A couple of days ago, as we were leaving a restaurant where we had eaten brunch after church, my husband passed out and hit his head on a slate topped table on the way down. I turned just in time to see this happen. It is one of the most horrifying things I have ever seen - and once seen, cannot be unseen. In that second or two that it took for me to get to him and determine that he was breathing and had a pulse, I thought the worst. Two years ago our friend Greg stood up to tell a joke to a class he was teaching and died instantly, immediately, despite the prompt attention from a doctor who just happened to be there. I can't help thinking about Jan, Greg's wife who kissed him and put him on a plane to Florida and never saw him alive again.
One day we will laugh about this. Walt is a big man, and the fall had a Jackie Gleason-esque, pivoting comedic quality about it. The wonderful guys from the fire department came, then the emergency squad. We spent two harrowing days in the ER and then in the hospital. Tests were done, questions asked, blood taken. We may never know for sure what caused the syncope but we think it was related to one of his heart medications - which he is now no longer taking. He can't drive for two weeks - we can't risk him passing out behind the wheel. Since he's not on the medication, his a-fib is in full bloom. Life just got a little more complicated, a little more restricted.
What was God up to when he made me turn in that moment; why did He want me to see Walt falling like a stone to the floor?
He is beating the self-sufficiency out of me - at least that's what it feels like. I am so hard-headed when it comes to this. As soon as things are going relatively smoothly I think I am self-reliant. I forget that I cannot even take a breath without His full participation and blessing. I lose focus on Him and barrel on full steam ahead, focused on the task at hand. I think about all of the people that He allows to live their entire lives with their illusion of self-sufficiency intact, and if I am grateful for anything in this mess, it is that He has rescued me from that. Like them, I thought I could take credit for my intelligence, talent, success. Wow, that sounds spiritually arrogant, but I don't mean it that way. If I can think of another way to more accurately express how small, helpless and grateful I feel, I'll come back with an edit.
Life can and does change in an instant. Ask my friend Jan. Ask the students at Chardon High school. Ask the apostle Paul, who fell down on the road to Damascus a Christian-hating Jew and got up a temporarily blinded, broken Christian. I didn't lose Walt on Sunday, but I could have. I did lose my self-sufficiency - at least for now. I know myself well enough to know that without an assist from the Holy Spirit, I won't hang onto this brokenness for long. I pray that the vision of my beloved, unconscious husband falling will be a reminder to me of my utter and absolute dependence on God for every good thing - and every seemingly bad thing - in my life.
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Wrestling...and Waiting...
I'm wresting with God. I think I am not alone in this. I think that God is pleased that I care enough about my relationship with Him to wrestle with Him, rather than walking away when things are tough. And things are tough.
Walt and I have poured the last five years of our lives into a business and into people that we came to love. It was our life and it defined us - and God was at the center of it. Now there have been changes in the marketplace that are making it more possible than ever for this tender seedling of a business to bear fruit - and Walt has developed a debilitating and apparently capricious heart arrhythmia that makes in impossible to plan anything with certainty.
Our team fell apart - partly because of our inability to lead it, but there was more. It was the perfect storm - Walt's illness, John's illness, David's business reversal and legal problems, Scott and Kelly's mother's illness and death, a DUI for another, loss of a job, marital difficulties. These are all challenges in life, but all of them happening, in a very short period if time to a team of people who are in the process of creating something together - it has been devastating to the business. Even if there are enough pieces left to pick up and start over, and the desire to do so is there, we continue to struggle daily with Walt's condition. So now what? It's so not in my driven nature to wait.
The bible is full of waiting - and being rewarded for our patience. Psalm 37:34 says "Wait for the Lord and keep his way, and he will exalt you to inherit the land; you will look on when the wicked are cut off."
and Lamentations 3:26 "It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord."
There are also copious references to patience, such as Romans 8:25 "But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience."
But what do we do while we are waiting, and how long are we to wait? That's a big part of my struggle. What's acceptance and what's quitting? I don't want to be a quitter, but neither do I want to bang my head continually against a door that has been closed by a divine hand. We have been dealing with Walt's illness for nearly a year now, and we have both seen much spiritual fruit as a result of the experience. Being human, I grieve for our losses as much as I celebrate the changes we have experienced; increased patience for me (though it may not seem so from what I've written here) and increased determination and discipline for Walt.
Where does that leave me? I want to trust. I've just finished the brilliant Timothy Keller's "King's Cross." This is some of what he has to say on the subject of waiting.
I believe that this next thing that Keller says is absolutely true:
"If you go to Jesus, he may ask of you far more than you originally planned to give, but he can give you infinitely more than you dared ask or think."
Arrgh, it's just that waiting....
Walt and I have poured the last five years of our lives into a business and into people that we came to love. It was our life and it defined us - and God was at the center of it. Now there have been changes in the marketplace that are making it more possible than ever for this tender seedling of a business to bear fruit - and Walt has developed a debilitating and apparently capricious heart arrhythmia that makes in impossible to plan anything with certainty.
Our team fell apart - partly because of our inability to lead it, but there was more. It was the perfect storm - Walt's illness, John's illness, David's business reversal and legal problems, Scott and Kelly's mother's illness and death, a DUI for another, loss of a job, marital difficulties. These are all challenges in life, but all of them happening, in a very short period if time to a team of people who are in the process of creating something together - it has been devastating to the business. Even if there are enough pieces left to pick up and start over, and the desire to do so is there, we continue to struggle daily with Walt's condition. So now what? It's so not in my driven nature to wait.
The bible is full of waiting - and being rewarded for our patience. Psalm 37:34 says "Wait for the Lord and keep his way, and he will exalt you to inherit the land; you will look on when the wicked are cut off."
and Lamentations 3:26 "It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord."
There are also copious references to patience, such as Romans 8:25 "But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience."
But what do we do while we are waiting, and how long are we to wait? That's a big part of my struggle. What's acceptance and what's quitting? I don't want to be a quitter, but neither do I want to bang my head continually against a door that has been closed by a divine hand. We have been dealing with Walt's illness for nearly a year now, and we have both seen much spiritual fruit as a result of the experience. Being human, I grieve for our losses as much as I celebrate the changes we have experienced; increased patience for me (though it may not seem so from what I've written here) and increased determination and discipline for Walt.
Where does that leave me? I want to trust. I've just finished the brilliant Timothy Keller's "King's Cross." This is some of what he has to say on the subject of waiting.
"God's sense of timing will confound ours, no matter what culture we're from. His grace rarely operates according to our schedule. When Jesus says...' trust me, be patient' in effect he is...saying, 'Remember how when I calmed the storm, I showed you that my grace and love are compatible with what seem to you to be unconscionable delays'. It's not 'I will not be hurried, even though I love you'; it's 'I will not be hurried because I love you. I know what I'm doing. And if you try to impose your understanding of timing and schedule on me, you will struggle to feel loved by me.' "
"If you go to Jesus, he may ask of you far more than you originally planned to give, but he can give you infinitely more than you dared ask or think."
Arrgh, it's just that waiting....
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