Happy Winter Solstice! First of all: thank you for your prayers and good thoughts. When I wrote the last entry, I was truly afraid of what was to come for me and Michael. There were dramatic changes. However, my attitude has changed a lot. It is a process of facing fears, acknowledging them and then surrendering and trusting. The force of love you all carry is no small thing. Speaking, writing true words to me has the effect of energizing the center of my being, the divine that lives there and in all.
Wednesday at the local hospital Michael got his biliary drains replaced AND he got a permanent shunt placed in his abdomen to regularly drain the ascites fluids at home. The idea was to make him more comfortable.
The drain exchange, which has been difficult in the past, went smoothly and he didn’t even go through the shakes and fever he usually gets. The new ascites drain has been leaking a lot, which I guess is not uncommon. So, lots of laundry to do! Our hospice nurse brought a wound specialist to the house who expertly attached a bag that would catch excess drainage fluid. I am learning how to empty that bag every day and then drain the abdomen going forward.
The large amounts of fluids leaving the body can really mess with electrolytes, equilibrium, and blood pressure. So, I have to be with Michael whenever he tries to move to the bathroom or the den or the bedroom. I have taken to wheeling him around the house while he sits on his walker when he just can’t take another step.
He has lost the ability to read since his vision skips around and sitting upright and standing or walking are very difficult.
Friday the chaplain came to talk. She was fun, AND open and Michael and I shared a lot about our history with Christianity and all the amazing ways in which God has met us.
Other thoughts from the last couple of weeks:
At one point Michael said he felt so free and able to surrender to the process. What process? Well of living and dying. Guess what? We are all in the process. Our culture fights old age and death when, in truth it is such a natural thing. I had an old wrinkled native American woman friend tell me once that the wrinkles were a sign of being in the temple -there was a word she used in her tongue that I don’t remember but the meaning was being outside. In their culture- nature is the temple. And so, the wrinkles were looked upon as evidence that an individual had more time in the presence of God.
One of the young, not so experienced nurses at the hospital Wednesday said something that made me cry. She and Michael were staring at his thin bruised arms as she was searching for a place to put an IV, and he said, “I used to have beautiful arms.” She said, “They are all beautiful”. I could tell she meant it. And it hit me: they ARE all beautiful, old age, death (and of course birth and child rearing) and I am not convinced that having and raising children is any less scary than getting old and dying. A lot has to do with how you see it. There is beauty in all of it.
Surrender is such a word dense with meaning. Just hearing it helped me feel a release a sweet surrender. Hazel told me over a year ago, after I had freaked out with worry about Michael and snapped at her a bit. Later in the car I apologized and she said, “You know what they say Nana, ‘Trust the Process’” Okay, whoever “they” are, that little sentence has helped me over and over.
I wrote down this sentence from one of my books “You always bring yourself into accord with that to which you have delegated power.” And so it is that if you think a person, a situation, the weather, or the cost of bitcoin has the power to make you sad, or angry or whatever, then you are saying those things have power over you. How much more wonderful it would be in our lives if we delegated that power to the almighty God, the creator of the heavens and the earth. Then that would be the force within us echoing that very power and authority. And alignment with this force is a way to release and let go of our own apparent wants, desires, and entrapments. Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame .. Heb 12:2, and then in Gethsemane he said, “If it be possible, remove this cup from me, nevertheless, not my will but thine be done.” He aligned himself with the power of God. He is our example of true surrender.
Also I was told by Spirit not to wait for the big event (like waiting for death to arrive), that this, where I am right now (ongoing) is the big event, I am in it. It is life- life in whatever form it takes; and our own weakness and insufficiency can be the key that opens us up to delegating all power to the almighty. Then we can transform, transcend and enter into the joy of the life way beyond this limited shadow world.
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