For Such a Time as This

Entering the walkway lined with lovely accouterments such as patio furniture and plants in full blossom, my eye glanced to the lush veggie and flower gardens on one side and the spacious lawn on the other. I knew what lay ahead, beauty and nutritional nurture and cool. While the rest of the Pacific Northwest roasted in mid nineties, I would soon be searching for my sweater in a house that is perpetually kept at 68 or 70 degrees. Old friends of decades long days, they had invited me to housesit while they ran a week long youth program at a summer camp. Their idea of fun is to take old houses and bring new life to them. They are an amazing team of design and craftsmanship. There was only one obstacle for me to fully embracing this retreat like setting. Where would I sleep? March 16, 2015 two days before the 54th anniversary of “The Accident” I began to understand “The Grand Adventure” was as much about my health, maybe moreso, as it was about getting a body or work into print and staging. I saw the inside story on my body from the waist down.

Seeing the x-rays explained everything. Now, a team of doctors was all over me to restore my health from the effects of being smashed by a drunk driver. The top of my right hip looks like uncarved concrete and has eroded the edge of socket. It will be a complicated surgery to rebuild and replace everything when it happens. Add a vascular edema behind my retina and a strep infection in my leg and I was surrendering to multiple wisdoms working as a well oiled cog to make it all better. I always get my miracle but only after enormous, sacrificial obedience to the still small voice. And good ALWAYS comes of it. I am a connoisseure of good doctors, nurses and physical therapists after a lifetime of depending on them.

The infectious disease guy looked at my legs and said, “You don’t sleep in a bed do you?”.
“No, I don’t” .
“A recliner?”
“Something like that”

Sighing deeply with compassion he said, “People with your hip condition can’t sleep in beds. It’s too painful”.
The Grand Adventure began as obedience to the still small voice telling me to parce out the pieces of my life to get my work done. That meant work in one place, exercise and hygiene in another, sleep in another. No hospitality or fellowship with my leadership.

I thought it was about finances. Turns out it was about my health. Free of a bed, for the first time in almost forty years, I slept- good, solid, extraordinary sleep. Where once it took twelve hours to get hours sleep, now I settled back cradled in just the right position, and with the exception of one brief potty break, I awoke , time and again the next morning with my body feeling restored. It has been a gift. God put all the pieces in place for me to do this. The only compensation will be compression socks.

The social cost? Enormous. But the doctors have said one year with no falls and no fractures and then they can do the surgery. There’s a lot of prehab to be done.

What sacrifice will you make for your health?

Love,
Deborah