On Hiatus

In Bermuda? No,wish we were. Still pain free? No- In the hospital instead. Once again, I am being reminded that life can change in an instant. A week ago, I thought I would go to the ER to check out a problem I'd been having while I was actually having it. Here I am, a week later, still here and awaiting surgery. Our bodies are "fearfully and wonderfully made..." and it's a wonder that they work as well as they do.

The people who care for patients are grace-filled gifts of God. I admire their devoted service even in the midst of the hurricane. They were here and they stayed the night. One nurse convinced a friend from NC to come babysit the children while she tended to her responsibilities here. Medicine is a calling and I've seen commitment in every department. I have an opportunity to reflect back to them the goodness that I see.

My stay has been a blessing in that I have felt great love surrounding me at every turn. My wonderful Paul is my constant support as we share another one of life's adventures.

Rejoice always, says the Apostle Paul. When things aren't going well, that's hard, but there's love to be found in every circumstance, even if we have to supply it ourselves. That is something that changes the face of anything.

Pain Free

In getting up from the sofa to come to the computer and begin to write, I realized that the pain in my legs that I usually experience in that process, wasn't there. I had had an easy night, too, flipping over from side to side without having to gingerly push my body with aching leg muscles. I had walked up the stairs and hardly noticed the effort. For the last 15 hours, I have been pain free.

What a gift! Medicine is the tool, but God is the one who gives me the grace to be grateful for the respite. To those of us who have had a broken bone and been unable to use a limb, its eventual healing makes the miracle of motion very obvious. To me, to be able to put one foot in front of the other without noticing the effort makes me aware of how amazing locomotion actually is. Maybe it takes absence to notice presence and be grateful for it.

There is so much about living - the way we move and breathe and exist; about our relationships - the way we communicate and love and feel empathy; about our experiences in society - the way we interact as cultures, genders and age groups, that I have taken for granted. Today, I won't.

Disappointment

Last week I went to Duke University Medical Center for an appointment that had been scheduled four months ago. The purpose was to discuss some ongoing problems that have stumped my local doctors and I was impatient to get there and hear some insight from the great "expert."

There was none to be had. The physician was distracted, rushed and unprepared. In the week since the trip, the promised referrals and paperwork have not appeared, even after several follow-up inquiries on several fronts. There has been no forward progress. I seem to have meandered down some side road, instead.

I've been asking myself how this could have happened because the entire visit had been lifted to God since the start. I, and so many others, have prayed for this doctor since April and asked for wisdom for him and blessing for me. Yet, the outcome, from my perspective at least, is a disappointment.

Even as I write this, however, I know that my questions replicate those asked by pray-ers throughout the millenia. When people have their expectations dashed, we all ask: "Where is God in this?" The hiccup that got in the way of my positive outcome was inefficiency and ineptitude; for others, it may be a far more serious appearance of evil or tragedy. In the end, though, the question is the same: "What happened to the prayers that went up to God about this?"

The underlying question is actually a more basic one: "Why bother praying?"

The answer that strikes me this morning sounds rather prosaic: "Does anyone have a better idea?"

Prayer is a positive, life-giving force that we send forth into the void. It unites those who pray and this changes the world. While I was praying for the Duke physician, love was directed into his life. I don't know how this has affected the man he's been and the decisions he's made since April, but I do know that there is enough stress and negativity in anyone's life that something positive can't hurt.

As for me, the experience of praying for a particular answer might have narrowed my insight into how I might be healed through other means. In expecting the Duke doc to be source, I was making my own diagnosis, when, in fact, the problem may not be in his area of expertise at all. Being disappointed at the outcome is like being annoyed that the lamp doesn't come on when I've actually flipped the switch for the overhead fan. A more fruitful prayer might have been for generalized healing, not a good experience at Duke.

Which brings me to the question that is really the most basic of them all: "What do I really want to be the outcome of my prayer?"

Ultimately, I believe, all of us want to be happy and at peace within ourselves. By praying for specific answers that we think will lead to that, we set ourselves up for failure. God respects free will and a prayer that involves someone else's responses to God's leading is problematic.

Inner peace in the midst of the difficulties we face would seem to be a more effective prayer. God can work with us directly and there are no intermediaries to foul up God's design. So, the better prayer for me is to be at peace with whatever state of health my body is in today while, at the same time, relying on the evidence that Jesus went about healing, not refusing to heal.

As God said to Jeremiah:

For I am mindful of the plans I have for you...plans for your good and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.

Disappointment, then, becomes my choice, not God's.

I like His vision better.

Back Flip

When I was a little girl, I loved to do what today would be called gymnastics, except back then, there weren't any lessons or trainers or facilities full of equipment. I was reduced to climbing up the molding around the arch that separated our dining room from the living room and doing somersaults down the front lawn. And back bends.

Ah yes, I could bend over backwards and touch the floor behind me. Now that athletic females - including my own granddaughters - are crowding the sports facilites, I've longed to do those back bends, flips and jumps on a trampoline. Yesterday, I got my chance at a setup at the local Mall.

I was there to give the world's greatest grandchildren a chance to have their flying moment, but when I got there, I wasn't 64 anymore. I was 14 and my body could do anything and my muscles and health problems didn't exist. What was I saving myself for?

As they strapped me into the harness, I wasn't nervous, just thtrilled. At last I was going to get a chance to break the gravity of earth and soar effortlessly through the air. I was giddy. I jumped...and jumped again...and soon I was higher than the second story of the building. I felt free and happy and very young.

And the back flip? A bit different from a back bend, but as I brought my knees up to my chest and dropped my head back, it suddenly happened. I was over! I had done it - up, back and over. I mentally crossed off another wish on my Bucket List of Life.

The moral of the story? Do it now. Whatever it is that will give you pleasure and allow you to experience life to its fullest, give it a try. I might have hurt myself as I bounced up and down and rolled my arms in a 360 degree arc, but I've put up with a lot of pain doing things that were a whole lot less fun. The "what if's" are a cautious way to live life, but there's a lot left on the table at the end. I think the "why not's? allow us to feel and experience the potential within.

T.S. Eliot wrote about J. Alfred Prufrock who measured out his life "in coffee spoons." Suppose we chose to fill a tea cup or even a Big Gulp instead? I don't want to reach the end of my days, how few or many that they may be, and say "I wish I had...". I want to be able to look God in the eye and say "thank you - how good it was!"

Sunflowers

There's no mistaking a sunflower. It shoots its way into the air and everyone knows it's there. Its stalk is strong and its seedy face is turned so that all passersby notice its presence. A sunflower strides through life; it doesn't creep.

Other flowers are more sedate. They might be delicate or low to the ground. They have their seeds deep inside and tread softly through the fields of our dreams.

Still others walk a path between the two, not calling attention to themselves, but providing a contrast so that their own beauty becomes evident to all who look.

In the garden of our existence, we, like the flowers, all have our part to play. Sunflowers that are planted under low hanging branches have to twist and bend to find their sun and get mangled in the process. Hothouse flowers brought out into the elements suffer blight and are full of holes. Bushes that live in the shadow of a larger plant remain scrawny and thin.

Jesus said that He came that we may have abundant life and the best way to achieve this is to be fully who we are. God created us with wonderful talents and personality patterns that were there at our birth. Trying to become something else just means that we are a mediocre knockoff of another plant in the garden. The place we've been given to occupy is meant to accommodate who we are - and all of our potential. God is delighted when we fill out the space he's allotted to us.

Be a sunflower; be a rose bush; be a pine tree, but above all, be who God made you to be.