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.
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