Waiting for the Wedding...

Burlap fibers dust the floors...
Succulents, freshly planted, peek out of cut logs...
A dress bag, filled with fancy, hangs in a doorway...
An empty guest book sits...waiting...
Sparkling shoes lay idle in a box, eager for a dance...
A simple veil waits to turn a pretty girl in a pretty dress into a beautiful blushing bride...
Bow ties spill out of a box, soon to adorn the necks of the bests...
Tightly wrapped plates, napkins and cups hold the promise of friendships renewed, new friendships made and good cheer shared in celebration...
Empty pitchers long to showcase summer blooms...
Rolls of ribbon and tulle will change the simple into the special...
And we wait.
Impatiently.
For the day when we will give a girl we love to a boy who loves her best...
When our family will grow in size and love...
When God blesses a union He designed...
And we celebrate with great joy!

The Laugh/Cry and the Run/Cry

My daughter and I like to watch movies together...
One genre in particular always elicits the same response...
Time travel movies.
Not the "Back to the Future" kind of movies.
I'm talking "About Time" and "Time Travelers Wife" types of movies...
The romantic heart-wrenching kind...
And at the end, as the credits roll, we look at each other and begin to laugh...
Wait, no...cry.
No...laugh.
And before we know it, we're laughing hard and crying with wrenching sobs...
My husband peeks into the den to see if we're all right.
We're not.
But he rolls his eyes and walks away.
This is the best way to handle it.
If he were to say ANYTHING...
He would be pummeled by "STOP IT!" and "LEAVE!"...
When two women are laugh/crying, it's best to leave them to their emotional upheaval.
They want to wallow in their hysteria alone...together...without a smidgen of testosterone in the vicinity.
We realize how crazy it must look...
We don't care, but we can laugh at ourselves.
And we say over and over...
"That was so sad!"
Then we laugh some more.
After a few minutes, it turns from a laugh/cry into more of a laugh.
Then we're done and we add the movie to our favorites list.
The run/cry is a completely different animal.
I experienced it today.
I hadn't run in 3 weeks...yes, 3 (three) weeks.
I've been busy.
Life has been crazy.
So today, I decided I could break away and run.
I was nervous.
My body was non-athletic for 47 years.
My greatest fear is that after a few weeks of inactivity (although it was very active inactivity),
It will decide to rest on what it's known for the longest...
That it will thumb it's nose at all of my efforts of the last couple of years and go back to the beginning.
So today, I PRAYED I could run my usual 2.8 mile course without stopping...hills and all.
I began.
My breathing was more labored than usual...darn it.
I knew if I gave it some time, it would fall back in line...
It did.
Whew.
As I ran, I listened to my iPod...
Thankfully, Needtobreathe was first and foremost in the shuffle...
All of my favorites made the cut...
I kept going.
As I conquered the last hill, I likely could have passed myself walking...
But I kept that spring in my step.
And as the grade leveled off, "Signature of the Divine - Yahweh", one of my favorite songs, began.
Here are the lyrics:

Cathedrals have tried in vain
To show the image of your face.
But we are, by your design,
The signature of divine.

We'll always sing your name.
Forever and today.

Yahweh, Yahweh...
Great is your glory when you go before me
Oh, we sing...
Holy, Holy...
Your ways are lovely. So high above me.
Yahweh

The fortunes of kings and queens
Are wasted chasing what we've seen.
Cause we are, by your reprieve,
The beauty framed by your suffering.

We'll always sing your name.
Forever and today.

Yahweh, Yahweh...
Great is your glory when you go before me
Oh, we sing...
Holy, Holy...
Your ways are lovely. So high above me.
Yahweh

Take me, and pull me through.
Cause I can't move without you.
I won't leave you alone, you say.
It will be okay.

Yahweh, Yahweh...
Great is your glory when you go before me
Oh, we sing...
Holy, Holy...
Your ways are lovely. So high above me.
Yahweh.
Yahweh, Yahweh...
Great is your glory when you go before me
Oh, we sing...
Holy, Holy...
Your ways are lovely. So high above me.
Yahweh

Ancient of Days...
Yahweh!

As the song played, I rounded the corner to my car and (why did I park so far away?) touched it...that's the rule...touch the car.
The chorus began as I slowed to a walk and I teared up...(thankfully no one was around.)  
I'd run the entire way.
Not far to most.
A marathon to me.
"Yahweh, Yahweh
Great is your glory
You go before me"
My hands went up.
I'm not usually a "raise your hands up in praise" kind of girl.
Today I was.
It's amazing what God cares about...what He will help us do...
Little things in the big picture...
Big to us, therefore, important to Him too.
I praised Him as I stretched.
"Oh I sing
Holy Holy
Your ways are lovely
So high above me
Yahweh!"

Taking a Right on Recovery Road...

At the risk of being overconfident,
I believe we may have turned off of this avenue of agony we've been traveling,
onto the road of recovery.
His pain is under control.
His leg has movement.
He is a slightly weathered version of the old him...
and I am so thankful.
I'm thankful that he is comfortable.
I'm thankful that he can eat.
I'm thankful that he has slept.
I'm even more thankful that I have slept a bit too!
I'm thankful for nurses who listen to crying wives and say calming words that change nothing but change everything...
I'm thankful for a husband who was grateful for my efforts in the wee hours of the morning when nothing I did lessened his pain...
I'm thankful that I do not have to go to Costco in the near future...
I've been to the Costco pharmacy approximately 8 times in the last 5 days (wait times were an hour each time).
Today they just motioned me over when my order was ready.
That's fine at Starbucks...
But at a pharmacy, it is NOT as cool.
On the upside, the street value of the meds in our possession could potentially pay for my daughter's next year at college...
but we're not sellin'...
Most of all, I'm thankful that my husband is alive and kickin'...
The clots in his lungs were killer...
and yet he lived.
And I'm thankful...

Mrs. Fix-It...and the One Who Can...

My husband is on heavy duty blood thinners...

Big time anti-coagulants...

I have to give him shots of the stuff.

Me.

Shots.

Giving them.

I've given two so far.

It's not so bad.

But when I do it...right after it goes in...I squeeze my eyes shut.

I don't realize I'm doing it until I have to re-open them to finish the job.

Did I mention that they go into his love handles...

It's not fun for either of us.

So, he's on these mondo blood thinners and he just had surgery on his knee so...

His knee filled up with blood the other night.

The pain was/is incredible...

Imagine a charlie horse at its peak without relief...for hours...and hours...and days...

I hate...no, loathe seeing my husband in pain.

His once functional and useful leg has turned into a heavy misshapen appendage...
A liability...
Something to be managed and appeased.

His life revolves around finding a comfortable position.  

That. is. all. he. does.

That, and watching the clock for his next pain pill.

I heard him laughing at an SNL rerun a few hours ago and I can't tell you how happy I was...he was laughing...it was music...

So last night at the hospital, he was in utter pain and discomfort...

His eyes were a little crazy...it really broke my heart.

I couldn't help.

He was looking for a comfortable position.

I was quiet...looking...examining...

Pillows.

Blankets.

Mattress.

Angles.

Positions.

What if?

How about?

Trying every position in my mind so I could fix it for him.

If he put a pillow here and moved the head of the bed up and the feet down it would relieve the pressure there and ...

I couldn't figure it out.

I suggested a few things.

No, that wouldn't work.

Nothing does.

After an hour or more of trying to work the puzzle, it occurred to me that we could pray.

So we did.

It wasn't a magic elixir...his pain didn't leave when we said "Amen".

But we felt God's presence in the pain.

It brought some kind of peace.

And later, after I'd gone home, the pain got worse.

Unbearably worse.

He said he felt God's hand on his shoulder...literally...

It comforted him.

Even through the pain.

Eventually, it subsided...they gave him a very generous amount of pain meds...

An ER doc came up and wrapped it in a magical sort of way that encouraged the muscles to relax a bit...

He slept.

Hard.
Briefly.
And today...tonight...he does it all over...hopefully it won't be quite so excruciating...
Maybe tomorrow it will be less painful...
Maybe not...
The doctor said the blood is coagulated in his knee and must be absorbed...
It takes weeks and weeks...
I can't fix it.
He can't fix it.
It will resolve with time and while it does,
We will draw near to the One who brings comfort in the pain...

When Weekends Attack...or...Who's in Charge Here?

This weekend was a mixture of utter dismay and utter joy...
How is that even possible?
Well, easy.
Here's the cliff notes:
I had my weekend planned perfectly.
My daughter's bridal shower was on Saturday.
An exciting, fun event!
All was going as planned except...
My husband had very minor knee surgery last week...
And suffered a major and rare complication of minor surgery...
I ran him to the emergency room Friday night at 9:30pm.
Shortness of breath.
His lungs felt like a 90-year-old, chain-smoking, 500 pound man with a full grown male bull elephant lounging on his chest...yeah, that's pretty accurate...
So we get to the ER at 9:30pm...
We were finally seen by a doc at 4:30am...
No, I did not type that wrong.
7 (seven) hours later.
I will admit that I had a mini-meltdown at hour 5.
Not a proud moment.
I apologized to the nurse who witnessed and bore the brunt of it...
She was more than gracious.
I continued to weep back in the waiting room next to the guy sprawled out, spread eagle in a wheelchair who smelled of alcohol (his 3 friends had dropped him off)...
I won't even get into the other crazy things I witnessed prior to hour 5 and the mini-meltdown...(perhaps in another post)
So at 4:30am, my husband's name was called and I literally jumped up, threw my arms toward heaven and exclaimed (loudly) "Hallelujah!"
I meant it.
Alex was a little embarrassed but too sick to say anything...(he mentioned his embarrassment to my daughter later)
At 6am, it was determined that he had blood clots in his lungs (a total of 13) and would be staying in the hospital.
I was oddly relieved.
Someone else could be responsible for a while.
I was spent.
and...
I was utterly conflicted.
The conflict arose from the fact that in 7 hours the bridal shower would begin...
There was still much to do.
And only 7 hours to do it!
How would I care for my husband, run the necessary errands, finish the last minute decorating and details, and be a happy, chipper mother-of-the-bride after a crazy, sleepless night in the ER and a scary diagnosis?
I prayed...
I prayed for my husband's health, for strength, for relief from the guilt I was feeling for needing to leave him...I prayed that the shower would be fun and happy, without a damper of upset from the night's events...and then...
I left the hospital.
My younger daughter took care of most of the tasks left to do so I could get a good hour of sleep...yes, just one.
We got everything done in time for the shower.
And it was good...so good...
A loving celebration of bridal anticipation...
I felt blessed....and tired...but mostly blessed...
My husband will be fine...
My daughter felt the love...
The Lord was there...carrying me...carrying my husband...carrying my girls...my far-away boy...
Family pulled together...
Filling in where the gaps gaped...
And it was done.
The weekend was over.
We survived.
A new week begins and I don't know what will come...
But one thing I do know is that I'm not in control.
God is.
In an instant, my plans could come crashing down and then what?
I will trust.
I will have faith that all will come together as it should...
Maybe not as I THINK it should...
Not as I PLANNED it to go...
But in such a way that God will get the glory...
And He does.
Because even though my husband sits in a hospital bed,
I have joy in my heart...
That's different than happiness...
It's assurance that when things fall apart,
The God of the Universe cares about the little details...
Like a bridal shower...
He cares about what I care about and He cares about me...
and my husband...
and my kids...
and you.

On sitting in Panera...writing...

Until last Christmas, I had never owned a laptop...

My dear husband, honoring my deep desire to write, bought me a Macbook for Christmas with the stipulation that I would actually write that novel that has been kicking around in my head for EVER.

Prior to my Macbook ownership, I had observed people sitting in Panera (my favorite "fast food" of all time), typing on their laptops...

It was sort of romantic...

I imagined what they must be writing...

Poems...

Blog posts...

The great American novel...

In reality, they were likely typing term papers,

English assignments,

Emails.

Un-romantic stuff.

But I always dreamed that someday I'd be sitting in Panera writing my novel, people watching, listening to conversations, observing the wait staff going about their work...

That just made me sound a bit voyeuristic and...well...maybe I am...

In reality though, today is the first time I've ever brought my laptop to a public place to write.

Why?

I don't know.

I do have a limited attention span and all the distraction may prove unproductive...

So far so good, though.

I tend to be a bit of a home body...

But here I sit...writing...sipping a caramel latte with half the syrup, thank you.

And it's inspiring to be surrounded by activity...

To have stories happening all around me.

A woman eats alone with earphones on...

She texts at the same time...impressive...

Two rustic men talk about projects they're working on...

The couple behind me are chatting about work...

A woman sits outside with a man, snuggling the cutest black lab puppy I've ever seen...she is almost eating him up...and how can she resist?

It's morning but some people have ordered lunch...

Others just have coffee.

The men are talking about their kids now...if their voices were higher, I'd think they were women...it's gossipy and funny.  

An older gentleman just sat down with a book...he could be my dad except he isn't.

My dad does Panera with a book...he is a "regular".   They love him here.

This gentleman is texting...his phone is small and his fingers are arthritic and large. 

His glasses sit on the very tip of his nose and he concentrates.

I wonder if the recipient of that text will appreciate all the effort that went into it...

Which somehow reminds me of the reason I'm here...

To write the great American novel...

In Panera...

Like I've dreamed I'd do...

I'd better get busy!