Author: Pursuitofkindness

The best stories contain both impeccable moments as well as moments of complete disaster. First there must be a hook, something that draws you in and makes you want to stick around to see what is to come. Then the disaster hits only for redemption to rise up in a glorious finale. This is the kind of story I have been given. We love to love a love story, particularly the beginning and the end. The initial excitement that draws two people together is intoxicating. Then life flits by until we see the amazing beauty of an elderly couple holding onto one another while letting life itself slip away. 

Those are the bookends of the best love stories, but what occurs between the bookends is more significant. Love cannot be proven authentic until it fills years that turn into decades. 

I am blessed and honored by a love that if written, would capture the heart of all who see it. 

First, the hook: two adults, in their young twenties, from opposite ends of rural America. One day, the girl is stopped in her tracks by love at first sight. Like every great couple, despite the power of the initial moment, there is struggle. A realignment must occur and at one point the couple isn’t sure whether or not such a significant alignment could or should occur. In a flurry of emotion, one day they push through the past and are in an instant bound together with a singular purpose. 

As soon as they are married, the wife is injured in a car wreck that nearly takes her life. The couple must rise through the fear and trauma to heal and bond and learn that love and marriage is more than simple choices. 

They travel the world simply for the purpose of coming home smarter and well fed. They leave family and friends for the sake of adventure, more than once. They create three beauties as reminders that action is an integral part of loving. They see dreams come true. They endured severe sickness. They see the best in each other and become better because of how they are seen. 

They serve one another to the point of exhaustion. They see the wonders of the Earth. They live in trust, peace, and love. And no matter what has occurred in the day, they hold one another in the night.

This is what happens between the bookends of a love story. These moments hold the substance. A beginning and end are meaningless without hundreds of thousands of choices in between. 

A relationship with God is structured the same way, your final day is not as significant as everyday before. In relationship with God, the treasure of life is not found in the bookends but in the unraveling story that is formed. Each day, each moment, can be filled to overflowing with the love and provision of God, despite circumstances of heartache and struggle. This is the key to truly amazing love. 

Thank you, My Love, the gift of my life. I am eternally grateful for all that you are to me. Happy Valentine’s, dear. 

I am not the first person to cry out in the darkness. To not see an enemy, but yet be overwhelmed by the desire for one who will remember me. 

I do not remember myself, and cannot resolve the issues inside. 

When I try to recall, I cannot identify what is missing, I simply do not recognize my reflection. 

I was a wife, mother, teacher, friend but weren’t there other pieces? And these pieces, weren’t they good? Didn’t I love and live above reproach? I simply can’t recall. 

It is interesting that the body isn’t simply made up of pieces that can be removed and returned. It is also a whole. Any part removed, for any amount of time, leaves an ache, a need. The whole must be redefined in its absence, for there is no whole without each and every piece. And is it the same with life?

I have felt the whole of who I am, or who I will be. I have seen shadows of it in dreams and whispers of it in song. Still, I must wait for the pieces to be revealed. In order to experience this “who I will be,” old versions of myself must be washed away. 

Washed, such a passive word: scrubbed, scoured, and scraped away is more accurate. 

If we must use the word “washed” then this washing is the kind that occurs when the tide has pulled you under. Tumbling with the sand and shell, washing, the water taking hold and not letting go. Washing by thrashing, until your mind finds itself incapable of escape. It is by this means that I have been washed. 

Grasping for air, listening for the light, hoping for freedom, desperate to be released. For there is nothing in turmoil but to hope. So I hope that when I break through the wall of washing water I may rise to find myself full of life giving breath. 

This hope lifts my eyes. My strength reaches upward. Hope yearns toward the breakthrough. 

Then the moment comes. It happens, the turmoil subsides and, rising, I find my feet, firm and ready. 

Finding their path they move away from the abrading wash. Walking quickens because the old burdens were pulled away in receding water. Who I was, has fallen behind. To turn back or search for it in the depths, is not a choice. 

Hope raised me from the water. Now, on dry land, hope stirs my eyes to search for a new path, a new piece and renewal inside this freedom. 

As I consider my birthday, another year behind me another year before me, I think about the unpredictability of life. This coming year, I am not sure of who I should be or what I should expect. Cancer survivors say it is a common mental struggle that gets better as time ticks forward. But here I sit, today, and I realize my doctors have never declared me “cancer free” or even stated that I am in remission. There is no clear line to distinguish that yesterday I was fighting, today I have overcome. My conversations with doctors leave me feeling that cancer is inside of me hiding, silently waiting. So a sense of insecurity hangs over me. 
When I stop and consider life, this sense of insecurity should not come as a surprise. In college a friend died of an aneurysm. Another childhood friend was told from birth that he would not live past 18, yet lives productively into his 30’s. Another friend died in his 20’s in a car crash, only to find his body had unknowingly been eaten by cancer. On and on I could reflect on unexpected tragedies and physical triumphs that I have witnessed. Experience shows me that our bodies are not reliable, the medical community is still learning, and without any security in our future, we all move forward. Some people move forward because they have faith in a doctor saying “you are cancer free.” Some people place their hopes in diet and exercise. 

The only response that makes sense to me is placing my faith in my God. Since I was a child, I accepted that only my God knew the path of my life. It was for me to understand one step at a time. It was His job to reveal and create the foothold that would carry me forward. Truly, forward motion is the goal. I have never wrestled with the “why”. My heart remains steadfast on the job that is mine: to step forward on the path that is revealed. 

This year taught me that pain is a great motivator. Difficult times push you to reach out to family, neighbors and even society. Pain creates a platform of interconnectedness. As I reached out in need, I was able to observe the web of love that had been built throughout my life. A web that seemed invisible in certain moments of life, but as tears dripped onto the web, it began to glisten and the most beautiful accomplishment of my life was revealed. 

Once observed, this web of love has become motivating. No matter where my path turns or climbs, whether my journey lasts five years or forty, it is this web of love that hangs before me, glistening in the light of my life. I want to see its strands grow and reach to the farthest corners of my view, including as many others in my interconnected masterpiece. 

No matter what I choose to do in the coming year, how I spend my time, or where I invest my talents, all that will truly matter is how well I have loved. This revelation, learned through pain, will carry me forward. 

I came out of a ten hour surgery. The worst over, the recovery beginning. Everyone was optimistic. I settled into my hospital room, vitals, wound care, doplar search for a strong heartbeat in my newly relocated blood vessels, medications. A nurse check-in every hour, if you were lucky. I had sent Clifton home to rest. While I had slept on the operating table, he had worried, fretted and paced, like any good husband. 

At one in the morning, the nurse came in on the hour. She took her data and by 1:10 I was back asleep. I heard an alarm going off. I must have overslept and now the girls were late for school! Lights flashed on, I opened my eyes and two nurses came running toward me. My steady heartbeat of 82 had jumped to 160 at 1:15 in the morning. Doctors must be paged, paged again and pulled from the beds they had barely made warm. Cardiologists and surgeons, if possible, must come to my bedside and make recommendations. An hour went by and no doctor had emerged. Another thirty minutes and one responded. My nurses were adamant regarding the care I needed but when looking at me they smiled and reassured me all was well. I did deep breathing and deep praying but really was not alarmed. I could watch my chest bounce as it pounded but I did not feel sick, I could breathe, and I was in no (new) pain. My roommate was removed from the room and doctors began flooding in. Two older nurses from critical care and a doctor from ICU. A tall young surgeon who spoke on the phone to a cardiologist, I would not meet tonight. My two nurses set up their computer while the critical care nurses piled shots and medicine on my bed. The charge nurse came in to hold my hand. Between 10-12 doctors and nurses stood around me and at 3 AM they were ready to go. My surgeon insisted that an AED be placed on my back. In the instance that it would be needed, every second would matter. On the other hand, if he was forced to use it, the pressure and pulse would negate his 10 hours with me in surgery. The critical care nurses questioned every decision of the young surgeon. He continued to speak to the cardiologist and repeat instructions. He did not want to be woken and in the middle of the night make life or death decisions in a medical area out of his specialty, but that was exactly what he must do despite the fact that there were plenty of people in the room who trusted his decisions less than he did. 

He told me that my heart had an arrhythmia and the best way to return it to its typical pace was a medicine that would stop my heart for five seconds. Once the heart had paused it would pick back up a healthier rhythm. 

When the medicine was administered I would feel very anxious but it was absolutely necessary that I took deep breaths and simply wait for the sensation to pass. The critical care nurse was told more than once, the medicine MUST be given as quickly as possible. If the medicine did not reach my heart within the five seconds it would not be given the opportunity to work. My heart rate at this time was 180. The medicine was administered. I was the only one in the room not holding my breath. I breathed in as deeply as my body would allow. My heart dipped to 140, every medical professional began to breathe and then it jumped to 200 and was holding steady. The medicine had failed. The surgeon told the critical care nurse again, the medicine must be pushed into my system as quickly as possible. My fluids were already flowing as quickly as possible, everyone was simply looking for answers. The medicine didn’t work, so it must be administered again and there was no room for error. This time I knew what to expect, my body would tense and a hurting sensation would flow through my chest to abdomen down my thighs to my knees and ankles. I didn’t want this to happen. I was unable to protest because they were administering the medicine. This time there was no dip, instead my heart rate jumped directly to 240. 

Doctors placed their heads in their hands. Others rubbed their eyes in exhaustion. I did not want that medicine again. There was discussion. I didn’t listen, I wanted my husband. I had asked for him before we had begun this mess. Now I needed him. I told the doctors I needed my husband. If I was going to die right here I wasn’t going to do it without him beside me. I was pleading my case when they decided to administer another medicine. I didn’t hear the doctor tell me what it was or what the anticipated outcome would be. They gave it to me and nothing happened. Then they told me they were administering a double dose of the failed med. I told them what they already knew–so far this med has only made my situation worse, I don’t want a DOUBLE portion all at once. 

There were alarms blaring. The blood pressure machine was searching for my pulse every minute and every minute began to flash and scream because it could not find what it needed. More nurses held my hand, told me to breathe, my only job–don’t stop breathing. I don’t know if they were reminding me or saying a prayer, asking simply that I don’t stop breathing. 

A double dose was shot into my arm and my body seized. The lockdown occurring in my body ran like a horizontal line starting at my chest pushing down my body to my toes. My heart slowed. For five seconds my heart stopped. When it began again it picked up a slower pace around 100 beats a minute. The medicine did it’s job and everyone in the room remembered to breathe. 

The next morning everyone of the doctors and nurses in the room with me from 3-3:30 AM came to my room to tell me how well I had done. The cardiac doctor who had been on the phone came in to explain the situation to me and Clifton. As the heart begins to beat faster the rhythms are thrown off. The top chambers that should manage the speed become unable to systematically allow the lower chambers to push the blood through my body. The roles within the heart become mixed up until no part of the heart is doing the job it has been created to perform. 

His diagnosis, I have an extremely strong and healthy heart. Only a healthy heart could continue to function despite the unhealthy pace and arrhythmia. Later that day he ran some tests to confirm his suspicion and was confirmed in his diagnosis. 

This incident made me consider the patterns in each of our lives. Each of us have a life pulse of our own. If you took an EKG of our life, many of us may fall into a general “healthy range” but never an exact reflection of one another.

Yet there are numerous books to tell us how to be more efficient–how to increase our daily life pulse. There are books to tell us to simplify–how to slow our life pulse. 

My cardiac incident made me consider whether the natural rhythms of one’s life are by design. Sure, if you are strong in mind and stamina you can hype up your life pulse. You can double your productivity and even hold that pace for an extended period of time.

 Though you may be able to “get the job done” at a double pace, there will come a time when you will recognize failures in other regions of your life. The rapid life pulse is effectively keeping one section of life operational but not able to spread your life pulse, as it should, throughout the whole of who you are. As with my heart, a rapid pulse soon led to a decrease in pressure. Soon the heart was sputtering rather than pumping. The increase in pace decreased the heart’s effectiveness. 

In my case, the more jarring option was the false slowing of of my pulse. A withdrawal of one’s life pulse from friends, family, or a given purpose is a complete shock to everyone connected to you. A withdrawal of one’s life pulse creates anxiety throughout its entire social network. Just as our anatomical systems are interdependent, so are each of our individual life pulses. 

My conclusion, know yourself. It is an old wisdom many time repeated. Don’t allow a book or a boss tell you to alter your your natural life pulse. You are more effective and more uniquely able to play your role when living at your own pace. 

When my heart settled into its natural pace, many levels of anxiety, stress and physical pain melted away in an instant. Perhaps if we are able to embrace a lifestyle that supports our personal life pulse, we would find the same.