Surgery
is a very interesting thing. The anxiety
dreams I’ve been having are nothing short of hilarious. The brain is
miraculous, the way it weaves your fears into a film that plays on repeat while
you sleep. I’ve been late for the
surgery, failed to do the prep work for the surgery, and forgotten the surgery
altogether, all in the middle of the night over the course of the last week. And in the grand finale of all surgery anxiety
dreams . . . last night there were no operating rooms available, so my doctor threw
me over his shoulder, my gown blowing wide open to reveal everything I never
want revealed, and carried me on a trip around the OUTSIDE of the hospital to find
another location to do his job. Pretty
sure that one’s never happened before, which I suppose just goes to show my
brain might be slightly . . . ‘abnormal’ is the first word that comes to mind,
but in the name of that whole self-love thing, let’s go with ‘creative.’
Surgery
is a lot like pregnancy, I’ve learned. It
ignites an intense desire to nest. I
forced my family to cut short our Christmas trip to the lake so I could come
home and get things in order before my three to four day stint in the hospital. Not sure exactly what I’m afraid of – do I
think my home and family will crumble without me? Is my husband not capable of putting away the
Christmas decorations and returning the too-large Christmas clothes and helping
the kids write thank-you notes and cleaning the toilets and doing the laundry
and vacuuming the basement and painting the powder room because the color is
slightly too dark and has been bothering me for months and HOW MANY THINGS CAN
I GET DONE BEFORE THIS SURGERY???
My
husband is very capable. Well, at least
up until the part about painting the powder room.
Of
course, my real fear has nothing to do with forgetting to arrive at the
hospital on time or failing to clean out the fridge before my 4-6 week recovery
period begins. My real fear is that I
might die on that operating table today because bad things happen. I know, I know. I could die any day of the week in a car accident or crossing the street or choking on a piece of chicken. But today, the possibility of death seems just too close. There will be anesthesia and several hours of surgery to remove part of my colon and my appendix and several days in the hospital where people have pneumonia and the staff bacteria thrives and you just never know.
Bad
things happen.
It
always sucks the air out of a mother’s lungs when she imagines the thought of leaving
her children, but when your children are 8 and 10, like mine, you can’t help
but let your mind wonder to the fact that they will likely remember very little
of me if I do die in that hospital today.
And that stops my breath altogether.I keep thinking of the millions of things I still want to do with them. The millions of memories we still have to make. The millions of things I still need to tell them. And just in case I’m out of time, I’m going to tell them one thing, right here, right now.
Be love, my darlings.
BE LOVE.
Be love to your family and friends. Be love to teachers and classmates. Be love to people who serve you meals and people who ring up your purchases and people who cut your hair. Be love to your future college roommates and your future spouses and your future children. Be love to those you disagree with and those who make choices you don’t understand. Be love to strangers in your city and the sick all over the country and the hurting from one end of the earth to the other.
Be
love. The world is seeking it and you
can be people who share it. Sometimes,
it will be hard. Sometimes, you will
have to search deep in your heart to find love for someone, because sometimes,
people seem unlovable. But God so loved the world that he gave his
one and only son to die for them (John 3:16) and He is love and He showed
us how to love and we have His love and we can BE HIS LOVE to everyone we
encounter.
I’m
sure I’ll be coming home at the end of the week. I doubt the toilets will be clean, but I know
my family and home will be happy and healthy, despite my absence. I will be sore and tired and incredibly grateful the hard part is over. But just in case . . .
Be
love.
