Sometimes God makes the train stop, all at once. The world keeps going by, but you have no choice but to sit out the tornado. Be it a death, illness, natural disaster or your house burning down, much that seemed to matter before suddenly takes a back seat. Life gets boiled down to a crystallized, laser-focused bullseye on the Big Things. Could be simply surviving. Could be making amends. Could be the thought: "If I get through this, what will I do on the other side that will make a difference -- to me or others?" Then, if I do survive, and things calm down and I get back to the "usual" -- did I remember what I said to myself?
Life is short. Don't wait for a better time or circumstance to do the right thing.
And one of the right things, for me, is to pause. I gotta learn this. I don't think I appear hyper, but my brain is, and I take on way more things than I have the real bandwidth to make happen sometimes, well, often. The major stuff will magically arrive, but if you look at the wake behind me, you can see a crashed house, neglected people, exhausted interior brains and emotions.
My sister and I are now of a certain age. That age where I'm not going to say I'm old, because I'm not! Besides, I'm only 39, that's what Jack Benny (and my Daddy) said, right? Ken owns that "old" label but nope, he can have it. Melanie and I both recently had emergency hospital visits, after large and exhausting projects in our lives. Sitting there now, feeling quite sorry for myself, I told her we need to keep doing, keep moving, keep living -- but maybe we need to learn to pause, particularly after these seasons of expenditure that we inevitably take on (on purpose, mind you). To take a breath and ruminate a bit on what just conspired before we jump headlong into the next adventure. Otherwise, like the sound of the tree falling in the forest -- did it really happen?
I recently had an amazing week at a writer's conference where my dear friend Grace and I absorbed lectures, workshops and consults like sponges. That was three weeks ago and my brain is still feeling the fullness, yet I have not had the space or juice to sit down, read through my notes and books, chew on a plan that I feel the Lord gave me. And if I don't, if I just let that sit out in the ether, in a year it will still be there rusting in my brain, but losing traction. There's space. There's time. Then there's that juice. Apparently that comes in limited quantities.
Yesterday, when I had a weird infection crawling up my arm and didn't know if it was jungle fever or MRSA or a flesh-eating bacteria, I went all the way to the worst possible scenario. I mean, it was spreading fast and even with all manner of powerful intravenous antibiotics, nothing was changing. I was watching this happen in real time and it really was a perfect time to panic. The histrionics have probably given my people PTSD. If you think you're going to die, then you go all the way to the other side of the moon, grieving and thinking last thoughts. If somehow you make it around to the other side and then there's a possibility that you might indeed live to see another day, you wake up extremely grateful. Everything is wonderful after that, even the dry, mealy chicken and beans I got to eat for supper. A friend brought me organic blueberries, however, and I had to have insulin this morning for my debauchery (and I don't even take insulin). Lord have mercy.
I still don't know what will happen to me. I might pull through, but there will be a day, sooner than I can imagine, that I won't make it past whatever stops this heart. Things seem better today, but I'm still in pain, seeing a hot, purpley-red arm, though it seems to have quit spreading. Either way, when I sat in the middle of yesterday, not sure of much, I was still sure of one thing. That in that valley, I was smack-dab in the middle of God's hand. I have not suffered much in my life, but I do know that He has been faithful to me all of my days. There's a song about that and I play it often, to remind myself. There are valleys, but He's in them with me.
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