I'm tired...but it's a good kinda tired.

Picture this: You are in a hospital room with your 41 year old non-smoking husband who had lung cancer surgery. You leave thinking, "This has been one of the best days we have had in over a month!" It truly was. He was Steve again. His personality was back. He was smiling, joking with the staff, shaving and begging to be taken on walks because he was getting bored and tired in his room. So we walked and walked and walked. It was wonderful, except for all the medical equipment that we have to drag along to include nursing staff - knocks the romance right off the moment. :-) But who cares. He wanted to be out. When lunch rolled around he did not want anything off the hospital menu, so I went to the cafeteria down stairs, had subs made for us and got chips. And there we sat in room 6 of 3 North. He in his recliner, me in a chair opposite of him with his hospital tray between us covered with our lunch. And then we held hands and he blessed it. It was the first normal moment we have had in weeks. Who knew one could have such a wonderful lunch date in a hospital room! It was better than any meal shared anywhere else (other than pizza movie night with the kiddos - which will hopefully be right around the corner). If all goes well, he will have his chest tubes out tomorrow and can come either tomorrow afternoon or Thursday morning.
But, oh the things I take for granted. I had reality slap me in the face yesterday. Yes, he had a much better day, but he still wasn't Steve. And at the end of the evening when he lay in his bed exhausted from all his work, he looked so vulnerable and weak. All I wanted to do was crawl in the bed next to him and snuggle - something we have not done since we woke up on Friday morning. It was then I remembered a conversation earlier in the day about borrowing a recliner for the house (it's here now). He would not be in the bed with me. Getting him home is not going to erase what we have gone through. I spent my entire ride home from the hospital last night crying my eyes out to a friend in Nebraska about how ungrateful I was being. A week ago all I wanted was for the Pet Scan to be clear. It was. We celebrated. Then it was all I wanted was for the surgery to be successful and Steve to come through it alive and well. Got that too. Apparently not enough for me though. Then all I wanted was to bring Steve home. Some how it seemed to me that bringing him home made it all go away. But as I saw him there in that bed in pain, I knew that even at home life would not be normal for a long while. And as I told him, " I just want it to be 6 months ago when it seem that all was right with the world." And his reply was, "Or 6 months from now when it will all feel right again." I am not very good at living in the moment (as someone on line or in an e-mail instructed me to do). I want to read to the end of the book. I want to know NOW that the good guy wins. And wins the way I want him too. I continue to ask God for peace and He continues to give me small victories to have peace with, but I want the big ones. And I want them now. As I pouring out my heart last night, I told my friend that I knew we needed to make this journey and we needed to make it in God's time. To speed it up or to skip portions of it means to skip the blessings He has in store for us. Like my lunch date in Steve's hospital room. My father-in-law told me that when we get to the other side of this, we will be changed. And I truly believe that. I am looking forward to the person God is making us to be in all this. To be remolded and shaped is a painful process, but so is training for the Boston Marathon (like our nutty pastor back in Nebraska - still haven't figured that one out). And so is bending to His will. It makes me think of the scripture in Malachi 3 -"He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver." A story is told of a women's Bible study that were puzzled by this verse so that asked a silversmith what it meant to refine and purify silver. The silversmith tells the ladies of how he has to sit in front of the fire with the silver in the hottest part to burn away the impurities. But that he has to take it out at just the right time or it will be destroyed. When asked how he knew when it was fully refined, he says "Oh, that's easy - when I see my image in it." God did not throw us in the fire. He is holding tightly to us and making sure that we are not destroyed and that we come out on the other side of this better than when we went in - seeing His image in us.


Peace to all who read...