I do not like being weak. On Saturday I ran a 10k rejoicing in the feeling of a strong body, and thanking God that my foot was healed. It was the first race I had run since my injury, and it felt wonderful. Gray sky, patchy rain, leaves scurrying before the cold wind: it was a good running day for me and I came back soaked, satisfied, and ready for the rest of the day. I took a shower, lay down for a moment in my bed, and have been largely in bed – at home, the hospital, and now my parents’ house – ever since. There seems to be a dark irony about this – or rather, a providence I don’t know how to trace. Here I am again, felled just as I had partly regained my stride in our daily life; reminded of my dependence, powerfully, again.

And yet: it was not worse. In the dark hours when I could not make out any faces, and only caught the blurred shapes of the paramedics looming over my bed, and heard the faint voices assuring me I was not going to die – in those long, jumbled, half-missed hours my fears were stark. I don’t remember much, but I remember the fear: as I snatched at J, shrieking to him in a sudden panic over who would feed the baby and what they would give her; as I screamed and fought to get off the table in the ER; as the pain and confusion grew heavier and I could only eke out a desperate, silent prayer to survive and take care of my children again. To J, too, the possibilities looked sobering at the time, as the litany of tests ran on: CATscan, lumbar puncture, MRI, EEG. But I woke up on Sunday morning with a clear head again, able to remember my children’s names although not to account for much of the previous 17 hours. And all of the tests came back clear, so I was sent home by a rather baffled set of doctors with a diagnosis of (barely) low potassium and instructions to rest and wait for the beastly spinal headache to go away.

So there are many reasons to be thankful. I have spent much of the past five days lying down (including an hour’s awkward ride on the van floor) because a vertical position usually precipitates an onslaught of the headache. But I am here, and apparently healthy. The doctor said there is no reason I should not go back to an active, healthy lifestyle. Of course, I am impatient for that to be today and not tomorrow.

From my reading today:

Remember your word to your servant, in which you have made me hope.

This is my comfort in my affliction, that your promise gives me life.

When I think of your rules from of old, I take comfort, O LORD.

Your statutes have been my songs in the house of my sojourning.

This blessing has fallen to me, that I have kept your precepts.

Psalm 119: 49-50, 52, 54, 56

The above pictures have been sitting on my computer for a while: small overlooked signposts of the goodness of God.  I am thankful to be here with these four precious people.

Time to go back to my couch…