New Years Eve...the night of one of my most challenging experiences as a wife, and adult for that matter. It was 10 years ago today that Roger went into emergency surgery for what the doctors thought was appendicitis. When the doctor came out of surgery, he sat down next to me with a very concerned look and told me that my husband was a very sick man and was lucky to be alive. He had just done one of the most memorable surgeries of his career. He explained that Roger's appendix had been wrapped around his intestine and had gangrene. It had began to kill off part of his intestine. He had to remove a portion of the damaged intestine but the big concern was the gangrene infection. He warned me that he would be in ICU and was not out of the woods. That's the moment I was really faced as an adult with how fast life can change and how meaningless so much of what we focus our life and attention on really is. I had two very young boys who needed their daddy!
Roger would go on to spend more than a week in the hospital with no progress in his healing. The doctor scheduled the same surgery for the 10th day because he believed Roger had a bowel blockage caused from the first surgery. We were beaten down. Roger was in pain and exhausted from being so miserable for so long. I was exhausted from worry and running between the hospital and home. The morning of the 9th day a friend of mine came by the hospital and wanted to take me to lunch. We went to the hospital cafeteria and I was telling her I just couldn't imagine Roger having the same surgery and starting the whole healing process all over again after all he had already been through. What I didn't know is that while I was gone to lunch, my husband was having a heart to heart talk with the Great Healer. To hear him describe this moment gives me goosebumps but after this talk, nearly immediately his bowels began working. I came back from lunch to see him juggling his IV and gown as he shuffled out of the bathroom in is room. The smile on his face said it all! In 8 hours he went from seriously ill, scheduled for major surgery the next morning, to going home! We were home that night and he will tell you it was all because God's healing. His doctor said he had no medical explanation for his healing and was really surprised that he would not be doing surgery on him again.
Fast forward 10 years later and here I am looking back over this past year, and how our lives drastically changed in nearly an instant once again. We had a little time to pray, to have some heart to heart talks with God and each other, and consider what we were meant to do. When the phone call came, we said yes. What we were really saying yes to was focusing on more than us. We said yes to the calling on our hearts to offer our love and our family and our home to a child. Eight hours after that phone call we were headed home from the hospital again, this time as a family of five.
These two moments were big moments in our lives as individuals, as a couple, and as a family. Big things are going to happen in our lives...big good and big bad. We have a choice in how we handle everything. We have a choice on if we focus on the pain or if we turn to the One who can relieve the pain. We have lives that we are living and we have a choice on if we focus on living more FOR ourselves or more THAN ourselves. What will your focus be in 2016?
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