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Rest Assured
January 1, 2007
A split instant can change everything. We all know this, but to truly understand it is another thing. I think I was due for the lesson.
Things have been a bit busy on the farm during this holiday week, in addition to our routine chores and work responsibilities. Add in family gatherings and potlucks with friends, more than usual church events, and the natural expected holiday increase in my hospital work in the drug and alcohol unit, and I can feel a bit stretched.
Last night I was at church helping get dinner ready for about four dozen
people who were going to stay after worship service to see in the New Year
together. I was late to get to the sanctuary to play piano for hymn
singing and was hurrying in the dark between buildings when I took a misstep off the edge of the
sidewalk and fell forward, crashing right into the concrete steps up to the
church. I cracked my forehead a good one. I didn't get knocked out, but my
forehead bore an impressive dent. I had the impending sense of "I'm in
trouble now" and fully expected to pass out, but I didn't. My second thought
was "I guess I won't be playing piano because I'd bleed all over" and then the third
thought was "the ER doctors are going to think I was falling down drunk on New Year's Eve."
Nope, stone cold sober, but just incredibly klutzy. Thankfully I had help
right away. My husband took me to the hospital where I got stitched up with some
30 sutures and no evidence of a skull fracture. The ER staff who I
know very well because they call me regularly to take their detox patients,
teased me relentlessly about "one of the deepest forehead lacs on New
Year's Eve". Needless to say today I have quite a headache and will have a
pretty nasty scar that will add a few new lines to my forehead but am grateful
that I didn't do more damage to myself.
Once I got home from ER, thinking the worst was over, my husband and two out of three
kids started in with vomiting and diarrhea during the night. I have to say
this is impeccable timing for the stomach virus that has been passing through
our community to hit our family and they are all still miserably sick so I sit
here wondering when my turn is coming. Happy New Year!
Times like this require a sense of humor and some perspective about the potential reasons why I needed a knock on the head:
This incident has proven that I am as hard headed as people regularly describe me. Concrete did not win against this skull. I'm ashamed to say I'll be even prouder now that I'm hard headed.
The plastic surgeon told me he'd need to stretch my skin on my forehead a bit to create an even wound closure, so when I raise my eyebrows or furrow my brow, I won't have the same number of symmetric wrinkles once it is healed. Ah, too bad. In fact he told me to not furrow or raise my eyebrow while it is healing--hah, try that for a day under these circumstances!
I knew there was a reason I still wear bangs at age 52. Now I have justification.
This proves that it doesn't take being under the influence to do something this stupid, unless the "influence" is congenital awkwardness.
Okay, I can try to make light of it but it is not always possible to understand how a split second can change a life, or even take a life. I am just not able to wrap my brain, protected as it is by my thick skull, around how bad things can happen to us when we least expect them. I do know that my travails are puny and pitiful compared to what some people face every day.
My college son showed me lyrics to a song his choir sung in concert recently, written by a 24 year old high school music director, Layton DeVries, from Lansing, Michigan just shortly before he died from injuries in a car accident. He could not have known what was coming so soon for him, yet he had an understanding far beyond his years. I am grateful to Layton that his words are reassuring to me this morning, the first rather traumatic day of a New Year which is blessed despite all that is happening to me and around me.
"O child, child of God, rest assured, the Lord is with you.
When you wake up in the morning and the sun is shining down, the Lord watches
over every step you take.
When the world has knocked you down and you don't know which way to turn, rest
assured, the Lord is with you.
When your friends have turned against you and you feel all alone, the Lord
watches over every move you make.
He will always be right there to protect and love his child, rest assured, the
Lord is with you.
When darkness drifts around you, and your eyes close in sleep, the Lord watches
over every breath you take.
And when death comes near to bring you home, you have no need to fear. Rest
assured, the Lord is with you. "
May we all rest assured --for Wayne Troyer in Ohio who fell off his roof two days ago and has multiple spinal fractures, for Jenny Rausch of Washington who is battling metastatic breast cancer with every ounce of her being, for Rick Matheis of Washington who is waiting for death after beating lymphoma and now losing to liver cancer, and for the family of Tina Eubanks of Arkansas who lost their precious mother, wife and daughter two weeks ago to gastric cancer.
Emily
http://www.briarcroft.com/emily.htm