#3 of 50

Well-watered Garden, 4 x 4"  Aided by a roll-on adhesive, I completed this one in less than two hours using scraps from a large mosaic in progress. It calls to mind water and sunlight for me.

While working, two conversations during the past few days about ovarian cancer were playing through my mind. My Cancerversary was April 21st- one year since cancer made its presence known. Party time! No tears. Then Friday in a thrift store I met a woman whose daughter is about to start chemo for ovarian cancer. Tears rolled down my cheeks in a aisle filled with ceramic flower pots and figurines, an empty silver frame tucked under my arm. Cancer is a memory for me but for thousands of women their season of treatment is just beginning. Her daughter has fantastic support medically and personally. Lotsa people praying. No advice or information needed; just a moment for a mother to process out loud what she is experiencing with someone who understands. Cancer doesn't just happen to the person diagnosed. A form of it happens to everyone who loves them. I learned that from my mother and my best friend.

How does a convo about cancer start in a thrift store? My still-scant hair is clue #1.

The very next day at a lecture about outhouses, yes way, the speaker Georg Papp of the Bull Hill Workshop made a brief but impassioned comment about ovarian cancer. Check out his roll of wisdom, left.
"My wife and I have ovarian cancer," he said, "because if it happens to her, it happens to you." His lecture was half myth-busting history and half stand up comedy, though he expressed he wasn't at his best due to the impact of cancer. His wife slipped out to the car for a rest and he quite vulnerably shared his fatigue and stress in a way that gave his wife much honor. I met her after the lecture. She's in year five and her 2nd recurrence but she is a thriver! Smiling and caring and knows she is deeply loved. 

So for Georg's wife, for thrift store shopper's daughter, and for all women impacted by cancer I call the latest mini mosaic "Well-watered  Garden" from Isaiah 58:11.

The Lord will guide you always;
he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land
and will strengthen your frame. 
You will be like a well-watered garden,
like a spring whose waters never fail.

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