Life Is What Happens. ..

...When you are making other plans.  It would seem life has decided that my neatly ordered life needed an upset.  Matt and I are sitting in the emergency room waiting to find out why he is so bloated and in pain. We are afraid of the possibilities.  Some could be quite dire.  Or, it could be something as simple as needing to change some of his medications, or it could just be a virus after all, though it doesn't behave like a virus.
Waiting is not my favorite activity.  It leaves me very tired and very tense at the same time. There are things I am supposed to be doing, places I am supposed to be tomorrow,  and I wonder if I  will have the chance.  I also desperately need to sleep, but how can I?  There are too many scenarios,  most of them awful, playing out in my head.

3/26/16

We have since learned that it was his appendix, and he had surgery on the 23rd to remove it.  We have been waiting for signs since that his digestion is getting back in gear, but until this morning, nothing much on that front.  At least there has been some movement, if slow.  It worries me that he has acid reflux all the sudden, when he hasn't had any for YEARS.  I am guessing that this surgery has just thrown off his whole balance, as his blood sugar appears to be resisting settling back into its normal groove. 

3/26/16

It would also seem that this bluetooth keyboard of Matt's that I borrowed despises me, for it just deleted a whole post that I was almost finished with.  This angers me greatly. I am, however, in a hospital room with a tired, uncomforable spouse, so I do not dare call Blogger and this keyboard all the awful names I would like to call them.  (Raggedy raunchy, corn-swozzlin' SHMURD! - to borrow from the Rick O'Shay comic of years ago...)

At any rate, the gist of it is that I have not done a whole lot of writing before this because the hospital is such an environment that numbs the mind.  Time ceases to have real meaning, and yet the realities of birth and death are very much with us.  All the news of celebrity deaths is not helping.  One begins to feel that this is the year we ALL die.  (If I don't get up out of this awful chair soon, my butt will be dead, for sure!) 

I went home early last night so I could get some housework done and get a walk in.  I did both, the house is sparkling, and I got in a mile and a half before dark.  (Cleaned house after.)  I got the sheets on the bed changed this morning, and the dirty ones into the washer. (On the Sanitize cycle, just in case).  The rest of the laundry is in the laundry room, ready to sort. 

Here I had written a lot of very lovely stuff about Holy Week, and I don't have the foggiest notion what it was except the notes in my notebook which I started from.  I guess I shall have to start again. 

Here is what I wrote down a couple of days ago:
3/24/16
It is Holy Week, and as Mother Susan reminded us when she came to visit Matt and pray with us, we are walking through our own trial this week.  Yet how can we forget, even in the midst of our own difficulties, the great suffering endured because of our wayward nature?  The suffering caused to humans by their fellow humans all over the world is a cause for our grief and our shame.
That Jesus saw and well knew what humankind was capable of, yet chose to be a sacrifice for us is still stunning.
Such stunning love, persistent in the face of rejection, ridicule, scorn, and attempted extermination is what Christians are saved by, and what we are supposed to emulate.  Most of us fall woefully short.  We react with fear, anger, and loathing toward those who appear on the outside to be different from us, but really are just human, just like us. We do not often remember the two great commandments.  ONE:  Love the Lord your God with your whole being, and  TWO: Love your neighbor as yourself. 
I really do kinda wonder if the problem some of the loudest hate-spewers out there have is that they really hate themselves.  Deep down, do they see themselves as horrible, worthless creatures, and therefore despise anyone who might actually have redeeming qualities?  Is that the problem? 
They are ignoring the first commandment if they do.  If you love God with all that you are, you will recognize how loved you are in return, and you will want to share that love, and when you do, it multiplies and spreads and eddys around and comes right back at ya with interest. 
The flipside is, hate rebounds on you, too, and not in a good way.  It eats all your joy, corrodes your soul, and leaves you alone and bitter in the dark. 
Hatred does not solve any problems.  It only makes existing ones worse, and causes even more. 
3/26/16

Today is Holy Saturday.  Tonight there will be a VERY long service in every church with a liturgical tradition.  Confirmations, baptisms, reaffirmations of faith, all sorts of celebrations of new life in Christ will happen.  Our service is rather a busy one because we are the Cathedral parish, and people from all over the diocese come to us on Holy Saturday, because that is where the Bishop will be.  Our choir does not normally sing this service, the nine o'clock Parish Choir does it, so I would not normally be there anyway.  I have already missed Good Friday, and will likely miss Easter as well.  Difficult to be away from our St. Paul's family, especially on special days.  The rhythm of the church year marks our own journey.  At least for me, the different seasons of the church year, marking the events in Jesus' journey, also serve as touch points for my own journey, reminding me of purpose and progress as we go.  This week has been a walk in darkness for the most part.  Not knowing if what was found is the total cause of Matt's health problems, not seeing very swift recovery, and wondering what that means for the future.  Yet even on this day, a day when Christians go through with the first disciples, a time of separation, of a sense of loss of God's presence, God hears and answers prayer.  We have received encouraging news, even when fearing we would not.  Not the great rejoicing of Easter, but still not being ignored and unanswered. Tomorrow is the day of joy, when morning dawns bright, and we are told without doubt that we are NOT alone, NOT without hope.  We pray for our own Easter joy, our own sense of release from this shrouded time of gloom. 

O love beyond apprehension
That encompasses all
And reaches past
Our doubt
Be real for us in our
Hour of need.
Thou that gave all there is
For those who would not see
Grant us the vision
Of your nearness
Grant us the light
Of Easter joy.

That is about all I have right now.  I really need to get out of this chair, and maybe even out of this room.  Matt is dozing off and on, but may ask to be back in his chair, all depends on how things go.  I am so weary of no answers and so little progress, but I am grateful for the positive progress we have had.