We Must Be Precious to Him
Back when I was an infertility patient undergoing my first laser laparoscopy, I felt so sure I would die during surgery that I penned good-bye notes to loved ones for them to find in my journal. I also changed the sheets so family members who flew in for my funeral could doze comfortably.
But it turned out that I didn’t need the sleeping pill I had asked for. Peace showed up the evening before I went under, and I slept without the meds.
Three laparoscopies and two tonsillectomies later, I had enough peace from the start last Thursday night that I slept great. The surgeon had scheduled me for an operation Friday morning to put a plate in my broken clavicle and connect it all up again. And I woke up right at the appointed time of 4:30 AM.
We had to be at the hospital by 6. And standing on the driveway at 5:15, I gazed up at the sky. The stars looked like so many sequins thrown across the darkness. They cast just enough light for me to see the silhouettes of the houses on my street. I breathed in the cool air, and the scene of utter stillness comforted me.
At that moment I realized that my blind friend/associate pastor, Mike Justice, would have given just about anything to gaze at what I was seeing just then. It would have made his day, year, life. To see again, even if only for an instant, so many stars across a Texas sky—now, wouldn’t that be something?
And here I considered it a day of dread.
I realized then that I see in every day enough beauty to mark it as all-your-life memorable. Yet I miss it.
It’s all in the point of view.
Once we arrived at the hospital, a nurse checked me into the pre-op area. I asked her how long my surgery would take. After glancing at the orders, she told me the doctor had reserved the suite for about 2-1/2 hours. Some of that, she said, was for an optional bone graft from the hip.
“Bone graft? Hip? But that hurts!”
“Yes, it does. You didn't know?”
Heck, no. The doctor had said nothing about messing with my hip! But then he had said I have a tiny clavicle, and he was unsure about how he’d repair it. I had determined that was his problem, not mine, but now it was mine again. I disliked his option of choice. My co-author, an ob-gyn, had recommended duct tape, which sounded brilliant to me. Something about no second incision, bone loss, pain… Very sensible plan. But no-o-o-o. This hot shot surgeon wanted to cut my hip open!
I walked back to the waiting area and fussed to my husband, Pastor Lance, Mike Justice, and my friend Virginia, three of whom exceeded the number of allowed visitors. (Some of the least-appreciated people are those who wait through someone else’s surgery. The patient lies unconscious, oblivious to the long minutes crawling by and the endurance of those who wait through them.) They offered the appropriate level of shock and lots of empathy.
I had to plant my behind on a chair and wait several hours from the time I got my “possible bone graft” news until I could actually talk to my doctor. I would have preferred to surf the net, call somebody, gather info—to do something that felt remotely like control. But control is an illusion.
As it turned out, the doc did have to do the hip thingy.
Ow.
And a couple of days later, I developed an allergic reaction to pain killers that made me itch all over. I opted for pain over itching, but eventually they stabilized it all again.
After three full days in the hospital, I came home. Today, five days from anesthesia, I walk like Neanderthal Woman, but hear me roar (or at least whine).
Mike Justice called two nights ago. We talked about what it’s like to be blind, and I told him about my driveway meditations. After we both wept, he reminded me of Psalm 8. The psalmist considers the star-strewn heavens and asks, “What is man that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that thou visitest him?”
Staring out at space can make you realize how tiny you are in the universe. And lying in a hospital bed, pushing the morphine pump, wondering how you will empty your bladder in the middle of the night can have the same effect.
You feel small. Helpless. Vulnerable. A little embarrassed. Insignificant.
It is in precisely such moments that the psalmist calls us to ponder why the Sovereign Son of the Ancient of Days would shrink to the size of an embryo and visit humankind. Why would he visit us?
"Why?" indeed.