I’ve been re-thinking the spiritual cleansing in the rain forests of Ecuador. It may not have been a good choice.

Oh, the guide said it would clean out all the evil and black stuff for the end of the year. And it was a chance to experience ancient religiosity. I’ll try anything once. When I was a journalist in the sixties and seventies, I was the reporter who got the New Age assignments – like learning transcendental meditation, speaking with aura readers, astrologists, witches, even Satanists that at one time paced our streets in blue velvet robes seeking funds. That story I asked to be taken off of right away. Normally, I just close my eyes and have at any experience from para-gliding, trapeze swinging, parasailing to gold face masks. I always close my eyes when exercising, having massages or just thinking in the surround-sound of the Calvary choir hitting incredible high notes of old hymns. Sometimes it’s better to imagine and feel than to watch.

However, if there wasn’t enough of my dark side for the shaman to cleanse in the cold, moist rain forest in the North Andes sector of Ecuador, the shaman must have knocked loose some of the residue on my rock. First my super-dooper Sony laptop crashed. Just crashed. Like it didn’t like me anymore. I had documents and photographs backed up, but all those emails and email information and email addresses have disappeared. The Geek squad is trying to retrieve something in a higher heaven than the local Best Buys, which couldn’t do it.

Then on arriving home three days later and calling the fancy chocolate shop with the purple decor where I ordered most of my Christmas gifts for friends, I discovered they had lost my original order and since I had no laptop with all the addresses and info on it, I couldn’t fight back and had to search again for a couple dozen addresses. I still haven’t finished that task.

The crowning un-delight that welcomed me home was listening to many phone calls from the Women’s Center on my answering machine. I had the lovely annual called a mammogram prior to my departure November 12th, and apparently there was a blip on the Xray that needed diagnosticing. (I made up that word.) So I called immediately and spent my third day home in the center having mammograms and ultrasounds again and again. The blip was so tiny, the doctor said, it’s either the world’s smallest cancer or a tiny benign mass. One way or the other, I am having a biopsy January 8th. No, I’m not nervous. I’m more irritated because I don’t want anything to interrupt my exercise campaign for the trek to Everest base camp and Mt. Kailas in the spring. Whatever happens, that’s a go. Whatever happens during the biopsy, I’ll take standing up. Would this be the “little C” if it’s the real thing?

There was something strange sitting in the waiting room between sessions. All of a sudden it wasn’t who you are, what you have done, or what your life had been. Everything was removed and you were naked before the world. You were in a new sorority of white robes clutched tightly as if something would spill out. You were starting a new challenge where so many had been before. There was plenty of hope since there would be plenty of sisters who would embrace you in your worst moments. It’s a woman’s world, a sorority of pink, when there is the suspicion of breast cancer on your menu.

Please rest assured, I know God doesn’t do these things to us women. But He allows challenges to our faith as he did with Job. I so daringly trust in God – after all He has taken me through He still is the one occupant of my heart and soul – that I won’t let faith dribble out like melted butter. I’m the eternal prodical daughter, over and over again. Seven times seventy and then another times seventy. Forgiveness is done through God’s grace, but I don’t think it’s free. Whatever happens is my due. I’ve groveled with the pigs and stomped values in the mud time and time again. I know I’m never good enough for whatever I’m allowed to do. And I am not so presumptuous as to think I don’t deserve the fight with cancer when so many so much stronger and holier than me have struggled and fought and won the battle. Some dear women have lost the battle too, but for them, I am sure, there is heaven’s pillow and God’s lap. This is just another mountain. I hope I can climb over it without a groan.