurricane / There is quiet / For just a moment / A yellow sky¹

The devastation of the sudden storm, the shocking diagnosis, the brutal accident, the unexpected news—we know this part of being human. But we also know that suffering ebbs and flows. Even the deadly storm surge after a hurricane will recede, leaving survivors to survey the damage and figure out how to rebuild.

Is it over? We wonder, edging tentatively out into the open. Or is more coming? 

Where are we now, in respect to suffering? (In relation to, you might say, except suffering deserves—and demands—your respect.)

Is this only a lull, or the end?

The eye of the hurricane can bring clear skies and light winds, a circle of calm. Bright blue, right in the center. People emerge from shelters, even take pictures of the briefly-here beauty. But the other side of the spiral is about to slam again. The towering, looming clouds edging the eye signal the harshest weather and strongest winds are right around the corner.

The eyewall is the most powerful part of the storm.

I cannot know whether now is the eye of the hurricane or the edge of an even harsher storm—or the end of what pummeled my body and soul, leaving lasting damage. 

How can you look at the world with open eyes and vulnerable heart when it has broken you, over and over again? How do you wake up each morning and decide to keep going, believing life can still be good?

Turns out believing in God is not the hard part for me. Trusting God is.

// 

Eighteen months ago, my oncologist handed me a detailed printout with the pathology of my tumor. The glossy, four page handout spelled out (kid you not) the exact rate of recurrence.

Was it good? Depends on your metric. On a high school grading scale, it would be a solid A. Zero complaints for a 95% survival rate. Frankly, I was delighted—despite the stark calculation of my chances to see all my kids through kindergarten. 

But if someone told me I had a 5% chance of dying if I went swimming in a particular ocean? You can bet I’d stay safe on land. Not worth the risk.

Still, I cling to that 95% number like a lifesaver. Fantastic odds, all things considered. Oncologists tell me that triple-negative breast cancer comes back during the first five years or not at all.² (This is a blessing or a curse, depending on whom you ask.) So whenever I get anxious, I remember myself back into the 95%. Deliberately, as if walking into a room. This is the world where I want to live, the one in which I am alive in five years—and beyond. 

Everyone tells me not to count down. (Everyone loves to advise and admonish you on cancer. Especially people who have never had cancer.) I listen, I nod, I understand. November 2028 is no magical best-by date. I try to trust in what I know: my treatment was successful, my cancer has not spread, I feel good. Healthy, and stronger every day. 

But despite my best efforts, my body marks the months, a silent tick toward the timeline. I always know where I am in relation to five-years-from-fall-2023. Even as I know no calendar countdown can protect me from mortality.

Every storm is unique. Even the experts can’t perfectly predict how any hurricane will turn out.

//

“God is our refuge and strength,
   a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change,
   though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea;
though its waters roar and foam,
   though the mountains tremble with its tumult.
The Lord of hosts is with us;
   the God of Jacob is our refuge.

(Psalm 46:1-3, 7)

We picked the earth-shaking psalm for their funeral card because a hospital chaplain read these verses with us after our daughters died in the NICU. Because once she closed her worn pocket Bible, she looked at us, took a deep breath, and did the very thing chaplains are trained not to do—but the very thing that saved us in that moment.

She told us her own story, of her baby who died at birth, a son named Jacob after this Psalm. She shared just enough of his story to throw us a lifeline. To keep us from feeling adrift and abandoned, floundering in the brackish flood of bottomless grief. 

Later that night, I saw her typing up her notes on a computer at the end of the hallway. I knew she might have broken the rules of pastoral care according to the textbooks (and her supervisor who had visited us the day before, told us briskly that “fathers don’t grieve,” and left behind a pamphlet).³ 

But in the aftermath of a hurricane, regular rules do not apply. Streets become rivers. Doors become boats. Schools become shelters. Strangers help strangers sort through the intimate details of their lives, ruined underwater or blown apart above ground.

I always wished I could thank her again, for staying with us in the storm. 

//

Is this moment in history the end or the eye? 

“...intense droughts, water scarcity, severe fires, rising sea levels, flooding, melting polar ice, catastrophic storms and declining biodiversity.”⁴

Turn on the news and you see. Walk outside and you know.

Suffering is inevitable in this life, sure. But we are heaping more and more upon ourselves and others by the ways we are living, destroying the creation God gave us to tend. 

“The earth dries up and withers, the world languishes and withers; the heavens languish together with the earth. The earth lies polluted under its inhabitants; for they have transgressed laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant.” (Isaiah 24:4-5)

My mother’s wise words always echo in my head: every generation thinks it’s the worst; every generation thinks it’s the last. We haven’t gotten to the end, despite the doomsday clock countdown. Yet more and more I find myself in conversations—with old and young, right and left, religious and atheist—around a shared sense of urgency that now feels different, pressing upon us onward to change.

In my early years of motherhood I often thought about what it means to be stewards of the end. God must have chosen some generation to be the last, though when and how remain mysteries. And yet the vulnerability of these small, helpless mammals I had brought into the world—it was almost unbearable to consider they might see the end of days.⁵

Now I read book after book, writing my own story of what cancer taught me about my place on the planet, how the deepest healing has come to me through God’s presence in creation. I turn to Scripture each morning or afternoon, depending when I need to temper the despair of scientific reality with the promise of sacred revelation. I find the same clear call in both: 

“You shall not defile the land in which you live, in which I also dwell.” (Numbers 35:34)

So I get out of bed in the morning. I wrangle together words about hope and healing. I learn to tend for my own body and the land I call home. I comfort my children who worry about the endangered species, the melting ice caps, the heating oceans, the Great Pacific garbage patch. I pray for humans to find common ground across political polarization (because if we don’t have a planet to argue on, the rest of our ideological divisions matter not) and tend the earth as the creatures we were made to be, part of the rest of nature that God made first.

And I wonder at the close of every beautiful, difficult day: is now the eye, the edge, or the end?

//

Loving God, maker of heaven and earth, protect us in your love and mercy. 
Send the Spirit of Jesus to be with us, to still our fears and give us confidence.

In the stormy waters, Jesus reassured his disciples by his presence, 
calmed the storm, and strengthened their faith. 
Guard us from harm during this storm and renew our faith to serve you faithfully. 

Give us the courage to face all difficulties 
and the wisdom to see the ways 
your Spirit binds us together in mutual assistance.
With confidence we make our prayer through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.⁶

1. The scene is worth a watch, whether you’ve seen the show or not.

2. This is because triple-negative breast cancer is particularly nasty and aggressive. The Cleveland Clinic tries to give a kind nod to this unfortunate fact, but I guffawed at their attempt: “Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is one of the more challenging breast cancers to treat. You might be discouraged by what you’ve read about the condition.”

3. We roared with laughter in her wake, fear not. But she was still terrible at her job.

4. From the United Nations.

5. Last night one of my children assured me that the parousia (the second coming of Christ, when God will be all in all) won’t happen for a long time yet, because God promised Abraham descendants as numerous as the sand on the shore and the stars in the sky, and he’s quite certain there are trillions of both but only billions of humans who have lived. From the mouths of babes (ok, middle schoolers), but I stood jaw-dropped at this one.

6. Prayer for Protection During a Storm, Catholic Household Blessings and Prayers, USCCB.