Well, it wasn’t scar tissue.

Another week, another waiting room. This one, the Breast Care Center at Northside Hospital. As I pulled into the parking deck that held my car during a dozen prenatal ultrasounds, I recalled the last time I had been here: one year ago, to see a lactation consultant who would give me tips on how to nurse without trauma (to me or The Kid). If it ain’t one boob, it’s another, amirite? Damn things. An email from the Yankee Mom said as much a few days later, how pleasure and pain can originate from the same source. Then she mentioned another organ that has its ups and downs–the heart–and how I am held closely in hers. And I began to think about all that we women endure for love.

The Husband and I are reluctantly ditching our homebodied, couch-loving ways every two weeks to participate in a small group study on marriage through our church. As we share–something I prefer to do with a wineglass, computer, or both in my hand–and hear love stories and life stories, I am struck repeatedly by how different men and women are. And how miraculous it is when we overcome those differences and stay in relationship: marriage, friendship, what have you. Wars have been fought over less than what happens at some kitchen tables. And yet we approach each other daily, risking bloodshed and heartbreak, to make it work. To let grace work on us.

There were no men present past the first waiting room in the Breast Care Center. Just a bunch of women sitting in robes, what could have been a spa locker room but for the anxiety etched into each face. This is a place where innocent people receive death sentences every day, I thought, and felt my heart tighten. Quickly, I texted The Sis to verify that she and The Bro-in-Law are still on board as guardians of The Kid in case. Then I was called back.

They did a series of mammograms first, all of which had me contorted in positions that make downward dog look pedestrian. “Next one’s called The Cleopatra,” the tech said, I shit you not, and within seconds I was arched backward with one arm in the air over my head. I almost laughed, then I remembered why I was there, and then my boob was crunched flat. So…no laughing. After a brief wait, I was told that the doctor wanted an ultrasound, and a nurse showed me to a private room. I lay on a bed next to a screen manned by a tech and thought of the last time I had an ultrasound. TK was on that screen.

My mind ventured into some dark territory–TH and TK can’t live off turkey sandwiches and cereal!–and the tech asked if I was okay. I realized there were tears in my eyes, I had been busted getting emotional in public, and I was pretty f-ing far from okay. A short wait later, and the radiologist came to tell me that there was a slightly enlarged, slight worrisome lymph node in each axillary area (otherwise known as the AAHMPIT) and I would need an exam by my regular doctor to determine if a needle biopsy was necessary.

Then I went back to the parking deck and got lost trying to find my car.

Bertrand Russell wrote, “It is a dangerous error to confound truth with matter-of-fact. Our life is governed not only by facts, but by hopes; the kind of truthfulness which sees nothing but facts is a prison for the human spirit.” As I wait for a fact-based diagnosis, I think about how well-worn my body is, particularly its heart, by a life that knows the kind of truth that only hope provides. Three days later (the best things can happen in three days), I sit in a gym and hear a sermon delivered in a Mexican accent by a man I’ve never met who is my brother; I receive bread and wine with redemption attached. Some day down the line, whether it’s sooner or later, there will be a grim diagnosis; we are all wearing down. But to have a heart that, even as it wears down, is renewed and forgiven every second by a grace that defies expectation and just keeps showing up? The sturdiest of hopes is born of grace’s faithfulness…is built on nothing less. This is a hope that outlasts matter-of-fact, that overshadows diagnoses, that remains whatever appears on the screen.

TK and I sat on the floor of the gym and had a picnic while we waited for TH to finish up some business. This baby, this boy, who will by grace one day become a man, grins up at me as we share a turkey sandwich. Broken bread everywhere.