Good can come from cancer

I have been very resistant to admitting that anything good can come from cancer. But, I can report that my hair is much, much thicker than it was before. I am even loving the curls. (Think Richard Simmons). But, it is now long enough to frame my face. And I am beginning to look somewhat "pretty" again, after almost 10 months. At least I don't go "who is that?" when I look in the mirror. The curls are not supposed to last, but mine seem to be. At least it has been more than six months since my last chemo. My hair was curly, but not like this, before, so it may remain curly. I'll keep it short if it stays curly. I'm going to my beautician on Thursday to get some shape into it (I haven't done anything to it since it was shaved in May). And to get color. I used to have my hair highlighted. It was the mousy brown that blondes often become. So, the highlights worked nicely. I liked them because they could grow out without it looking like I was dying my roots dark. It's now a steely gray, so I don't know what color or process will work on it. Just as long as there is no red in it. I hate it when women dye their hair and it gets red. It looks so well, dyed. One woman in my congregation has soft blonde hair (I know it's naturally gray). Her complexion is much fairer than mine, so I don't know if that shade will work with my skin. Actually, it's about the same tone, it's just that my skin is more, as my mother would say, sallow.

I'm beginning a series on modern saints for Lent. A parishioner who thought she might have had ovarian cancer (but thankfully didn't) said to me, "well, I saw you come through it and I knew if you could, then I could." That's a common thought. But, why is it when we look at "saints": Teresa, Dorothy Day, Romero, Bonhoeffer, we think of them as exceptional people and not as models for what we can do?