Monthly Archives: October 2019

Washing away the griminess

31 Thursday Oct 2019

Posted by in Relationships

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The dust hasn’t yet settled on the work, but in the middle of recent events I had some really good memories come to the surface.

The last couple of weeks have the makings of stories that will be told for years to come: when the hot water heater, water softener and clothes dryer all quit at the same time. At least we should be able to remember the year it happened!

The most important part of it was that the water heater and softener were both original to the house when we built it, and had lasted for more than 34 years.

In late March of 1985 I got engaged to a guy my dad had set me up with on a blind date. I’m not going to tell the whole story here, but it was definitely a God thing that we got together.

The important part for this story is that I had hit rock bottom, knew I was lousy at picking guys to get involved with, and asked God to show me “in so clear a way that I can’t deny it’s you picking and not me” if his will was for me to get married.

And he used my dad to show me.

Because I had not been talking to my dad about anything of substance for months. A romantic relationship had ended, I had gone through a time of depression (though no one named it back then), and I realize now I was ashamed and feeling unworthy of my dad’s love and care.

So obviously I took it out on him, put up my defenses so I didn’t have to face my feelings.

Then he suggested fixing me up with someone. And knowing my dad and the variety of people he knew, I was sure he would name someone I would just hate.

So when he said the name of a man God had been bringing to my mind for about ten years, I was unable to speak.

God had done it. Made it clear that this was his choice. He had my dad name the only guy I had any secret desire to know better.

Since my fiance was in the construction industry he had already picked a basic starter house he was planning to have built that spring anyway. Over the previous couple years he had bought land, put in a driveway, had a well dug, put in a septic system, and built a pole barn. The house was the next step.

And the wife.

We spent our date nights touring homes under construction by our builder, tweaked the design to add a family room, second bath, and a big closet, and prayed the bank would approve our plans.

Everything went through seamlessly, and on my parents’ 32nd wedding anniversary, June 6, 1985, we broke ground on the house.

And based on the estimate for construction time, we set the wedding date: September 28, 1985.

What a summer that was! We both worked at least five days a week, and spent most of those evenings cooking something simple on one of those tiny hibachi grills at the house. We took note of every change from day to day, documenting it with pictures. I hammered a nail into about every stud in the place, just so I could say I “helped” build the house.

The structure wouldn’t be huge, but it would be cozy. And of all the rooms in the house, the coziest was the laundry room.

It was small, but how much room could a washer and dryer take up? Then the furnace went in. And the water heater. In their own little alcove. Then the water softener and the big salt tank went in next to it, right in the middle of one wall.

Once the washer and dryer were in place against the other usable wall, there was almost no floor space, only enough for the door to open into the room, and a corner to lean a broom and mop.

But it was ours.

I remember the excitement when the drywall was up! Finally came the day to start painting.

So the memories returned last Saturday, after the old water heater and softener were gone, leaving holes in the room that had been occupied for 34 years. And dust that had been unreachable until last weekend.

I had a new dryer coming that morning, so I was up early scraping and scrubbing through the dirt on the floor, washing down the walls that we hadn’t seen so much of in decades.

And as clear as anything I could see my dad on those days we were painting. I think he was there every time, as he liked doing it and was always willing to pitch in when there was work to be done.

In fact, Dad was probably the hardest-working person I’ve ever known. He took on way too many projects he had no business doing – like painting the roof of our three-story farmhouse electric neon green – and pitched in to help anyone doing any kind of fix-up, no matter if he had any expertise or not.

We didn’t hire jobs done around our house. Dad tackled them all. And if he couldn’t fix it, he’d ask a neighbor who knew more to come help him get things back on track. He fixed plumbing and cars and lawn mowers. He had a boiler engineer’s license when he left the Air Force and worked in that field for many years while also preaching.

And he acted like it gave him license to fix anything he wanted to give a try. Of course he usually commandeered us kids to help, and we all knew what it was to work hard.

On those painting days I was glad for his help, but more thankful for the time we spent doing the work. I can’t remember what we said, but we talked, maybe the longest since I’d met my soon-to-be husband.

Sometimes healing comes to a relationship when I least expect it. Not because I am trying to fix things, but because the life I’ve been blessed with puts things into perspective, and suddenly whatever the issues I had with them are not as important as the person.

As I washed down the walls I was amazed that the paint was still holding, that I could still remove the grime and see the color I had picked all those years ago.

And I was full of joy that as the years have gone by I’ve also been able to let go of old hurts between my dad and I, that even though he’s been gone over 26 years, I’m finally able to face my past and let my mind focus on all the ways my dad loved me, even when I didn’t think I wanted him to.

The Common Denominator

24 Thursday Oct 2019

Posted by in Recovery journey

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All my friends are sinners.

Which is a relief, because so am I.

It isn’t something we get to choose. It is in our nature to want what we can’t have, and to have the audacity to think we deserve it anyways.

Way back in the beginning, Adam and Eve could eat from everything in the Garden of Eden except one tree. So what do you suppose they ended up doing? You bet. They decided, with some well-placed rationalizations by Satan in a serpent disguise, that they deserved to be like God, and they ate the fruit they believed would give them god-like qualities.

That didn’t work out so well for them. Or for us as a result.

Yet don’t we keep doing the same thing?

People don’t use the word sin as much as they used to. I think it’s a perfectly fine word, a sobering one that tells it like it is.

One that affects every single person who ever lived.

I used to have no mercy towards people who I saw reaping the consequences of the way they chose to live their lives. After all, don’t we all freely choose to do good or bad? It was as simple as that in my mind. And I felt my superior attitude was fine, because of course I wasn’t doing those things I found so objectionable in others.

That was back when I was still hiding so much of my own past, even from myself. It was easy to excuse my sins, but not those of others.

Then I walked into my first Celebrate Recovery meeting, and I met people who were sinners and weren’t afraid to admit it. Most of them openly admitted that they had all kinds of things they were struggling with.

You might think at a recovery meeting that most of those there would be dealing with an addiction of some kind, but I found then and know now that only about three out of ten people at a CR meeting have struggled with an addiction.

At my first few meetings I listened as others shared about all kinds of hurts, habits and hang-ups they were facing and finding healing from, and it gave me the courage to start facing my own issues.

My own sins.

I’m a person who has some really strong spiritual gifts. Over the last twenty years or so I’ve taken spiritual gifts inventories and consistently score very high in several areas.

And very low in one.

Yep, mercy.

One of the last times I took an inventory we discussed how the different spiritual gifts look in action, and we were challenged to develop the ones we were weak in, to ask God to help us become stronger in the qualities he’d like us to have.

I really didn’t want to improve my mercy score. I felt fine in my smugness.

Not only did I start attending CR, I also joined a Step Study right away. Like four days later.

And within a couple of weeks I was ruined for regular Bible studies.

I know it’s important and necessary to read and study the Bible, but after the experience of reaching down inside myself and pulling out wrong attitudes and actions I’d engaged in, as well as revealing the things done to me as the result of other people’s sin, I can’t stick to the surface and not go deep any more.

Life is too short to just smooth over the things God wants me to wrestle with and conquer.

In the nine months that Step Study took, everyone heard my junk and I heard everyone else’s.

And against the old me’s better judgment, I loved those sisters more than I could have imagined, even knowing their faults and failings.

Because, well, mercy blossomed. Like it was just waiting for the right conditions to grow.

We are none of us perfect, but we are being perfected by this process of recovery.

By the time my first Step Study was finished I realized I wasn’t the same person anymore. I was more real, more honest, and because of the things I’d had to face, humbled.

And I looked at other people differently. When I walked in to CR the first night, my thinking may have gone something like, “Man, these are a bunch of messed up people! I’m glad I’m not as bad as any of them. They must have really weak character to have gotten themselves into so many bad situations.”

But somewhere in the process, God did something miraculous in me. He replaced my heart of stone with a heart of flesh, and I found that I no longer thought of people as what they had done, but as how much I wanted them to fall in love with God so he could heal their hurts and give them hope that they could change with his strength.

So week after week you will find me at CR on Friday nights, because I’m a sinner and I need God’s help to place his nature in me more and more so that I no longer have any desire to try to have what I can’t. Because I am letting him show me what I need.

I want to be clear that I’m not excusing the bad things I chose to do as if they can be made right. They can’t be.

But they have been forgiven.

By God, and by me. And hopefully by those I’ve hurt.

And so now when I see the sin in others, I look at them in a different way.

I no longer see only the expected consequences of their bad choices. I see so much potential for healing. I see people who have tried to treat their own hurts by doing everything but going to the only one who can help them.

And I know that if they spend some time around people who are actively letting Jesus take the lead, they will be on their way to getting what they really need.

Which is so much better than getting what you want.

The beauty of CR is that I’m not going through this alone. I am surrounded by my forever family, people who I love deeply, who I admire and am constantly awed by, who I learn from every time I’m with them.

Because of all the ways they are letting God change them, they are some of the genuinely best people I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing.

Yes, I’m a sinner. But I’m no longer stuck in my sin.

Constricted

17 Thursday Oct 2019

Posted by in Asthma, Gratefulness journal, Recovery journey

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So to give a little more information about my adventures with asthma (or what I did this summer!), let me take you back to July. I was finishing up my first clinical trial, and for some reason right at the tail end of it I had a pretty bad attack.

For me an attack usually starts with coughing, the coughing is productive and doesn’t let up, and it progresses to wheezing as my lungs get congested with mucus and at the same time the air passages swell, making the space for air to move smaller and smaller.

I lose the ability to talk.

So I have several hours of time spent focusing on my breathing.

I can’t read, play games, even concentrating on tv is too much to expect. I recline or lie down and try to slowly bring air in and out.

The place my mind goes during an attack is a new landscape for me. I’m aware of things immediately around me, but I can’t focus on any of them. Sometimes other people’s voices come through clearly, but I can’t respond.

I’m thinking about how I can’t think too deeply about anything, and I get distracted by my own wheezing, losing even that pitiful train of thought.

I know I’m getting better when the fuzziness of the world around me starts to clear, a sharpness returns like a camera lens that was a little out of adjustment. Only I thought it was clear.

I’ve had mild asthma for years, and never had to do more than use my rescue inhaler once every few months, usually after exercise or going out in very cold or humid air. My “normal” triggers.

But last November I got what I thought was a cold that I couldn’t shake. It settled in my sinuses and nothing I did seemed to help. Meanwhile I lost my sense of smell and taste, started each morning blowing my nose and using a dozen tissues, and lost my voice quite often.

In January I began my adventures with asthma attacks. It wasn’t until after the first one was over that it occurred to me what it was.

I have a really high pain tolerance, and so I was determined to just get back to normal breathing. Even though that took 2 1/2 hours with the first attack, I stubbornly didn’t consider it to be serious.

In February I had a second one. Then in March and April I got help at urgent care, finally getting two courses of antibiotics, which helped not only my sinuses to clear, but also started getting rid of junk in my lungs!

I felt so much better! I had high hopes of spending lots of time piddling in my garden areas this summer.

Then in May I had my third attack. It was on a hot day, humid air, and I had stopped at my daughter’s to plant some flowers I’d gotten her for Mother’s Day.

So much for spending time gardening.

I was very cautious in June, staying inside in air conditioning as much as possible, very aware of my activity and surroundings.

My first clinical trial began in June and it seemed to go well. I was using a better drug than my usual, and I was ready to switch when the trial ended.

But right before my last office visit in early July I had my fourth attack.

This was not part of my plans. I was set to finish the trial that Monday, and leave for five days in Nashville at CR’s Summit East on Tuesday. I had the good meds packed and ready to travel, and I was determined to not let myself get too stressed or tired, hoping to avoid more attacks.

Then a long car ride from Ohio to Tennessee, walking on hills, temps in the upper 90’s, and humidity of about 90%.

And lots of walking at Summit.

I found myself experiencing pain deep in my calves and had a toe swollen and discolored. And a strange feeling of constriction in the middle of my chest.

Despite my physical ailments, I was having a great time. I settled in that first night and started adding to my list I’m keeping of one thousand gifts from God that I can be thankful for. Over the next four days I wrote down 103 different blessings.

I was feeling such thankfulness to God for getting me to Summit, where I was immersed in an atmosphere of pure gratitude and awe of all God has done in all of our lives, me and the 3,000+ others attending, that I couldn’t do anything but give praise.

Yes, my friends were concerned. We discussed whether I should get checked out at a hospital. The words pulmonary embolism were thought and spoken, as were deep vein thrombosis and concern about the chest feeling being one of those odd woman signs of a heart attack.

I prayed about it and really felt I was going to be ok. My breathing was not bad. I carried all my meds with me and used them as needed. I let the rest of our group go off without me and stayed put close to my workshops.

It made for a lot of time with God and it was all good.

On the ride home I got a call from my husband. He and two of our kids had been in a car accident in a parking lot. They were a little banged up from being t-boned, and the van had probably received a death blow.

So no stress for the last four hours of the drive!

When I got home we headed out to get some dinner.

And even on the way there I was starting to cough.

By the time our food came I had progressed to wheezing. And nausea. My husband and I left then to head home, where the attack continued and was worse than any other, adding in vomiting and sweating and shaking.

And when my husband asked if I needed to go to the emergency room, I shook my head no. Because I couldn’t imagine being able to make the effort to walk out to the car to drive there. So I toughed it out. Again.

The next morning, Sunday, I made it until the last of three points in our pastor’s sermon before the constriction in my chest and my shallow breathing made me sure that I was headed to the hospital after service.

I got the lecture about how people actually die during asthma attacks. How the pain in my legs and chest could be the things I’d already thought of.

And I got my first nebulizer treatment.

Truly sweet relief.

Lots of really good things happened that day and into the next, as I was admitted to the hospital and they ran several different tests.

I found out I have great veins in my legs. My heart is perfect. My lungs had no nodes or nodules that would be symptomatic of lung cancer, and no embolism.

The only thing wrong was that asthma had filled my lungs with thick, sticky mucus that I needed to be able to get rid of.

Just like I’d been saying for years.

So a course of steroids and antibiotics, the nebulizer sent home with me, and otherwise a clean bill of health.

I will tell you another time how that knowledge has affected me.

Three attacks total in July, and three more in September brought the total to nine over nine months, the most serious one I wrote about a couple weeks ago.

And then a breakthrough. While brainstorming with my asthma doctor we figured out the culprit. Aleve. Which I’d taken for pain before most of my worst attacks.

So now I’m hoping to only talk about asthma attacks in retrospect.

Because I never want to feel that constricted ever again.

Exhaling

10 Thursday Oct 2019

Posted by in Grandfostering, Redemption, Relationships

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The last time I wrote about my daughter’s first foster baby it was about the day she had to hand her over to case workers to be placed in another home.

Last year this time, Baby A and Big Brother were adopted into that family, finding their forever home.

And after more than a year and a half of not seeing her, our whole family was invited to the adoption party! We were over the moon with excitement!

The day the official adoption proceedings at the courthouse happened was the day before my husband’s and my 33rd anniversary, and the party came a few days later. I don’t even remember celebrating our own milestone, I was so ecstatic that we were going to see Baby A, now almost 2 years old, with Big Brother and their new family.

We joyfully picked out presents for them all, looked back through the pictures on our phones from those brief two months we had the pleasure of helping care for this child, and ticked off the minutes until the day came.

As we drove out to their town I tried not to analyze my feelings. I was nervous (not normal for me), but I didn’t want to think about it then. I’d wait until later to dig into the reasons.

My daughter and Baby B had gone to Baby A’s first birthday party almost a year earlier, and we had been greatly reassured to hear our girl was surrounded by people who loved her and her older brother. And even more pleased to hear how Baby A remembered my daughter, the mother who cared for her in those first months.

It had certainly eased my mind.

And now I could see with my own eyes how our little girl was doing.

Then we arrived. As we expected there was a nice crowd of friends and family come to celebrate. We were welcomed in and introduced to a number of people and the names were all a blur.

I was trying not to look for her.

It was wonderful to see Big Brother, who we had the pleasure of meeting the day Baby A left our family to join with him in this one. He had made an impression on us then, and it was a delight to watch him playing and interacting with so many people. And he was still a sharp dresser!

We saw where the food was laid out, listened as our daughter and Baby A’s mom caught up on their girls’ milestones, getting our bearings.

And I knew she was there somewhere.

Then her Nana came alongside me and asked if I wanted to go see her.

I have to say one of the surprising things to me was the sense of honor I felt was being given to us as Baby A’s first family. In the grand scheme of things we were a part of her life for only two short months. This family had been dealing with the day-to-day sickness, allergies, temper tantrums, and mischief of the nineteen months that followed.

And also all the smiles and cuddles.

But even a year later I am still awed and humbled by the respect and thankfulness Baby A and Big Brother’s new family showed us all.

Nana pointed to where Baby A was eating in her high chair at the back of the garage. And all by myself I walked over to her.

I took in the same high hairline and beautiful rounded forehead I had kissed and nuzzled many times.

We were both wearing purple. I had loved to dress her in purple as it looked so good next to her rich, light brown skin.

She looked like herself, and my heart was so full I wasn’t sure I could stand it without yelling out loud or breaking down in tears, either of which would probably scare her.

I started talking in a low voice, saying some of the same things I used to say to her as an infant. I knew I was repeating myself a little, but I didn’t want to speak things unfamiliar to her, to us.

She stilled.

She was looking at her food, and she stopped moving, stopped doing anything.

Except listening.

To my voice.

She lifted her face and our eyes met.

I was bent over to be closer to her height, and that put us face to face.

I kept talking as I saw recognition come over her features.

A look of pure love.

And Nana asking if I wanted to hold her. Yes! Yes!!

I picked her up and it seemed like right away I was surrounded by my husband and kids, everyone wanting to see and touch and hold.

And it was okay to hand her over to my husband, her Papa, because it was hitting me that I had been living as if with my breath held all these long months.

I did not realize the fear until that moment. The fear that she wouldn’t remember me. Gone in the sparkle of that first look that passed between us.

There was lots of smiling and laughing, eating good food, Baby B at 18 months old toddling around clinging to my legs and wanting up in between playing with Baby A and Big Brother and the other kids.

As time got closer to when we needed to leave, Baby A’s family wanted to get some pictures of all of us with their girl, so we gathered across the street in a big grassy area. My daughter picked her up, someone else held Baby B, and we all smiled like crazy.

And when we were done, Baby A came over to me and I knelt down and let her look through newborn pictures of herself on my phone as I told her about them. She was amazed that I had pictures of us together, the same ones that are in a scrapbook she has.

Then we walked hand in hand with others back to the house, and she wrapped herself around my leg. I picked her up and she draped herself around my shoulders, this great big girl filling up my heart just like she did as a tiny infant.

As she nestled into my neck I sang the first verse of “Baby Mine” that I used to sing as I held and rocked her.

And she fell asleep.

Her family was a little surprised. They said she was hard to get down for a nap, but to me it was just like those early days.

They offered to take her off my hands. But I was willing to hold that child until I collapsed if I could! I did eventually take her into the house and sit down with her, but this knowing was like something I’d expect to feel in heaven.

She knew me. And I knew her.

And love always wins.

Not Finished with Me Yet

03 Thursday Oct 2019

Posted by in Asthma, Childhood, Recovery journey, Tragedies

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Last Thursday I almost died.

Literally.

I’m still gathering all the pieces of why I didn’t, and I want to capture for you my perspective on what I hope is a one-time occurrence.

(For some background you could check out my post “Inspiration” from August 8, 2019.)

I’m really big on gaining knowledge and understanding. So when my asthma and allergies (still unnamed) started ramping up and causing attacks, I went into research mode. I made an appointment with a pulmonologist, but it was almost two months away. So I responded to a Facebook post about an asthma clinical trial, and found my asthma and allergy doctors instead.

Since then I’ve participated in two clinical trials designed to test generics of an effective asthma drug that makes it more affordable to do what should come naturally.

Breathe.

So in a two week time I had already had two serious asthma attacks: one after visiting a very musty used-book store, another that woke me up coughing and choking in the wee hours of the morning.

That second one got me thinking that I needed a better strategy of how to communicate that I was having trouble. I was alone in the family room to use my nebulizer for an albuterol treatment at 4am, taking my phone in case the distress didn’t let up. But my husband’s phone charges overnight in that room, so it would be down to my teenagers or 911 if I couldn’t walk and breathe at the same time to get help.

I freely admit I have control issues. Four and a half years of Celebrate Recovery have gotten me to the point where I can clearly see my problems, but I still don’t want to admit that I need help.

I don’t want to be powerless.

Seriously, I have been in places where I had no control over what was being done to me, and as a girl I decided I would do my best to control everything I could to make sure nothing bad happened to me again.

Yet Thursday night I had almost no control over what was happening to me.

Just the day before my third attack in two weeks, I met with my mentor, who I hadn’t seen for a month, and we talked about my need to have a written and easily communicated way to let my family know what I needed. So while working Thursday, my mind was on doing this, making a list from the most drastic to least invasive things to do for me or ask me about.

In my controlling mind I never wanted to entertain the idea of needing to call 911. That was for people who couldn’t analyze their own situation and be proactive about doing for themselves all they could.

Joke’s on me.

My niece, a firefighter and EMT, will give me a look next time I see her, but on my list was to ask her what to expect if I ever needed to call for emergency help. Because I like to work it out in my head before it ever happens.

Someone else was doing the working out, way better than I ever could.

Simple things like me feeling inspired to clean the garage. Okay, boss the teenagers around to get the garage cleaned. This happened a few weeks ago after moving Middle Son into college, when I was feeling the need to clear out the staging area in the house, and do the every-ten-year garage purging. It wasn’t completely cleared, but in organized piles at least.

I just want to park inside it this winter.

And getting stocked up on my regular asthma meds for when the current trial ended, something I would normally wait to spend the money on.

Way farther back, two and half years ago, Baby Girl had taken the classes and gotten certified for adult and infant CPR training. Though she had never had occasion to use it, she wanted the knowledge and confidence it gave her to work with young children in many areas of her life.

Let’s go farther, to 8-year old me, who was learning to use a riding mower and wanted to hear herself sing over the noise. And who was almost drowned by a neighbor boy in our pool, so I decided to learn to breathe deeply and be able to hold my breath for long periods calmly. Who loved to be onstage and belt out lines or songs, no cheating with microphones. Who toughed out labor every time with no help from drugs.

Just breathing deeply.

So when very suddenly Thursday evening I went from laughing over pictures of a cake I’d had delivered to Middle Son at school, to not feeling right, to labored breathing, sweating, feeling a little nauseated, all the pieces (much more than I could ever list) from my whole life’s story came together in some of the hardest words I’ve ever said.

I need help. Call an ambulance.

I guess I’m not shocked this didn’t register. After all, I’m the one who handles these kinds of things. Because nobody else can (Ha! My deluded mind talking again.)

But as I stumbled back into the chair by my nebulizer and with shaking hands broke open a vial and poured it in, I heard my husband making the call.

My ears quit working. I couldn’t make out all the words. I could see my younger daughter trying to catch my eye, saying something I couldn’t understand. I barked out a few one-word orders on the exhales, but I couldn’t stand not having the little push of air helping with my feeble inspirations.

I was hardly breathing. In only a couple of minutes.

And several more passing while the ambulance rushed from five miles straight up the road.

There was no white light at the end of a tunnel. My whole life didn’t “flash before my eyes”. I don’t think I was that close to death. But then again, what do I know? Why do I try to minimize the seriousness of those moments?

The reality is, if the EMT’s hadn’t gotten there quickly, I probably wouldn’t be writing this.

There was a lot of activity going on around me. Kids rushing out to make sure the garage was wide open and shoving those piles farther out of the way. Moving one of the cars so vehicles could pull close to the house. Clearing laundry baskets and shoes out of the floor and away from the door so there was clear access.

Me begging wordlessly for another vial of albuterol, frustrated at how long it took me to communicate what I needed. (Should have gotten that plan down in writing.)

And the overriding need to breathe.

Out is possible. It’s a relaxing, a release, as little as it may be it didn’t take much effort.

But inspiration…

I didn’t fully understand what I was talking about until Thursday night, when every thought, every bit of my will was focused on moving that magnificent muscle, my well-developed diaphragm, and feeling a pitifully small whiff of air making it’s way into my wheezing, mucus-filled, inflamed, closed-up lungs.

There were suddenly strangers, one kneeling beside my chair talking in my ear, others carrying things, holding things up, putting things on my face and in my veins, asking questions I couldn’t answer.

The voice by my ear telling me to hold just a quick second before breathing out, to get the medicine in.

I’m just as sure as I can be that it’s like Luke described it: “Suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God…”

Not the people, don’t misunderstand me. There was a battle going on in that room that was far beyond the working of my labored lungs. There was an eternal question that was being answered:

Who is in control here?

It wasn’t me.

In fact, I fought some of the things they wanted to do. I couldn’t stand the mask (they said it was like a CPAP, so that’s out for me in the future), but I wanted the oxygen and aerosol drugs it was providing so they let me hold it as close as I could. When they couldn’t get a clear oxygen reading, I heard something like 84%, they talked about intubating, and I motioned the kids to leave the room for a bit. Thankfully they didn’t need to do that.

The hardest part was hearing them ask questions I knew the answers to, but couldn’t speak.

Yet within an hour and a half of getting to the hospital I was talking to everyone and walking out on my own two feet.

Two days later Baby Girl (who is 16 and my hero right now) shared what she had been trying to tell me. She had her CPR manual out and was preparing herself mentally to be able to break her mother’s ribs if I went unconscious before the ambulance arrived and she needed to keep my heart beating. Because she is the only one in the house trained to do that.

And in the emergency room I learned that the EMT who took charge of me is also a nurse at the hospital we wanted to go to. He knew exactly what they would do, and did all he could ahead to avoid any delays in my care.

My family rushed madly to gather things I might need if I were admitted, let our grown kids know the situation, reached out to our church, got there quickly to be with me, though I was pretty unaware of my surroundings for a while.

The next day I canceled work and appointments, let myself be chauffeured to get more meds and run necessary errands, and was able to go to Celebrate Recovery.

I got there late because I’d run off without my phone and had to turn back. Got caught by a train, and after arriving during worship had three people I needed to talk to before I paid attention to the song.

And then I looked up to the screen and I got my answer.

“From life’s first cry, til final breath, Jesus commands my destiny.”

Thank you, Jesus, that you have not yet let me reach my final breath!