In all seriousness

Last Wednesday morning, I opened my eyes at the crack of 7:00 am and saw that I had a text message waiting from my sister. "Don't freak out," it read, "But call me when you get this." Well, crap, I thought. Several days before that, she'd found a lump in her breast, which lead to a mammogram which lead to a biopsy. And I knew the text message meant that she'd gotten the biopsy results.

I stumbled downstairs in my pajamas and called Becky. She was driving Laura to the dentist and said she'd call right back. Isn't it funny how normal life intrudes on those important moments? Like, yes I need to tell you the test results but first I need to get this mac and cheese out of the microwave.

"Well," she said when I got her back on the phone, "It isn't good news. It's cancer." "Crap, " I said again. (Apparently, I am not very eloquent in moments like these.) She proceeded to tell me the lowdown--that it was a particular cancer called "ductal carcinoma in situ" and that the doctor said it was very treatable. Apparently Becky seems to have discovered the tumor very early on, and it is quite small. "You're going to be fine," the doctor told her, "A bump in the road," she called it.

Many of you are regular readers of Becky's blog and you know this already. If not, you can read her first person account of all that's happened here. I found it particularly poignant, in that she describes the progression of everything's-fine to maybe-it-isn't to Oh-God,-I-have-to-deal-with-this-now. And mostly, I found it poignant cause she's my sister.

Tomorrow morning Becky and Matt are meeting with the breast specialist (I will avoid the temptation to make a silly joke about that title) for a surgical consult. I am posting this here in case you aren't a Suburban Matron reader, to ask you to pray for my sister. We are hopeful that it will all be as Becky's doctor assured her, but as I'm sure you can imagine, there is a lot of anxiety and a measure of fear involved.

I believe that God is interested and invested in our lives. I believe He loves us more than we could ever comprehend. I believe that prayer matters--that it not only changes us, but that it can make a tangible difference in our lives. I've seen it happen too often to doubt it. I'm not sure what you might believe about that, but if you're a pray-er, please say a prayer for Becky. If you're a good-thoughts-thinker, we'll take some of those too! Heck, throw in some pixie dust and we'll be good to go.

Thanks, y'all.