I used to be very comfortable living in a black and white world. I don't mean I liked the absence of color but more that I loved the absence of ambiguity. People were good or bad. One choice was right, the other was wrong.

This season of my life is one that has reinforced the idea that things can be both/and..good and bad, joyful and painful, heart-breaking and hopeful...all in one single moment. I can't find black and white anymore.

You know that my brother is sick. Cancer is awful. Steve is an amazing person. He is brilliant...and humble. He has Stage IV metastatic colorectal cancer...and he is teaching and working on his Ph.D. The combination of Oxaliplatin and Xeloda is making him horribly sick...and it might save his life. He is sick and I want to be more like him.

My brother is the living picture of life in the Both/And.

This weekend I found myself dwelling in this land of both/and.

I went back to Maine, where I grew up, to be there for the birth of my new niece. Lillian Esther arrived at 12:56 AM on Sunday morning. For some reason my sister allowed me to be there for the labor and delivery. It's the second time I've actually witnessed a baby making their appearance in the world. And it doesn't get less amazing. To watch my little sister do a VBAC with a 9 pound, 8 ounce little girl - to be in the worst pain of her life and to experience the greatest joy she could know - was a picture of both/and. If you've ever witnessed a baby being born you know it may be one of the goryiest things possible - and the beauty of it brings you to tears. Seriously, you see things they don't ever tell you in your sex ed classes. But when my little niece appeared the blood and gore was instantaneously transformed into the purest picture of life that there is.

Then there was my nephew Daniel. He was both entirely disinterested and enamored all at once. He was both blissfully ignorant and keenly aware that his entire world is changing. He will both love his sister and protect her above all others - and she will take his toys and make him want to give her back all at once. Both/and.

How do I live gracefully in the midst of both/and? My brother has cancer and my niece just entered the world with her entire life in front of her. The overwhelming threat of a life too short and the promise of a whole life to be lived. The story I told myself of my family is

disintigrating in front of me - and my niece Lillian is the promise of a hope and a future. Both/and.

I have to be entirely honest. I long for black and white. But I am convinced that black and white is an illusion. The truth lies, I am beginning to believe, in the both/and...