Reflections on a bend in the road

To save anyone looking for professional updates some time, let me state up front that this post has nothing to do with book updates or writing. Every once in a while, I get reflective about personal things, and this is one of those times. Read on at your own risk .

Recently, my husband and I went to Florida to visit our family. We left our house about eleven hours after I turned in Once Burned, to give you an idea of my schedule. Three days after we arrived in Florida, I was in an Emergency Room with such pain on the left side of my chest that I thought I was having a heart attack at 38. That was ruled out after an EKG and blood work, but then the doctors wanted to make sure I didn't have a pulmonary embolism, which they told me would be very bad. In the hours while I awaited my diagnosis, I was reminded of two things that I hadn't focused on as much with my busy work schedule.

The first was the importance of my faith. In some circles, Christianity has become synonymous with intolerance, which makes me sad because I see its foremost message as love and forgiveness. Rather than get into a dispute over who's right and who's wrong, I'm going to touch upon what my faith means to me. It means that despite how afraid I was over what might be wrong with me – and I was very afraid – I didn't lose hope. My husband waited with me in the ER, but when the nurse wheeled me off to have a CAT scan of my lungs, I was Patient X to her, which I don't blame her for because she was focused, as she should be, on doing her job. I was focused on wondering if I'd see my family again, what the odds of recovery were if I did have a pulmonary embolism, and how I didn't want to die because I wanted more time with my husband. When the nurse slid me into that long tube to have the lung scan done, it felt like everything had been stripped away from me except for one thing. My faith. Faith meant I wasn't alone in that tube. It also meant that even if I didn't have my husband waiting for me in the other room, or my family at home – who I didn't tell about my ER visit because I didn't want to worry them until we knew what was wrong – or my friends, I still wouldn't be alone. To me, faith doesn't mean that everything will always be okay, or that I'll never be afraid, or even that I won't wonder Why? when I look at all the injustice in the world. But it does mean that if everyone and everything else falls away from me, I still won't be abandoned. I wish I could articulate it better than this, but even though words are my trade, they're not sufficient to describe the difference my faith has made to me.

The other thing that resonated with me was how powerful love is. Yes, that sounds cliche, and if I was in one of my jaded moods, I'd stop reading right now if this was someone else's blog. Yet I wasn't the only one unsure of their fate in that ER, as you can imagine. In the same room, separated by a curtain, was an elderly man that sounded like he was perpetually drowning. He couldn't even swallow his own spit without gagging, and he gasped for breath in between those awful heaving sounds.

I'll be honest – I thought he was a goner. He did, too, and in between gagging, gasping, and heaving, he told his wife that he was going to die. Her response was an immediate "No, you're not." She said it with complete conviction, and when he asked her why, no doubt wondering if she'd heard something from the doctor, she replied, "Because I said so."

My husband reassured me in similar ways that everything was going to be fine, and despite the worry in his expression, he said it with the same confidence she had. Of course he didn't know that. Neither did the wife on the other side of that curtain, but they both said it because that's what we needed to hear at the moment. I've been on the other side of hospital beds, too, telling people I cared about that it was going to be okay when I didn't know if that was true. It's not a lie, in my opinion. It's a statement of hope whether it's said from spouse to spouse, friend to friend, family to family, lover to loved one, or any other combination, and it's the love behind the statement that makes it powerful. It makes a difference to the person hearing it, even if the outcome isn't what we want it to be.

In both our cases that night, it was. The doctors ended up giving the elderly man a series of shots that stopped his symptoms, and they told him he could go home after a few hours of observation. Shortly after that, I was told that my lungs were clear and the pain I'd felt was from two inflamed layers of tissue over the lungs that rubbed together the wrong way, causing a searing sensation (probably explaining it wrong because I'm still not clear on the specifics, but all I knew was that it meant I was going home, too).

My follow-up instructions were minimal: Take prescription anti-inflammatories and get some rest. The biggest impact from my first real health scare is more emotional than anything else. I'm very grateful to be back home with my husband, I'm looking forward to seeing my family again in the spring, and the saying "Tomorrow isn't guaranteed" holds a lot more weight. I'm also grateful for the faith that carries me whether the road is rocky or smooth. I'd be lost without it.

And I'm also glad to have a job I enjoy, so don't think this post is my way of saying that I'm taking time off writing. I'm not. It's what I've always wanted to do, and I'll keep doing it as long as I can, but I will set better boundaries with my time and try to work more efficiently.

Speaking of that, I've rambled on long enough in this post . I'll close with a quote that sums up my feelings far more succinctly: "And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love."

Mirrored from Frost Light.