Existentialism and Poker

For the first few days at the hospital I do nothing but eat and sleep. Usually by day four or five I am well enough to appreciate visitors and watch TV. By the sixth day I am bored of TV so I
have developed other past times. I read, I clear out my old emails, I talk on the phone, I journal, I listen to music, I talk with God. Sometimes His presence feels very close, sometimes I feel very alone.

Lately I have a new activity to pass the time away. I play poker. Like most card games there are different levels to play. Some players just willy-nilly take chances and throw out their cards without much thought. Some players try to bluff their way through a hand acting like they have something of significance when they actually have nothing. Some of the more serious players know the odds , count the cards and calculate their every move and counter move.

Regardless of what level you play at there is one dominating factor that rules the game - luck.
Luck of the draw, meaning you can only play the cards that have been dealt to you. You do your best, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, regardless, the game goes on.

Now the hard part

I have been in the hospital for a week. I feel much better. My body is responding to the medication. I have not had a fever in several days. I am not struggling to breathe anymore. I have more energy. I am on the road to wellness.

Now the hard part begins. Waiting....

I want to be home. I want a normal life. This year has been especially hard. It seems I am getting sicker, the disease continues to stomp through my life like an enemy army on the attack. In the previous eleven months I have had five hospital stays, weeks of home IV's, and a month living away from my family going through pulmonary rehab. All this accompanied by the continual thought of "when will it be time for a lung transplant?"

I am so tired of sickness overshadowing my life. I have lost perspective and it seems like there is no end in sight.

I wait to hear from the doctor about when I can be discharged from the hospital. An insurance company will dictate whether or not I will be home for Thanksgiving.

I feel so helpless.

Being Here

I was hoping to make it through the rest of this year without another hospital stay. I am sad to say that is not so. It's been 7 weeks since my last hospital visit and here I am again. The usual brought me to my demise- fever, extra congestion, shortness of breath or (SOB) as they refer to it in medical jargon.

I've been here since monday. I am beginning to feel better, which makes being here harder. The weather is supposed to be beautiful in East Tennessee this weekend. One of the last tastes of Fall before winter comes. I want to be outside enjoying the sunshine and the final days of warmth.

I am trying to embrace what is, not what I would like it to be. I know if I focus too much on my desire for this hospital stay to be over with then I will become very frustrated and I will miss the goodness of what is happening now. At this moment I am resting in a comfortable bed. I am enjoying the quite hum of the IV machine. I am watching the sun come through the window casting ever changing shadows on the wall. I am eating a blue berry muffin that is quite tasty. I am breathing. I may not have all that I want but I have all that I need for this moment.

OOPS!

Thank you to all of my dear friends who graciously informed me that we turn our clocks back tonight, not last week. Perhaps I got it wrong because I don't pay attention to details, or perhaps my memory lapsed due to stress. I would like to think that I'm just ahead of my time.

Falling Back in Time

We all adjusted our clocks this past weekend. Now the darkness comes earlier at the end of the day. Or does it? The sun did not change when it rose and when it sets. We adjusted our perception of time to better utilize the sun's light for our purposes.

Where am I going with this? I don't know, just thinking again about how our perceptions create our realities, how our perceptions are affected by our perspective. This all sound so heady. Let me try to explain where I am going with all of this. (hang on, it could be a wild ride.)

I grew up in South Florida, near the tropics, closer to the equator then most of the United States where there is lots of sunshine lots of the time thus Florida is nicknamed the sunshine state. Day light savings time doesn't mean a whole lot there because the closer you are to the equator the more constant 12 hours of sunlight you will receive regardless of what season it is.

However in other parts of our country, the tilt of the earth creates more sun shine in the summer and less in the winter as the earth rotates. Therefore, day light savings time impacts people up north more then the south because sunshine is a precious commodity in the cold winter months and daylight savings time allows for people to enjoy the sun more in their awake hours.

All of that to say that the sun never really changes when and for how long it shines. It is constant. Yet our perspective (where we see it from) of the sun changes as the earth rotates so much that we adjust our perception (how we see it) and this creates our reality. (what time of day is it?)

Whew, I'm tired and I'm not even sure this makes sense to anyone else. I think somewhere in this analogy is a lesson about changing and adjusting and letting the sun shine in your life but I'm much too tired now to connect all the dots. Perhaps I will ponder this more later.

The Trial of Trust

As much as I would love to take credit for this writing I can not, it was sent to me from a dear friend. I wept as I read the words as I can relate to the continual desire to trust in spite of feeling naked in the middle of winter. Spring will one day come, until then I stand in the cold and wait....

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"I worry too much. Autumn trees ask me not to worry. They, like Jesus, suggest trust rather than worry.So often in autumn I want to go lean my head against a tree and ask what it feels like to lose so much, to be so empty, so detached, to take off one's shoes that well, and then simply to stand and wait for God's refilling. It sounds so simple, so easy. It isn't easy. But it's possible

Slowly
she celebrated the sacrament of letting go
first she surrendered her green
then the orange, yellow, and red
finally she let go of her brown
shedding her last leaf
she stood empty and silent, stripped bare
Leaning against the winter sky
she began her vigil of trust.

And Jesus said:

Why do you worry about clothes? Remember the flowers growing in the fields: they do not fret about what to wear: yet I assure you not even Solomon in all his royal robes was dressed like one of these.

Shedding her last leaf
she watched its journey to the ground
She stood in silence
wearing the color of emptiness
her branches wondering
How do you give shade with so much gone?

And Jesus said;

Do not be troubled or needlessly concerned.

And then,
the sacrament of waiting began.
The sunrise and sunset watched with tenderness
Clothing her with silhouettes
they kept her hope alive.
They helped her understand that
her vulnerability
her dependence and need
her emptiness
her readiness to receive
were giving her a new kind of beauty.
Every morning and every evening
they stood in silence
and celebrated together
the sacrament of waiting!

And Jesus said;

Now if that is how God cares for the wild flowers in the fields which are here today and gone tomorrow, will He not all the more care for you...?"

Back To Normal

Tomorrow I will have been home from the hospital for one week. The world seems like such a big, beautiful place after being cooped up in a tiny room for 19 days. After 3 weeks our whole family is together again. The kids have been staying at our friend's house because Tom was sick at home while I was in the hospital. He is still in recovery mode and will hopefully return to work next week.

This experience has hit us much harder then the "normal" hospital time. Perhaps because both Tom and I were out of commission at the same time. Perhaps because it was the swine flu causing more uncertainty then usual. Perhaps because this is the fourth hospital stay this year and we have had less time in between stays to recover. I'm not sure of all the factors but I'm ready to get back to "normal".

Over the weekend I told my daughter it is going to take us a little while to get back in our groove. With the raw honesty of a teenager she said, "Mom, we don't' have a groove." Hmmmm...


Hmmmm....here's a thought - what is the difference between being in a groove verses being stuck in a rut.