I Saw God's Gracious Face in Each of Your Smiles

St. Paul Lutheran Church in Davenport, IA is where Mark's brother and family attend church.  It is a big, beautiful, busy congregation and they were a wonderful support for Mark during our time there. This article is in their current newsletter.

Mark and Carla Hillman left their long-held jobs in education in Minnesota, and packed up their three kids to move half-way around the world.

They went to build an orphanage in Tanzania. They went to China and worked with kids there, too. Now, the Hillman family is in the process of moving to Saudi Arabia.

But there was an unexpected stop along the way – five months in the Quad Cities at the home of Mark’s brother and sister-in-law, Steve and Jen Hillman.

Cancer can do that – put a person in a place they didn’t think they’d be, accepting the kindness, love, generosity of family, friends, strangers.

So can a lot of other circumstances.

And that, Mark says, is one of the most important lessons he’s come to understand: God doesn’t care where we are – our physical location on this planet. What matters is that we are serving God by serving others.

You might have seen Mark, Carla, and the kids around St. Paul. Mark has a bald head, and for awhile, a mask to protect his fragile immune system as he battled lymphoma. He came to worship, a book group, and Bible study, volunteered to help the building crew clean on Monday mornings – he vacuumed a lot of doughnut crumbs.

Just after his last hospital stay, he joined the Tuesday morning book group at St. Paul. The group read The Holy Longing by Ronald Rolheiser.

"One of the strong points he makes is that the incarnation continues in and through each of us,” Mark said in his note to friends sharing the news his lymphoma is in remission and is cleared to travel to Saudi Arabia. "When we show love, support, encouragement, etc... to others, we can do so because of Jesus's love for us and when we do, we continue directly Jesus' incarnation –He lives.”

Rolheiser suggests that God needs our "actions of love for each other" in order to answer prayers.

"I found his words describing exactly what I experienced this year,” Mark said. "God became more and more real to me as you visited me, fed me and my family, wrote letters, liked my health updates on Facebook, and as you prayed for me and my family. I saw God’s gracious face in each of your smiles and my prayers have been answered.”

Mark saw God’s grace when his family was robbed in the middle of the night in Tanzania. His neighbors came to the family’s rescue, and then guarded the Hillman’s compound night and day for weeks – without being asked.

He saw grace in the families of his family’s church in Beijing. When Mark was diagnosed with cancer and began treatment, people he never met from that church brought his family meals.

And when his family needed a place to call home while Mark finished his treatment at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, Steve and Jen Hillman welcomed them into their home. Their church, St. Paul, welcomed them too.

So as he and his family begin their journey in Saudi Arabia, Mark Hillman knows this: "It doesn’t matter where I am, the community of Christ is there.”

We Kicked It!

I certainly know that I would not be able to survive if it were not for the fact that I am being upheld by the prayers of so many people.

I thought these 2 quotes were suitably juxtaposed together.  It is true that there were so many times that there didn't seem to be anything to cling to except the knowledge that so many people, known and unknown were praying for us.  At the same time, there times when I was so angry and scared at what was happening that keeping calm was a joke and I wanted to kick everyone's ass.

When someone has cancer, the whole family and everyone who loves them does, too.

On October 4th, Mark complained about some pain that seemed to be a possible bladder or kidney infection.  55 weeks later--almost 13 of those spent in a hospital bed--he kicked cancer to the curb.  Actually, I'm not ashamed to say that we all did.  I can't say I would rather have had cancer than watch someone go through it, but cancer infected every one of us.  Like its spread through the body, cancer spread through our lives, our church, our family, and our friends.  We are "those people," the family relative, that friend from college, that former colleague--the one who had cancer.  And even though it's gone, it will never be gone, at least for me.  It will always lurk just around the corner, unseen.  Maybe just waiting, maybe out of sight for good.  There will never be a doctor's appointment, a pain, a fever, that won't cause cancer to rear its head in my heart.

All who call on God in true faith, earnestly from the heart, will certainly be heard, and will receive what they have asked and desired.

There were so many time when I could not do anything but pray.  I was terrified of articulating what I really wanted, which is the cancer to be gone, because so many have prayed for that, to no avail.  I prayed mostly for peace and strength,  patience and courage.  I looked desperately for blessings and opportunities to be thankful.  I tried to push away the thought that maybe I really don't want God's will to be done, if that meant an outcome that I didn't want.  I didn't want God to give me more than I could handle, because some days it seemed that that was what was happening.  Some days there was nothing I could do but just cry and ask for more strength than I had.

In those 55 weeks I worked full-time and ran back and forth to hospitals.  I took care of my kids and my husband.  I packed a house and sent it to two separate countries.  I drove my kids from Seattle to Iowa.  I took my son to Missouri (twice) and let him go to start college.  I imposed on my family as we moved in on them in Iowa.  I left them all behind to start a new job in the most challenging place we've lived to date.  And yet although very little has happened in the way I thought it would, everything did happen.  The rough places were made plain.  I have no idea why so many hurdles were thrown up, or why the load was so heavy, but at every stage, those obstacles have been moved aside.  It's not luck, or coincidence...I do believe it is God working in and through my life and the lives of the people around me.

There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.

If you hope for happiness in the world, hope for it from God, and not from the world.

I can't wait to move forward.  We're in a new place, new jobs, new experiences....a new beginning.  I want to put worry behind me and soak up the sun and the joy of being with my family.  I want to relax, something I can't even remember doing.  I want to be more than I've been this past year--a better wife, mother, teacher, and woman.  I can finally look ahead at the possibilities again!

The Best Laid Plans...

2013...truly an annus horribilis, to quote the Queen.  We were going to spend our last year in China traveling, spend spring break in Paris or Rome for our 25th (and first) wedding anniversary celebration, and thoroughly enjoy those last months with Cameron and our friends before moving on to the next phase of our lives.

Here's what happened.

Mark had a wicked appendicitis attack that knocked him off his feet for several weeks.  His eventual appendectomy found a tumor that turned out to be an aggressive form of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.  Of course, that whole appendix thing turned out to be what alerted us to the fact that he had cancer.

Mark needed a LOT of chemotherapy, meaning he was sick for most of the spring.  We were so fortunate that the chemo could be done in Beijing where we could be together and have the support of so many friends!  And he bounced back enough to be able to be at Cameron's graduation!

Changing jobs meant a stressful and frightening coordination of multiple insurances and the uncertainty of how our new school would react and support us.  We had such great care and assistance from both ISB and ISG as well as the insurance reps that negotiated all the challenges for us.

Mark needed a stem cell transplant and we needed to be together.  We had wonderful care at the University of Iowa hospitals and the overwhelming gift of being able to spend the summer with family so that we could be together.

I was set to leave August 19th with the kids for our new jobs and schools, leaving Mark behind and hopefully joining  us by Christmas.  Embassy bureaucracy meant that we were/are delayed indefinitely, leaving us unsure about what to do and eventually enrolling the kids in their first American schools, where they started 2 weeks late.  I was able to take Cameron to college and get him settled in.  We had over a month together as a family with Mark, and the kids have found that they are very well-prepared for school, thanks to their time at ISB!  We've been able to follow Cameron and send him care packages as he settles in to college, too.  There are doctors in our new city in Saudi who can do the checkups that Mark will need for the next couple years.

Now I'm set to leave for Saudi tomorrow night...alone.  The kids will have to wait until I get my work permit and then come.  Mark will be applying for his visa shortly, hoping to fly by the end of November.  It will be so hard to adjusting on my own, away from my family--but it does allow me time to get settled into a job that I'm a month late for, so that whenever the family does show up, I can spend my time and energy helping them get adjusted.

I don't know why all of these things have happened.  I would not wish this year on anyone.  It has pushed all of us to the breaking point over and over.  I'm sure that the recovery will be much more than Mark's physical health.  But there has never been a time in my life where I've seen the rough places made plain like they have been for us.  I'm a slow learner, but I have more peace about going alone and Mark's potential visa issues than I could have had in the past (which is not to say that I'm not worried, because I will ALWAYS worry), but to those who wonder...God does have a plan for us.  I don't know what that plan is, and I can look back and see all the intersections where things could have thrust us into a much darker place...but the path has been cleared for us as we've needed it.  And the things that have tested us have yielded other blessings and opportunities.

I will continue to plan, and continue to worry, and continue to not trust fully, I suppose.  Everyone has their weak spots, or their sins, and these are mine.  My goal is not only to seek out the blessings in life, but to seek more peace with the unknown.  After all, that's what's ahead of me!

Russ Hillman--A Life Well Lived.

Mark's father passed away last week. He had been recently diagnosed with cancer and had just started chemotherapy. His death was quite sudden. We have been incredibly blessed with opportunity to be with our family in the States this weekend as we say goodbye to a wonderful father, husband, and servant of God. More later, but his obituary is here:

New Tacoma Cemeteries & Funeral Home: Obituaries