I had a conversation recently with someone who asked me how things were going. I responded that things were good, and I feel very blessed in my life right now. She said something then, which confused me a little. “Come on, it’s me. You can tell me the truth.” I reiterated that I was very happy with where I am at, with my family, with life. She said, “Oh. Really? That sounds like something I say when I don’t feel like talking.” It has continued to bother me, this idea that Christians may just “say” they feel blessed when they really don’t, but I realized that I really do have a different feeling about being blessed after my husband’s illness.
My husband was very sick about a year and a half ago. He had double lung pneumonia, a sack of infected strep fluid wrapped around his left lung, and sepsis. They put a tube down his throat to make him breathe because he stopped doing it on his own. They had him on eleven different medications, all hooked up to his IV at the same time. I watched them wrap him up in ice blankets to keep his temperature “down” at a fairly constant 105 degrees, though I saw it hit 106 as well. I was terrified. He was only 28.
I think it’s the difference between an intellectual acceptance of a fact and the emotional impact of it. I held his hand and cried for 2 weeks while he lay completely unconscious, completely unresponsive. I thought of a passage which I always knew intellectually was true, but had never really internalized: “Fool! This night your soul will be required of you;” (Luke 12:20a). We might say the words—Oh, I know I might not have tomorrow—but, we still act like it. I felt like I would have another day, another month, another year with my husband. Then I listened to the doctors talk about the severity of his illness, I watched him lie there while life continued to move on. It didn’t seem fair that life kept going while I wanted to just stop and cry. I was in school at the time; so there was homework to do, classes to attend, two kids who didn’t need to see how terrified I was, decisions to be made for their school activities, decisions about surgeries for my husband, and time to think. So much time to think how I wish I’d treasured my marriage more, my life more, how much different things would be if he didn’t make it; he had to make it, but I just didn’t know. He was only 28. Who thinks they might die at 28?
In the meantime, my family and his came up often. My mom stayed with the kids. My dad stayed all night one night in the hospital with Chris so I would go home and sleep, as well as making sure I ate regularly every day. Visitors poured in. They offered comforting words, money for gas, and most importantly, prayer. Here is another instance where we sometimes say the words—the Church is a family—but, we don’t fully understand what that means until we go through something where we need them as our family quite desperately. Jesus said in John 13:34-35, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” The Church didn’t just say they were there for me. They were there. I saw them and heard from them every day while I went through this.
When he finally was allowed to come out of the medically induced coma, there was still much healing for him to do. When he came home, there was still a hole at the base of his throat about the size of a quarter from his tracheotomy. Every day I had to un-bandage, clean, and re-bandage that gaping hole in his throat, terrified that I would do it wrong; that I would let something fall into that hole and cause him to aspirate. When he needed or wanted to speak on the phone, I held his throat closed so he could talk. I still cry about it. I am crying as I write this, and I continue to be amazed that I got through it at all. I could not have gotten through it by myself. I know it is God, and the help and prayers of His people who lifted me up and got me through it.
The magnitude of what I had gone through had me stunned speechless for a moment when the woman I was speaking with said that: “Oh. Really?” Yes. I really do feel so blessed in life. I hate that I had to go through something so traumatic to feel passionate about the blessing of life, but I truly now feel that “This is the day that the Lord has made. [I] will rejoice and be glad in it!” (Psalm 118:24). Everything feels like a second chance. A chance to truly appreciate everything I’ve been given in life: my husband, my children, my extended family, my local congregation, my Church family worldwide. There were people on the other side of the world praying for me and my husband! People experiencing war and persecution who prayed for us! It was such a humbling feeling. Sometimes I still look at my husband and feeling wells up in me that ‘the hills are alive with the sound of music.’ “For you shall go out with joy, And be led out with peace; The mountains and the hills shall break forth into singing before you, And all the trees of the field shall clap their hands” (Isaiah 55:12). It’s not the same feeling as when we were ‘young and in love;’ it’s a feeling that goes beyond adoring my husband and finally seeing the One above him in truth, the One who gave him to me as a gift to treasure: the Lord.
Let us always keep our eyes upon the One who is above this Earth, above the physical people and things which surround us. It is God who made us, and God who blesses us. Let us truly feel that “This is the day the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it!” (Psalm 118:24).
-Tricia Reno