Horn Family Update #5

“In my end is my beginning.”

- T.S. Eliot, East Coker

It’s hard to fathom the number of appointments.

Like a tech CEO overseeing an ever-growing start-up, our medical team has quickly expanded.

We began the week with a follow-up from surgery. Hilary had her staples removed, and she is slowly but surely walking farther from our home each day.

This week we also had our first meeting with our oncology team, which, as you might imagine, came with a tremendous amount of information. After those initial appointments, here’s what we know:

Hilary has a Grade 3 IDH-mutant astrocytoma. As we’ve learned, brain tumors are graded on a scale of 1 to 4 based on how aggressive they appear. While Grade 3 is not the most aggressive classification, it is considered a high-grade tumor.

Next week, I'll share another update on what treatment will look like. We share these updates simply to help guide the prayers of the many people who continue to carry our family—and Hilary—as she journeys toward healing.

If you missed the update on Hilary’s healing journey, you can find it here. If you missed the update on her return home, you can find it here. If you missed the update on surgery, you can find it here. And if you missed how we got here, you can find that update here.

“Hit the wall, I just hit the wall
I’m not a problem you can solve
Weighing the cost, impossible
I hit the wall, I hit the wall”

- Gracie Abrams, Hit the Wall

The road home can be long.

Especially in a Christopher Nolan movie.

I’ll be honest, with how complicated life has been recently, a sprawling three-hour epic based on a three-thousand-year-old poem felt like a reach.

So when I went with a group of friends to see The Odyssey, I suspended the analysis I often do. Odysseus sailing across a mythological world, descending into Hades, and wandering for twenty years may not seem relatable, but the longing beneath it certainly is: a longing for home.

Or perhaps, more accurately, a longing for hope. Home and hope are often synonyms—and both can feel terribly far away.

In one regard, hope is always hard. Unlike the sudden loss of a loved one or an unexpected career change, though, this season of life is defined more by its duration. As numerous people have shared with us, it’s a long road ahead.

So when hope feels far away, how do you keep moving forward?

“The shadows are there—night descends upon life—and there is that which seem to defy God, to disturb his order and his purpose: sickness, death, trouble, and sorrow. But it does not have the last word…”

- Eugene Peterson, Every Step an Arrival

A few years ago I did a podcast. It was about the end of the world.

Or let me reframe that before you put me in the category of a doomsday prepper or religious fanatic: it was an examination of scriptural and pop-cultural portrayals of the end of the world—and how they shape the way we live right now. As I’d often say, the apocalypse isn’t about the ethereal, but the everyday.

Throughout history, communities have studied and crafted apocalyptic stories to find a way forward when the future seems uncertain. As theologian Jürgen Moltmann once wrote, “From the remembrances of their future we find energies for the new beginning.”

While Scripture’s vision of the future affirms a brutal realism, it is also a realism soaked in resurrection. Like the raising of Lazarus, Jesus’ voice can penetrate the darkest cave of despair. He surely weeps as a caring friend, but his care also extends in a call to leave behind the grave clothes that once bound us.

Surely, some have used this sentiment as a way of avoiding grief or ignoring the hard aspects of reality. I know a few. If I'm honest, I’ve been that person at times. But holding fast to faith doesn't require us to minimize trauma, ignore unanswered prayers for healing, or pretend the road ahead isn’t long. It simply reminds us that suffering doesn’t get the final say.

When the days are long and the years cut short, faith has the final word.

I recognize this can feel a tad abstract. But hope isn’t top-down; it’s bottom-up. Think of hope like a habit—less a philosophical concept and more like a muscle that has to be regularly worked, pushed to its limit, and allowed to recover when it feels depleted.

Habits are consistent and durable—almost as stubborn as the slime my 8-year-old somehow manages to leave perpetually stuck to our kitchen table. They become the trellis from which new vines find the structure they need to climb toward the sky.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t have the headspace these days for a hope that doesn’t actually do something. If hope can’t hit the wall, then what’s the point?

For example, Hilary and I have begun a daily ritual of going for a walk. Early on, the laps were around our kitchen and long hallway with a walker; now, we are slowly traveling farther from home each day.

To walk is a habit of hope. Hope for the restoration of Hil's body and mind. Hope for the return to a normal rhythm when this is all said and done. Hope for our friends and family whose bodies also groan for healing. Hope for the long road ahead, when we finally receive a test that says she is cancer-free.

It’s hard to tell on the latter. It’s early. We’re still in the first quarter. But we are forming habits that enable us to choose hope—to find our way back home.

I pray you do the same.

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Know that this has been a process for us. Our world has been turned upside down quite quickly, so we're still figuring out some of the pathways to support as we go. Thank you for your patience and grace as we learn what this season requires.

For those who have asked how they can bring us a meal: A close friend created a Meal Train for our family. You can find it here.

For those who have asked how they can follow along: I’ll share more updates as we have them. If you’d like to receive them, you can subscribe below.

For those who have asked how they can support us financially: At this point, if you’d like to support our family financially, you can do so via Venmo: @hilary-horn

Duh.

Go see The Odyssey.

I actually wrote a ranking of Christopher Nolan’s films a few months ago—but with a twist. Instead of a straightforward worst-to-best list, I compared each stage of Nolan’s career to the development of a Hall of Fame quarterback.

I may end up posting it soon. It’s just been...a little busy around here.

Either way, find the biggest screen you can and go see it.

Had this realization that Hilary is a little like Dory these days.

She laughed when I told her.

Then she rolled her eyes…

Apparently, having a brain tumor removed still hasn’t made my jokes any funnier.