Note to heaven: I need help!

I traveled this weekend, to the funeral of a dear great-aunt who lit the world with her kindness and housed me for many halcyon childhood nights in her rambling farmhouse in a field on the flats of the White Earth Indian Reservation. Her sons bent to scoop the mound of dirt onto her urn with their hands, loving her so much they didn't even use the spade to scrape the dirt back over what remained of her gentle and beautiful body.

And in the pale yellow light of early afternoon, a trouble brewing deep in my body for weeks blossomed and felled me to my knees in a church bathroom. I fainted several times, grew gray, heart aching and throbbing and that horrible sense of dread rising like a lump in the throat. I guess I was out of it enough, gray enough, to cause many relatives concern...which makes me feel so sorry. In short, I was rushed to the ER in a rural Minnesota town, where they noted changes in my heart rhythm and lab tests that led them to transport me via ambulance to a much larger hospital in Fargo, North Dakota. There they found a problem with the settings on my pacemaker, which has caused it to fire over 250 times in the last 3 days alone. This error in the settings also caused some dangerous rhythm problems that were causing my heart to lose blood flow (causing the chest pain) and my brain as well (causing the fainting).

With the settings changed, I felt somewhat better. I am extremely exhausted, deep down to my bones. That event opened up the tap on my energy source and drained me deep. The slightest exertion, and the chest pain comes roaring back with a vengeance, my vision goes dim, the world hazy. I honestly do not know how I will survive the next few weeks.

Amelia has 10 hours of testing and appointments today at Mayo Clinic.I will have several follow-up appointments and possibly even surgery to investigate the ongoing pacemaker problems as this week progresses. Next week, Amelia will be hospitalized for 3 days (the 11th, 12th and 13th) at Mayo-St. Mary's Hospital for very necessary monitoring of her life-threatening epilepsy. Nothing on this busy calendar is "optional".

I don't write this to be depressing. Or to wallow in self-pity. In fact, it is very hard even to report these events. My instinct is to crawl in a hole until I either a) get better, or b) die quietly, peacefully, and without bothering anyone else. However, there is only one way I will survive the next two weeks. I need power from a richer source than my own body. Will you join me in begging the God who says that through Him, all things are possible, for the strength needed to navigate this busy season of suffering once again? (Matthew 19:26)

Abraham leaned on this impossible power of God and received a son as a graying old man (Genesis 18:24).

Job, in the depths of trials much larger than mine, leaned on this truth. (Job 42:2)

God said it again, when the entire nation of His chosen people turned from Him and sinned in hideous ways. He said it, promising to bring them back and build them up again (Jeremiah 32:27).

Surely the Creator of the universe, the life-breather and Ruler of heaven, the author and finisher of my faith...surely He has strength enough for a few long days at a clinic and a surgery and the tasks that loom all around my house. Please lift me up in prayer. I need to be hooked up directly to the power He alone can give!



::
Photos from the yellowest sunset on a bitter cold October evening at the York's hilltop ranch in Pepin County.