"Snippets" is kind of an appropriate moniker for my life this month...figuratively and, if you could see my right side, literally. As I look at the calendar, I'm thinking about having a T-shirt made for myself that says, "I SURVIVED JANUARY 2010!" Truly, God has been gracious to me in getting me through the first half of this long wait, and I thank Him for providing me with a team taking care of me that is so beyond what I deserve...

Because of a death in our extended family, the Papa needs to go to Fort Worth tomorrow. Since Lyric was due to fly back to California last night, I was a little panicked at being without both of them...but again, God provided in an unexpected way when Lyric offered to extend her stay by three or four days to cover most of the time that John is gone. Like so many times before, His provision and the love and care of my "inner circle" has made me feel enveloped in His arms as well as theirs.

The events of the past six weeks have disoriented me as to time...the holidays were a blur, and now it's a new year and sometimes I can't think what month it is. Yesterday I looked outside the window and noticed that our crape myrtles were leafless, and thought, "What month is this?" Much as I love winter, this year I'm looking forward to spring...

You know you miss cooking when you dream in detail about a trip to the grocery store and exactly what you're going to do with each ingredient, watching the clock to make sure you're home to get it all prepared in time.

And oh, how I've missed worshiping with my church family. In these past few years I've had to miss so much with them and I pray for the day when no one has to say to me, "I'm so glad to see you could make it! Welcome back!"

You'd think with all this time on my hands that I'd have gotten a lot of reading done. Not so. Focus and motivation (and until the past week, drugs) have been on the wrong side of reading. How lovely, then, that Lyric loves reading out loud to me. Since my return from the hospital, we've finished In Faithfulness, He Afflicted Me, and we are now halfway through Anonymous: Jesus' Hidden Years...and Yours. Both these books have had messages I need to be reflecting on through this time. Anonymous focuses on not despising all the hidden times in our lives when God is preparing us for the future. It's hard, sometimes, to see where my future goes from here, but I know that's not a mystery to my Father and He is preparing me even through this strange and difficult time of waiting.

And that's all I have from here. My frame of reference is rather small and I don't seem to have all that many observations of the world other than how things look from my rented bed...but then, this, too, shall pass :-)

Labels: Books, Family, Health, Sundays

Just when you thought you were going to check back here and see that picture of me, AGAIN, here I am proving that I haven't completely abandoned this space. No, I don't expect to be a daily poster again for a while, but I'll try to be better about updating.

I returned home from the hospital 48 hours ago, having spent 23 days there in the past month, including Christmas and New Year's. Three surgeries since December 24 have left me weak and more helpless than I care to explain, but at least I'm in my own own room and am eating things that were actually designed to BE eaten and I have the wonderful company of my family and my best friend. It's an infinite improvement over this time last week.

As for my current state, we'll call it super-sendentary. I have an antibiotic-coated spacer in place of my (new) old right hip, and I'm supposed to move it as little as possible. I'm in a semi-reclining position in a rented hospital bed, perfect for looking up at the TV and dozing but not much else. Twice a day, I get hooked up to an IV antibiotic and swallow a different antibiotic as well. And I wait. And wait. Yeah, for a couple of months.

Matter-of-fact as all this sounds, I'm not always this even-keeled about it. Some hours I lie here praying to hear whatever God has to teach me through this period, and the next hour I'm straining and resisting it with all I have, asking Him to just make it all go away and fast-forward me to real life again. And yet deep in the night, when there's nothing to do but pray and listen, I must admit that whether I like it or not, this is real life. Not the one I chose, but the one I live. And not an accidental one in the eyes of the One who holds me, but the current vehicle for turning me into the likeness of Jesus. Ultimately, can I ask for more?

Only for your prayers.

Labels: Devotional, Health

Oh, make no mistake. I had the best of intentions.

I was going to write a nice New Year's post to make up for the fact that I didn't get back here since my big Holiday Whiplash on the 23rd. Yep, I was was going to come home from the hospital on New Year's Eve and have it all ready to post at the stroke of midnight.

Funny thing about those New Years. Just because they're new doesn't always mean a fresh start or a happier set of circumstances. And for me, 2010 is the perfect illustration of that fact.

Instead of getting to come home with my 20" incision and starting down the difficult but promising road to recovery, I got the news I'd feared for a long time: there's infection in and around the new hip implant, probably one that's been there a long time undetected, and ignoring it is not an option. Dr. Keeney presented the options, prayed with us, and allowed me to come home for a few days to regroup, huddle and pray with the family, and take care of details that will soon be out of my reach.

No firm decisions have been made yet, but here is the likely scenario. Late next week I will go back into surgery and have the entire apparatus that was just put in taken out again, along with the bone grafts, screws, bands, etc. Those will be replaced with a temporary prosthesis, sort of a spacer, or a "spare tire" if you will, one that will not bear weight and will allow for little to no movement. I will stay in my bed or a nearby chair for six to eight weeks while being treated aggressively with a powerful antibiotic cocktail, on which I've already started. At the end of that time, I'll go to surgery again for another permanent hip replacement.

(Did I say permanent? Well, I thought that a couple of times before!)

Then I will begin another stint of physical therapy for several months, regaining strength and mobility and seeing how close we can get to normal walking.

So...you can see that the first half of my 2010 won't look anything like I expected. God must have been gently smiling on me as I had it all planned, knowing that none of it was going to happen. I wish I could describe my own reaction as gentle smiles, but in truth I've run the gamut from despair to anger to resignation. My tears, now yellow from the new antibiotic, have fallen in several cycles since New Year's Eve. My knight-in-shining-armor husband and my dear children and my best friend will attest to the wild swings as I came to grips with the wiping out of my list of 2010 resolutions. And as I listened to fireworks and heard revelers outside my hospital window, I wondered how it could still all go on while I adjusted to the reality of what amounts, for me, to a rather Old New Year.

But God.

My Father is still on His throne and holds my future in His strong hands. Why He has planned for these next months to be spent in stillness I can only guess, but I know it did not escape His attention or His kind intention. I would much rather be running my kids to piano lessons and shopping for groceries and preparing for a houseful of guests and sitting with my beloved HOPE moms and sharing spiritual and practical lessons with them. To me, those things seem so much more productive! But for some reasons, reasons totally mysterious to me, He has chosen stillness for me instead and I must listen and watch for His purposes.

The morning after receiving my New Year's News, a sweet friend was led to send me words I needed to hear. It's a poem published in the priceless Streams in the Desert, and the word "daughter" was originally "children." For me, though, the intimacy of being His daughter is something I needed to feel and I treasure it. I'm sure I'll reread this many times in the next months when I'm tempted to wallow in my inability to do anything other than be still and know...

Labels: Devotional, Health