First Published on my Blog Sunday, October 31, 2010 and now again today, January 5th, the day Amy has been freed of her illness.  

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be a hero. Not a fan of cliches, I tire of folks being glibly called heroes when it can refer to an athlete who caught the big touchdown pass for the win or the unbelievable courageous men and women in our military, police, and fire departments. The word seems to lose its power when it is flipped around with such ease.

Yet there I was emailing my dear friend Amy, telling her in that she was my hero. It just sort of spilled out after reading her caringbridge.com post that is chronicling her fight with breast cancer. A less-than-a-year mom at age 32, Amy was recently diagnosed and also has the dreaded BRCA gene that not only increases a women’s chances for breast cancer, but also for ovarian and colon.

Amy has truly approached her cancer in a way I respect, admire, and that crushes me with its honesty. She expresses the deep joys that she experiences from her sweet baby girl and her wonderful husband. She clings to and enjoys every bit of them with an insatiability that comes from recognizing life’s preciousness and potential shortness. Which, of course, we all face but pretend we don’t. She gets downright pissed at having had such a wicked hand dealt her, but deeply trusts God with it all, while simultaneously doubting him and feeling fearful. And to top it all off, all who encounter Amy laugh their asses off; she is one of the funniest people I know.

In short, she is feeling it all and living her life with integrity and courage.

So we when she asked her website readers to pray for her as she spends her last weeks with her breasts before she has a double mastectomy, I wanted to openly weep in my office in the face of such courage, strength, loss, grief, and vulnerability. But not being an in-public cryer, I decided to suck the tears back in, as I often do, and email her to tell her how amazed, in awe, and inspired I am by her. I told her she is my hero.

“Hero?” she responded back to me. “Really?!”

I could sense the earnestness and surprise with which she asked it. She knows me well enough to know I don’t offer that word easily. So on my drive home, I thought about it. Is Amy really my hero, or am I just throwing that word out at her in my own attempt to feel better about this completely unfair deal she has gotten and alleviate my own fears?

Nope, I decided, after some in-auto soul searching, I mean it. I absolutely mean it. What did I mean in extending this title to Amy?

You offer me hope, because I fear the day that bad news will come my way or tragedy befall,  as it certainly will. But more than the event or illness itself, the things I most fear are losing hope, not living authentically in the midst of it, and not rising to the occasion–being a coward. You show me it can be done. Thank you.

And today January 5, 2013, the day you left us to head into something  and Someone more beautiful beyond anything we could ask or imagine, there you go, Sweet Amy, my hero.