If Aslan gave me my choice…
by
…I would choose no other life than the life I have had.”–C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle
Facebook memories have become more an Ebenezer than I ever could have imagined.
I’m curled up on my heating pad. I haven’t been able to keep any food in my stomach. I feel frightfully dehydrated. I’m weak, and my very heart hurts. Things are a blur since my surgery two weeks ago in Maryland. I’m wandering through the hours and days trying to make sense of the Versed laced memories. There are full days missing. There are conversations I’m sure I had, gifts received and messages answered I just can’t piece together. All this adds to the grief of lost living. It always feels the same. The weeks of preparation to leave, the time gone and the return to weeks of recovery feel like wasted time. God, what are You doing with this time?
Today my memories pop up back to 2010. There is a photo of Danica sitting in her wheelchair and Minerva brace playing trains on the table. What a miracle her second surgery was. Oh how grateful we were to be back in our own home, if only for a little while. A year later the posts are blog updates from Dan and my friend, Angie. I was in the hospital in Maryland on Thanksgiving Day after my first brain decompression and fusion. Five years ago there are photos of a Thanksgiving meal delivered from Feast for Families to our new home. This house has been another miracle we couldn’t have written into our story. He did this. Three years ago I was gifted the most meaningful retreat of my life at Laity Lodge in the Texas Hill Country. God continues to thresh out harvest from seeds planted there. And last year, there is a photo of us around the table. I’m wearing my Aspen collar, recovering from my huge fusion, and we were clinging to one another looking towards Baltimore and Danica’s surgery.
These memories hurt in the way rubbing up against hard things do. They also call to remembrance the sustaining tune of Grace gifted in measure year after year.
There are new stories to tell about the gratitude we live today. They will come in time. Our holidays look sad from outside, but our expectations are whittled down past the tinsel now. We know too much to ever forget. They begin at the cradle and point to the cross.
If we could look back over a decade and make a different life, we would not. Streams of mercy, never ceasing. Mount of redeeming love. Hither by His help we’ve come. He’s rescued us from danger and interposed His precious blood. Our wandering hearts are sealed and bound forever to His courts of love.
Forever.
Come Thou Fount of every blessing.
Forever.
Our Hope Remains.