The irony of life never ceases to amaze me.

On November 23 of last year, at 2 a.m., I was asked to leave my son’s hospital room because he was crashing and they needed to act quickly. A very kind nurse walked with me down to the family lounge and waited with me. She asked me questions about Charles, my family, where we were from. She did a great job distracting me.

And then she left to check on progress, and I absolutely lost all composure and called my husband in a hysterical mess at 2:30 a.m. (I had sent him home, I wanted normalcy of some kind for our daughter. Charlie was stable, so I sent him home.)

He asked if he should come back right away, I said no I still didn’t want to worry our sleeping little girl,so I told him to take her to daycare in the morning and come up after.

I proceeded to cry hysterically after getting off the phone. My anxiety climbed every second I sat there. My thoughts racing a million miles a minute. What are they doing? Is he ok? What if…? You name it I thought it. I prayed. I prayed hard. I begged and pleaded.

And then that nice nurse came back into the room and told me they were done, he was successfully intubated and sedated. The Doctor would be in shortly. I’m not sure where she came from, or her name, I have never seen her again, but I thank her.

I anxiously awaited, for what seemed like an eternity. And then the Doctor came, she sat down in the chair next to me. This was going to be one of those serious talks.

His lungs had filled with blood. His mitral regurgitation was so severe he couldn’t tolerate it. And his lungs had collapsed. “If we didn’t intubate him, he wouldn’t have made it through the night.” The words slapped me in the face, punched me in the gut, and squeezed the beating heart in my chest so tight I thought it would explode. She saved him. She and her wonderful medical team, they saved him.

It would begin the most depressing, frustrating, and trying hospital stay we would have. But I had him.

That date-November 23 at 2 a.m.- haunts me. It haunted me that day and it haunted me leading up to its anniversary. My anxiety running on high all of the dreadful November 22, when we had returned to the hospital with him the last year.

And now as we lead up to 2 a.m., on the 23rd, I’m riding with my son in an ambulance, in a snow storm, on a high anxiety trip. I can hear every rumble, every spray of slush, every slide. I can feel every slip of the wheels, every bump. We were even flagged down by someone in the ditch. But I can’t see more than a fuzzy car light out the window, into the dark of night. And once again I pray, I pray hard.

And while this year, less severe then the last (at least I choose to believe so), it comes with its own challenges and pains. It comes with the fear of spending Thanksgiving in a hospital once again, disappointing a big sister at home, and sleeping (if at all) on a plastic couch.

To the nurse in the ER that told me I handle it all so well, Thank you, thank you for saying that and for letting me tell you that I don’t always. Because there are days, like today, that inside, I can’t.

And now it’s 2 a.m.

Today and Always God is in control.

Nothing is truly ours to decide.

Nothing is predictable.

Nothing is fair.

Not everything will turn out how you think it should.

Not everyone who disagrees with you is wrong.

Being angry does not make things better.

But God always has this.

 

“Would it help?”

A few months ago I had a chance to sit down with my husband and watch a movie. This is something very few and far between. We watched Bridge of Spies (Steven Spielberg, 2015), with Tom Hanks and Mark Rylance. It was a great movie. I pulled something very helpful from one of the main characters. While he was in jail, being accused of being a spy, he didn’t get angry, ever.

When his lawyer (Tom Hanks) says, “You don’t seem alarmed.” “Do you never worry?” “You’re not worried?”

He (Mark Rylance) responds every time, “Would it help?”

No. No it would not help. No it does not help.

What does help?

Praying to God, asking God for help. No matter your feelings, your worries, whatever it is your struggling to deal with: the argument with your spouse, the upcoming surgery, the ever prominent election and the future of America, your meeting at work, and everything in between. Take it to God. God can help. God will help.

 

Let Go, and Let God

I’m going to share a few things with you that have helped me through the past year, they apply to more then just my own personal life circumstances.

 

Isaiah 41:10 (NIV)

So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

 

My message today is not my normal, my message today is to remind you that no matter what happens, God is in control. Go on with your day. Love your neighbor. Love your family. Love yourself. And I urge you to Love God.

 

Today and Always God is in control. Pray. Let Go, and Let God.

 

 

 

 

One day as I drove through the pharmacy window it struck me out of no where, as it normally does. I wondered what they thought of me as I picked up medications, again. By now my local pharmacy has come to know me by first name, by my face, and most likely, my car. Whether I pull up to the window or I go inside, they say hi to me with friendly smiles. They now ask me for the date of birth as a formality, not that we both don’t have it memorized at this point. Sometimes they don’t even ask before I rattle it off. They have become someone I depend on weekly. Then I realized, it’s not just their ability to be open, know my information, or hand me a bottle that I depend on, it’s their ability to make the medication.

For many people a pharmacy is somewhere you get antibiotics, pain medication, and your typical prescriptions. For my family, a pharmacy, a pharmacist, and the techs they work with have been life changing. On a daily basis my son takes a minimum of 7 rounds of medication, some days many, many more, depending on his status. Those medications, for him, are necessary in keeping him alive.

During ER visits and hospitalizations, often the medication given through IVs is life saving. They keep his heart functioning, his airway open, they prevent life ending blood clots, they stop painful infections that could go straight to his heart. These are all miraculous medications, medications that we could not get to without a pharmacy.

Pharmaceutical staff work with chemistry, mathematics, the knowledge of what medications can combine with others, how much to dose at what concentration, which need to be refrigerated, which can’t be kept in the light, which medications have to be in black bags (or I’ve been told they become hazardous), and so on and so forth. The variety of medications available is impossible to count and would be even harder to remember.

Doctors often get all of the credit for ordering the medications that help you get better or stay healthy, depending on what you need it for. However, when you stop to realize how you get that medication, it’s your pharmacy. The pharmacist, the techs, and those that often work behind the scenes. Unheard and unnoticed. But ultimately creating and measuring out those every day or life saving medications.

So to the pharmacy (whether you are local, hospital, home health, or ER), thank you. Thank you for working day in and day out, days, nights, and weekends, thank you. You have more then once provided us with life changing medications. So for every time you have worked behind the scenes and gone unnoticed, for my son, myself, or anyone, Thank you. In this house, you do not go unnoticed. Your presence, on a daily basis, is very, very noticed.