The in-between

I woke up from 40 minutes of unconsciousness to an alien sound. It took me a few seconds to understand that it was me making that sound, a vast empty sucking sound, the hollow of my chest pulling air in slowly a few times every minute in a chaotic, rhythmless gasp for life. In between, someone was pushing sickly sweet oxygen down into my belly through the purple ambu bag, and I remember trying to swallow it, or breathe it in. I was looking up into the eyes of a coworker from the University who still works in the ER, and she was calling my name through a long tunnel, her voice echoing off the walls as it bounced it's way down to where I lay in a cavern deep below the crowd who seemed to be working on my body. If there is an in-between, a place between alive and dead, I have been there. It is a platform suspended, invisible, where your soul perches like a frightened bird, too afraid to rejoin a quavering, hurting body, the glass ceiling that opens to heaven now shut above you, beat your wings against it as you would to get back to that dark warm firelight of something as light as air and as flowing as water, some element that doesn't exist here.

Brother, he’s suffered like a tree taken down

Wept as he witnessed his dreams carved out

And how can a man just keep walking around

With his heart full of holes

But oh, His bow is on the strings

And the tune resonates in the open space

To show us how emptiness sings:

Glory to God, Glory to God!

In fullness of wisdom,

He writes my story into his song,

My life for the glory of God.

~How Emptiness Sings, Christa Wells~

I remember well the first time this happened. I was 17 and had played my last heart beat out on the stage at a dear friend's wedding. The last notes of the piano fading into the postlude, I wavered through the crowd to the bathroom, my smile wooden as friends complimented my playing. I collapsed there and waited for someone to come bring me my mother. I felt my soul leaving my body, and the sound in my ears was the rhythmic "whumph-whumph" of helicopter blades, helicopter blades hovering just over the water, and I could feel the ocean spray kicked up by the windstorm, only then I noticed it wasn't ocean water, it was ice water my mother was splashing on me, and I was on the cold tile floor of the bathroom and pinned there, motionless. Her voice came through a tunnel, too. On that ambulance ride, I flew away, and felt the warmth of heaven touch me even though I kept my eyes closed on purpose. But something pulled me back and I opened my eyes to look down at my naked self in an ER room and hear my mother calling me, frantically, through that tunnel.

It happened again when I was 22, just before I feel in love. And I think that time I almost made it there. I was so ready to be done. I had no idea what joy lay before me. I was so tired by the work He had me doing. I was so ready to go home. That time my heart stopped.

Then it was 11 years, and I almost forgot about the in-between, until I saw it again in August. And now again, suddenly, so quickly, on Saturday.

Four times. Four times I've almost made it all the way to heaven. If there is an in-between. And four times, He's comforted me, and then sent me back, said there is more for me to do here on this turning Earth. Sent me back to the chaos and the cold and the separateness.

Before Christ died, there was a place called Paradise, or Abraham's side, a place where believers went to await further vindication and ascent to heaven. But that was after they died. Is that an in-between? There is a powerful story I love in Luke, the story of the rich man and the beggar named Lazarus. This story tells me that it doesn't matter if I've seen the in-between. It doesn't matter if I've met my angel. It doesn't matter if I shout it from the rafters. It won't change anyone's mind, if the prophets and Moses cannot.

Paul speaks of a man who was caught up to the 3rd heavens and saw things he cannot even put into words. Is this the in-between? Are there those of us who are brought to the in-between for comfort rather than just to prophesy, like the author of Revelation, who was brought to heaven to describe it to us? My daughter Amy knows the in-between, I, too have seen it. It is a place I can't describe but I know well, and when I get there I know nothing else but thankfulness and peace. I am surrounded by powerful emotions and beings and other souls, and I forget all about the former life, and I am wordless and wise and only a whisper in a whole breathing current I've suddenly joined.

Coming back here is so hard. This world is cold and harsh and lonely. I cry for days and I can't tell anyone why. It is because I am separate again. Completely by myself. This life is so hard. It is not just because it is hard to recover. Yes, I am covered head to toe in bruises and my physical reserves are tapped out and all I can do is rest and wait for strength to return to these veins. But it is the harsh slam of the door to that welcome tide where I am at once joined again to Love and no longer lonely, no longer striving, no longer working, no longer suffering - that is what I mourn in these days of tears as I come back to life slowly and painfully from the in-between.

So tame my flesh

And fix my eyes

That tethered mind free from the lies

But I'll kneel down

Wait for now

I'll kneel down

Know my ground

Raise my hands

Paint my spirit gold

And bow my head

Keep my heart slow

Cause I will wait, I will wait for you

~I Will Wait, Mumford & Sons~

Almost dying

I quit breathing sometime on Saturday afternoon for 40 minutes or so. My brother did CPR on me. My children watched me through all of that. For three days, I didn't get any answers. I floated in and out of sleep, recovering. Nightmares.

There is a room somewhere in the belly of every hospital, a room I love working in. It's called the trauma bay, the trauma room, or something like that. It's a huge room where they bring people who stop living on ambulances. I had no idea what it would be like to wake up there, splayed out like a fish on a gutting table with 30 people working on you, disoriented, confused, unable to make any decisions for yourself. I've always had an instinct about working there, been next to the person's head, comforted them. Because somehow I knew it was terrible to wake up there. When I woke up there, there was a friend at my head. But still, it was one of the absolute worst moments of my life.

I'm glad Saturday wasn't my day to die. I keep leaning hard on the verse that says there is one day appointed for me to die, and only He knows the hour. However peacefully I felt myself floating off, and however chaotically I felt myself pulled back into life, it wasn't my day to die.

"Each time the mystery of suffering touches us personally and all the cosmic questions arise afresh in our minds we face the choice between faith (which accepts) and unbelief (which refuses to accept). There is only one faculty by which we may take hold of this mystery. It is the faculty of faith, and "faith is the fulcrum of moral and spiritual balance." I write as one who desperately needed a refuge. The bottom has dropped out of my world, as it were, more than once. What, exactly, is going on?  Where was I to turn? To God? Is He God or is He not? Does He love me or does He not? Am I adrift in chaos or is the word true that tells me that I am an individual created, called, loved, and purposefully placed in a cosmos, an ordered universe, a universe designed, created and completely under the control of a loving God and Father? It helps me, at such times of bewilderment and sorrow, to go to some of the simplest words, such as I am the good shepherd." (from A Path Through Suffering, Elisabeth Elliot, p. 98)

In the 3 extra years

Life, when it is going smoothly, is often a quiet thing. Illness slipped in quietly, too - insidious, 3 years ago. One day, Amelia was just Amelia. Slowly over the course of two weeks, she slept more and more each day, until she was never awake, and we were plunged into a hospital environment talking about a coma and a brain infection and a 50/50 chance that she would ever wake up again (see "Amelia's Illness" on the top menu above for more info on all Amelia has conquered to be here thriving today).

Life with Amelia today is anything but quiet. From her husky voice that is often at shouting pitch to her body always in motion, she is bundle of energy that never shuts off. Her body is loud and bold and intrepid. She never does anything in the expected fashion. So too was her 6th birthday. She wanted to go to a water park, where she conquered all the "big kid" slides. She wanted her annual "Celebration of Life" instead of a birthday party. Usually that means a sing-along by the campfire, but this year it was bone dry, chill-you-to-the-core cold, and blustering windy.

And so, instead of quiet around the crackling fire in the dark, we had 15 people filling our house to the brim with laughter and sing-alongs, dancing, a magic show thanks to Katy, parlor tricks, mountains of gift wrap, and two giant French Silk pies - the only dessert our sugar-phobic newly minted 6 year old will eat.

We had horned beasts and hugs.

Tears and lots of stories told from those awful memories of such a different October in 2009.

We had a houseful of yellow and owls everywhere.

We had grandparents reading cards, a 6 year old sucking her Nuksy, and an almost nephew filling his mama's lap inside her womb.

We had family of all kinds.

Our cup runneth over with the love of it all.

That she can balance on a skateboard.

That she can teach her little brother and has learned - again - how to share with him.

It was truly a Celebration of Life. Three unexpected years that we've kept this treasure here on earth. We never knew how to celebrate a milestone until Amelia was regaining lost ones. We never knew how to celebrate a life until it was given back to us. We never knew how to roll with the punches until we were punched and punched again. We never understood the depths of the unconditional love you have for these little people until it was stretched thin by the demands of illness and it's lingering effects. We never knew how to switch ourselves from survival mode into thriver mode. We never knew how to appreciate the million little "goods" that are sandwiched between the bad, however big and all-encompassing the bad may seem. It is true that no trial goes unwasted, no opportunity is lost. That He grows us faster and stronger in the rainstorms of life than in the ease of the dry summer warmth. 

We may long for the easy path, but it is in the hills and valleys of life's forests that we find the beauty of the path Christ trod laid out before us.

The heart at peace gives life to the body. (Proverbs 14:30)

Part of Fried Okra and Joy in This Journey's Monday blog hop on Parenting 

**I apologize for my long silence on the blog. The end of September and beginning of October, I am literally lecturing or teaching EVERY class meeting of my 3 team-taught courses, so I am working, eating, and sleeping Powerpoints, grading, and prepping assignments. Sometimes I have 4 separate lectures to prepare for in one single day. Overwhelming? Yes! BUT, this teaching thing has turned my inner light on. God made me for this. I love it. Hands down, I KNOW He designed me to do this. Pray that my contract gets extended another year this spring!!! And give me two weeks, and I'll be back to blogging as normal (I hope!!)

Time twirling

My children spun in the sunlight, feet grazing the new maple floors just long enough to propel the next leap and twirl. My dad was down on his knees for days tearing up carpet, laying down subfloor, lovingly piecing the maple tongue-and-groove over the 1950's linoleum of his childhood home. He named it Skønnestad - "beautiful place" in his grandmother's Danish.

My grandparents have been gone two years now, quick years with fleet feet that dance out of my grasp as quickly as my children twirling away. I still hear grandpa's chuckle in the waves of the big lake lapping up pebbles of granite and agate at the shore. The twinkle in grandma's eyes as she said, "stop now! I can do that!" every time I washed dishes in the turquoise dishpan in the wide white farmhouse sink.

My parents talk about their aches more these days. Seeing them in Grandpa and Grandma's house, grandparenting my children...the lament over mortal time begins to sing deep in my soul. A generation goes and a generation comes... (Ecc. 1:4a)

In my youngest memories, my mother was a slow woman. Laden with the burden of chronic illness and the weight of four busy children, she rested often and used her energy in spurts. I watch her now, sledding down the hill with my children, and I wonder if I can make such a comeback. My body feels riddled with cancer and it's treatments, the heart that doesn't beat right and hurts under the stress of these busy days. Will I be sliding with my grandchildren?

Looking forward to a world without parents is never easy. As the cloud is consumed and vanisheth away: so he that goeth down to the grave shall come up no more. (Job 7:9) It is only in between breaths, in between heartaches, when I pause...there I feel it, steady and sure, the promise of eternity breathing new life into buried hopes.

Thoughts from Lake Superior linked to

Come visit Some Girl to read more!

Questions

I stare up at the clouds that fly silver, cobalt, purple, magenta, like wings off the setting sun already tucked behind the hills. Venus is there, sparkling in her white dress, straight out to the west. Yesterday, she was northwest. The day before, southwest. I wonder at this, realizing how little I know of the earth's spin and the skies spin around her. Why don't the stars march slowly up and down the horizon like the sun in her seasons? Why does the moon set at a different time every night? So little I know, just a tiny bit of trivia about this grand earth and life. So much I want to learn with my children. When I am old, I want to understand these mystical stars.

I remember younger years when all the things I hadn't experienced yet weighed heavy, and I desperately wanted to live so I could do these things. Marriage. Babies. A home. A career. A spiritual life. I am not old yet, but I have felt the kiss of the sun in the springtime and learned how Jesus sings in the breeze; I have painted the hills with wildflower seeds scattered and seen a hummingbird perch on the long grass. I have heard the laughter lilting from my children's mouths, and I've felt my husband's eyelids crinkle beneath my cheek as he smiles. I know now that birthing a baby is the hardest work and the greatest joy, that pain in the soul is harsher than pain in the body. I've lost friends, lovers, grandparents, loved ones. I've lost the mirage that life goes on forever. But in the beautiful in-between, I've found a life I never imagined in the hush of the everyday. I've danced to music no one else can hear, I've sung songs I never wrote down, I prayed prayers without words, I've broken and I've been rebuilt, and this beautiful mosaic that is almost-33 is more than I ever asked for.

And still so many questions, and a myriad of hidden joys to be discovered. How many years would be enough? My soul whispers of the immortal Garden, walking with God through the verdant pathways. Only eternity is enough. I sigh, and look up at Venus again, high above the sooty hills, and I think about her singing with the constellations a tune only God himself can hear. And so my soul groans, happy and full this time, a song without words to a Creator without end.

Linked to Lisa Jo at the Gypsy Mama

2011: The Year of My Best Friend

Frost glitters in the headlights, a million diamonds in a ditch. A million of His gifts scattered just for a night, just for my hungry eyes. I think back on a year of slowly counting the small things. How the joy has glistened brilliant on the darkest days, and lit up my heart in ways I didn't think possible. I read Deuteronomy 30:20-21, the verses that pulled me out of suicidal hopelessness, to a friend facing her own season of hopelessness last night. I think about His command, to choose life instead of death, blessing instead of cursing, to serve Him with our whole mind, body and spirit. How does that look in real life, with skin on? It seems like an impossible command...especially that last part. Like He is setting us up to fail.

I remember slowly that this is a book of law, a book for a time before Christ's ultimate redemption of our whole human race. The law was instituted to highlight the failings of humanity, how far we are from the perfection of God, how often we disobey, intentionally or unintentionally. While He certainly wants us to strive for that whole mind, body, spirit servitude, He knew from the beginning of time that we would fail at this.

This year, grayed out by depression and plagued by nightmares, flashbacks, and moments of the most utter helplessness and sorrow, I have succeeded at one thing...putting skin on Deuteronomy 30:20-21. I have chosen life instead of death, blessing instead of cursing, and laid myself out to serve Him wholly. Of course, I've failed in the minutiae of life, but as I look back at the big picture of 2011, I have done better at this than ever before.

What has that looked like? Willingness to welcome Him into my darkest days. Obedience in telling Him how I feel, instead of kicking Him out when I am angry. Pleading to Him when the tears burn sulfuric and the chest heaves with uncontainable grief. Remembering Him when the road of life is easy, and my burden lighter. Not forgetting His sustenance and faithfulness when I am filled with joy.

Following this command has healed my soul. And while depression still lurks, and sorrow still devours, I am never alone in my abyss. When the sun is shining and the smiles beaming, I have someone to thank, someone to revel with. In the most friendless year of my life, I find loneliness peopled by the divine, and I am satisfied, for the first time. It is a taste of eternity, walking daily with Christ. 2001 was the year of the Lover of my soul, 2006 was the year of my rescue from my temper, 2011 is the year of finally knowing Him as my Best Friend.

For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it. See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. If you obey the commandments of the LORD your God that I command you today, by loving the LORD your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments, then you shall live and multiply...But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the LORD your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days. (Deuteronomy 30:11-21a exc.)

I will never forget

September 11th, 2001, dawned in the bone marrow transplant unit a quiet morning just like most. Somehow the children I cared for, deathly ill, rarely coded around shift change, perhaps sensing the need to hang on until one nurse could report off to another. I was staying over from my 12 hour night shift until 11 a.m., an extra four hours that took me from the energy of the darkness I lived on as a night nurse into the bluster and raging bright light of day shift, where I was barely keeping my head above water and my patient's, too, at that. My patient was a foe of mine long prior to transplant, her and I playing on battling teams on the top tier of our summer softball leagues. She remembered me immediately when I had walked into her room a few days before. We made up and had some laughs about how seriously we used to take softball, and she swung her one leg out of bed to get into the chair, pivoting effortlessly and leaving me, still athletic and whole, without words and only a stare which she met with the bravery and boldness I had admired on the softball diamond six years before.

 

At 10 a.m. that fateful morning of September 11th, I began to hear rumbles that something was amiss in the broader world. I had no time to waste with the broader world though, as my friend and patient coded, quit breathing suddenly, heart nearing complete failure, and I began compressions on her chest while the charge nurse and another from the desk stormed in with the red crash cart while the overhead speakers blared, "Code Blue, 4th Floor, Unit A, Room 406." I was ordered to leave after an hour of the code, which continued into the afternoon and left my patient barely hanging on while a ventilator breathed for her and she was placed in a medical coma.

I returned home feeling kind of at a loss. The streets were oddly quiet for 11:30 and all the world seemed like that code I'd just left had set the world on it's ear. I left the radio silent as I sobbed, not knowing whether she would pull through. I remembered the Grateful Dead blaring, per her mother's staunch request, and I hummed and sobbed and wondered when in the world God would quit letting people, lovely people, amazing people die like this, in horrible pain induced by horrible medical interventions and even more horrible options to save them, keep them going, to that magical 100 day mark where they became a "survivor" on the transplant lists regardless of whether or not they could breathe, move, speak, or open their eyes.

I entered the kitchen quietly as my roommate was still recovering from her double shift as well, sleeping as long as she could before she started again at 3 p.m. Normally, I went straight to bed, but I just couldn't. I grabbed a Leinie's from the fridge and sat down on our threadbare second hand couch. I clicked on the TV hoping to catch a morning game show. We only got 3 channels with the large antenna that the last resident of my house had left affixed to the chimney. A building was smoldering on the first, so I clicked to the 2nd, then the 3rd. Every channel showed the same thing. It took a few minutes for the tragedy of the century to break through my personal tragedy of that morning. Now I was sobbing out of control. I remember calling my brothers, all 3 of them threatening to enlist before the damage was even over. My mother begged them to wait. I watched people jump out of the buildings from stories hundreds of feet in the air and explode on the sidewalk when they hit. Exploding bodies. It didn't seem possible that I could be seeing this on TV just as I had lived it this morning with my friend, whose body was swelling faster than her skin could stretch, great lumps growing off limbs and fluid seeping out and running off the CPR board onto her sheets in yellow rivers.

"Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them." ~ President H.W. Bush, 9/11, evening address to the nation

In life in a microcosm of one, as in a macrocosm of an entire nation, these words rang so true. I prayed - begged - along with my patient's family, all of whom I had known from a distance - for my friend's life, while I suctioned her, changed the yellow sheets, bathed her wounds in potions and lotions, ran a fan and kept spraying M9 air neutralizer to keep the smell of dying flesh at bay. We were in our own war, and the stakes were just as high. On September 13th, the family asked to have her medications stopped for a few hours so they could ask their daughter, who was technically an adult, what her wishes were. She had coded so suddenly on the 11th that they hadn't gotten that far in their plan. They were still living in justice, living in freedom, trying to hold on as long as possible to hope, when their world disintegrated beneath their feet just like the floors of the Twin Towers. She was able to squeeze her mother and then her father's hand while tears rolled down everyone's cheeks. Yes, she wanted to be let go. Medication drips that were keeping her alive were stopped, the ventilator set at minimum settings. More pain medications were ordered to keep her peaceful and adrift from the body that was bleeding out beneath her. Dave Matthews Band and Louis Armstrong, Allison Krauss and Rufus Wainwright competed for eclectic honors from a CD player. Candles lent a warm light to the scene. Her favorite quilt covered her now, a homey touch instead of the white institutional bath blankets that were underneath, soaking up fluid. Her family circled the bed. She softly and sweetly passed just 2 days after she coded. I know she walked straight into the arms of Jesus.

The wailing began, and I sat on a stool, my arms around her mother, wishing I could hug the whole world.

September 11th has passed ten times since. I'm sure it is still the saddest day of the year for her parents, her brothers, her sister. Ten years now without her sunshine. But for me, the day finally brought joy last year, when I prayed all day and night for my sister-in-law, who had grown identical twin girls with life-threatening twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome for 32 whole weeks in her short frame. They were born September 11th, tiny, but kicking and breathing and beautiful. They spent weeks in the NICU but never needed help breathing. It was our small family miracle that makes September 11th a day of joy in the midst of a country mourning.

I will never forget my friend. I will never forget what our country lost that fateful day in 2001. And I hope to always say "Happy birthday!" to two of the sweetest nieces I could possibly have.