26 March 2013

From the Hill

In Portland the major hospitals sit on this huge hill.  Tonight I write from The Hill, specifically in a room in Shriner's Hospital.  I'm watching my little man watch his beloved Duggars as he begins to doze a little bit, but fights the urge to sleep, because seriously, what 7 year old boy ever wants to sleep, even after surgery. 

(I apologize ahead of time to my grammar-loving friends for that sentence.  Although I guess since the apology came after the sentence, it's not "ahead of time".  I'm a little tired.)

Today wasn't as stressful for us as some surgical days have been in the past.  We had a later check in, so we didn't have to get up at "o dark thirty".  I just realized that I've never written that and I don't know how to write that phrase.  Ok.  So we had a relatively easy morning, a long wait in pre-op, and we prepared for a potentially long surgery.  

An odd thing happened.  I was mentally prepared for a 3+ hour wait for the surgeon to come tell us all was well.  After barely an hour the nurse came to tell us the surgeon was closing Isaiah up.  Now keep in mind that I'm the positive thinking one in our family.  I panicked.  I thought that surely the surgeon had looked in Isaiah's back, realized he couldn't repair the connectors that he had been hoping to prepare.  I "knew" that he would come out disappointed and start talking about the necessity of having to fuse Isaiah's spine a lot earlier than we hoped.

I'm really not familiar with this feeling.  I didn't like it.  I'm thankful that it didn't last long.  The surgeon came out looking quite pleased and showed us on his phone pictures of the x-rays showing his beautiful work.

Why am I even writing this story?  Well, maybe because I never cease to be amazed at the depths of my own heart.  I need to remember these types of moments when I think that I can handle things on my own.  I need to remember that even had the surgeon been disappointed, God wasn't.  I need to remember that no matter what my emotional response to things, I can turn to my great God Who loves me and does all things well.

And I am tired, so I don't know if this will even make any sense to anyone else, but I wanted to record it somewhere to help me remember in the future.  If it helps someone else, too, all the better.

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