A Prayer For A Friend

I stopped working at Barnes & Noble for three months. I had worked there for two years. Truth be told, as I try my best to tell it in these posts, I didn't miss it all that much. I was a different person at work than the man I wanted to be. Days and days and days spent being a lesser example had allowed me to create a reputation I did not want to accept. I was not looking forward to returning to a place that had known well the parts of me I was ashamed of but had also not respected the parts of me I was proud of.

So walking through those front doors again last week was kind of bizarre. I'm still working at the job I originally left B&N for, but now that I have no classes in the summer, I have time to work both as a research assistant and as a book slave, er, uh, book seller. I can't complain, really. With a wedding down the road, I need the savings. So, it wasn't bizarre working, necessarily. What was weird was encountering the subtle, yet profound changes that had occurred in a mere three months.

And it wasn't until the end of my shift that first night back that I heard the biggest change. Susan Schwab was in the hospital fighting for her life.

Many of you have heard my stories of the "grandmother" of Barnes & Noble, the sweet old lady who always replies the same way to my immature jokes -- with a question. Here's the typical exchange when we're recovering the store at the end of the night:

"Susan," I usually say, "there's no way this book will get in that shelf."
"Caleb," she replies, "just stuff it in there. We'll make it fit."
I can't help myself, of course. "That's what she said," I say, trying not to laugh.
She gives the same response she has dozens of times over the last two years.
"Who said that?" she asks. "Valerie?"
We all just laugh and get back to work.

Susan has seen the best of me and the rest of me, rarely in that order, and she still smiles when we greet. And it's a sincere smile, too. She has made a huge impact on the place, infuriating people with her commitment to her work and reminding us, even when we don't want to remember it, that there really are reasons to be happy at work.

So when I found out about her truly awful diagnosis, of something like six different kinds of cancer, I immediately made plans to visit her. This is not a big deal, and anyone who had encountered her would have surely done the same. But for me, it was a challenge. I knew that as soon as I walked through those doors and entered the cold hospital lobby, I would be overwhelmed with memories of my grandmothers, each suffering slowly under the pain of cancer. When I got to Susan's room, the memories became amplified, and for a moment, seeing her there, with her hair resting calmly on the pillow as the doctor gave her a progress report, time stood still. I had seen that rest before. I had heard that conversation.

Suddenly, the card I bought felt worthless. My prayers seemed weak. My concerns appeared infantile. Here was a woman, struggling to live on a bed in a hospital, smiling when she saw me walk through the door. And there I was, a young man, physically alive, but struggling often to find that joy that seemed to leap from her frail frame.

Like my grandmothers, Susan is a Christian. And like the two incredible women I called Mamo and Gran, Susan smiles in the face of her diagnosis. She has joy. A sign outside her door reads, "Smile Before Entering! Only Positive Thoughts In This Room!" But that sign isn't for Susan. Is she scared? Sure. Death is a serious thing. But she smiles. That sign is for us. It's for the people still here, the people with a clean bill of health who are still dying inside. It's just a piece of paper on a cold metal door, but it challenged me. It still does. Find that joy. Find that love. Find that peace that sees God beyond the fear, beyond the hurt, beyond this life.

I had to go straight to work after visiting the hospital, and the time I had spent there was brief. Susan was speaking with her doctor, and all I had time for was a quick word and card delivery. When she called from her room to Barnes & Noble a short time later and asked for me, she thanked me for the gift and said it was what she needed to get through the day. That might have been the most humbling phone call I've ever received because it was my visit to her that got me through my day, through my selfishness, through my own kind of death.

In my life group, we are starting John Piper's Don't Waste Your Life (available free here), and last night, we discussed what it meant to live a life unwasted. Surely this is it, to glorify God in the harshest of situations with a simple gesture of faith. A smile in a hospital. A bit of laughter from a woman resting in a foreign place. My grandmothers had that faith. Susan has that faith. I want that faith.

If you are reading this, say a prayer for Susan Schwab and her family. They need love and encouragement as the long days go by at University Hospital. But don't just think of her illness. Live by her example.

Hebrews 6:11-12 (ESV)
And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.