It's been a week stay in the hospital for my wife. Last Sunday she was suffering through a boiling fever and the pain of needles. Her skin felt as if lava would erupt from her pores. To watch her lean on a bed of warm towels as the doctor tried to perform a spinal tap was one of the more excruciating moments of our marriage. You feel completely overwhelmed and helpless fighting something you can only guess lies under the surface. Having the flu is a diagnosis. Chicken soup is a remedy. The festering beneath is something you release control of because you have no choice.
The first release of control became the role reversal. I did not realize how much my wife serves me throughout the day. I don't mean that in a chauvinist/sexist way. We play our roles rather complimentary at home. To list them in detail would undermine the work we both do, and sometimes I consider it as jobs to do instead of serving the common good of the household. I do them because what else would I be doing? My wife sees hers as a way to serve all of us, kids included. Just the day before she fell ill, she was making Mother's Day gifts for various friends.
The second release was the schedule. Our oldest completed finals on Monday, so there I was driving madly to Canton with my wife sleeping through a fever. I pulled next to Fox Hall with my daughter surrounded by a group of softball teammates and friends who all chipped in to bring her various totes, pillows, bags and clothes. I know the worst part of being bed ridden for a week was not being able to serve her daughter. No Sunday Open House with cake, no charcoal flamed steak.
The little ones changed their schedules too. Monday dance class for Milly, a baseball game I didn't attend, shuttling them back and forth from friends to take them to church on Wednesday. I don't believe Cruz did any of his homework all week. He cried foul and the unfair card all kids use knowing Milly was not going to school. He explained to me that since he was above grade level, what was the point of going to class?
Other meetings and agendas were wiped away from the dry erase calendar. Gardening was put on hold. Grocery store lists went unpurchased. Lesson plans at school were printed for the substitutes My students sent me text messages, FB prayers and questions to predict my return. No one really mentioned what the atmosphere of the room might have been for a stranger. While chaos may have reigned, I decided against retaliatory strikes and scare tactics.
Daily routines now became a different sort of commonality. I watched from the window each morning as my son played kickball with the bus stop kids. Watched him run to the stop, pick up his book bag and walk on the bus with his 9 year old confidence He doesn't even look back to wave. I arrive to my wife, slowly recovering from the unseen. She couldn't bathe, so the only way to refresh her was with washcloths and generic soap. I read while she napped, charged my phone to play a series of games, charged the phone again and read some more. Those first few days weren't conversational. The exercise of the day was unplugging the i-v monitor, walking her to the bathroom and helping her in bed. We began to trust in the "couple of days" scenario given by our doctor until a couple of days stretched into the weekend. I think she cried Saturday when she couldn't come home.
At home, the weariness crept into my personal life. I ditched my daily devotions. I figured the prayer and support given by my friends would sustain Delcina throughout. While I didn't lose faith that he would heal her, I released control of my own responsibility. While freedom and faith are a choice we all make, God expects you to respond accordingly. Again, my experiment to rely on only myself only revealed that I'm completely helpless. Having my wife away, left to my own direction, again proved my undoing.
While sin, reluctance, guilt and excuses form the crust of separation, God readily keeps pursuing. The moment we say "yes" is not a release from the reign of our hearts. He uses the people around us to have your daughter over for dinner and ice cream cake, their photos outside of their home could easily be that of my own. Or they are in the form of visitors who bring balloons, bags of candy and hugs. Sometimes even the radio plays the perfect song you need while sitting in lunch traffic. God coordinates and centers all focus on you. Nothing is wasted. While my flesh says no, God continues to remind us that, "yes, you can."
Of course when I return to my devotions this morning it's Romans 7:21--...."although I want to do good, evil is right there with me." Paul goes on to say that there is a war raging against his mind for control of his flesh. You think the men who wrote the Bible, the disciples, would have been free from these sentiments. What confounded Paul so much as to write these words generations ago? Was it the look of a woman? Was it greed? Was it patience of the crowds? I only know that the sin that confronts me daily is not unlike other men. Each day is a choice. The flesh is and always will be weak. It doesn't mean that sin wins, although the devil would have you believe otherwise. The Great Accuser always stands at bay to snicker at you when you are at your weakest.
I know that the lessons from this week may be forgotten by the end of the month. The new routine of having my wife home and relaxing will undoubtedly change the landscape. New challenges will await, and new schedules will undoubtedly be written and abridged.
I skipped church this morning to be with my wife, unbeknownst to me that the church was in me all along. It's in the scriptures, the smiles of my friends. It showcased itself in the form of a friend I had not seen in months, walking into the room to chat with us and offer his well wishes. I gave up on him months ago, but God doesn't erase their story lines. Church was in that picture of my daughter and her ice cream cake, and it was the church that was behind the camera snapping the picture.
The church was in the heart of a man who walked past a patient's room. I had seen her bedside. No visitors. No look on her face but despair. I didn't want to look away. The church in me wanted to intervene. The church was the steps that brought me into her room, covering the awkwardness of her look at the stranger. "Hi, my name is Ray. Can I get you anything?" The church speaks too, and it moves forward one person at a time. Awkwardly appealing.
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