1,461 Days

Today, I sat in the waiting room at Lily's pulmonologist.  While she happily played Minecraft on my phone, I sat.  Sure, I could've read an outdated magazine about golf, but instead, I forced myself to simply wait.  There was little I could do about the situation.  Sure, we could leave, but otherwise, we would sit in that waiting room for an undetermined amount of time, until the doctor himself finally came and called us.

The parallels are obvious.  In this life, how do we cope with waiting?  Frankly, of all the places I could have been this afternoon, a waiting room was a pretty appropriate picture of my last 4 years.

The day was utterly insignificant.  I was rallying after celebrating Lily and Jaime's birthdays, stressed over a leaky roof and an injured husband, frazzled and nervous as I drove to speak at an event, worried about how I was going to pull my upcoming shifts as an EMT with the ensuing chaos.  And then, I got into a car accident.  No MedStar, no ICU, just a simple, forgettable car accident.  I had no idea my spine had already begun its slow crumble, and the force sustained was enough to cause discs to succumb.

In the narrative that is my life, tonight marks nothing particularly memorable, with one exception.  1,461 days ago was the last day I lived without pain.

35,064 hours, most of them not sleeping.

2,103,840 minutes readjusting. Stretching.  Arching back.  Bending over.  Repeat. 

126,230,400 seconds of breathing in and breathing out.

Before you get out your tissues, here's the point (and it's not that I have a sad, sad life).  For 1,461 days, I have prayed for healing.  I've cried out to God through sleepless nights and the pain-filled, exhausted days.  And, thus far, I am not healed.  And, believing that the purpose of this life is to bring God glory, I rest in the knowledge that, for today, for the last 2,103,840 minutes, God has been more glorified in my suffering than in my healing.  And I wait.  I wait, confident that one day, He will call my name, and I will be done with the waiting room, done with the pain.  And I pray, secure in the faith that God is good and does good and has a good, pleasing and perfect plan for my life that I continue to hope includes healing.

If we're honest, we're all kind of there.  Sure, maybe it's not a jacked up spinal column, but we all wait.  Wait for a spouse.  Wait for depression to lift.  Wait for a baby.  Wait to be reunited in heaven.  I'm not special.  It's a universal state that we're all in, to one degree or another.

So what do I do, stuck in this waiting room?  Well, I live.  And, though it's a pretty broken offering, I wouldn't trade it.  I have known God, and known my own spiritual brokenness, in a way I would not have been able to if it wasn't for the physical brokenness that has become my reality (which, as an aside, I would argue is very different than it being my identity).  In the last four years, I've watched each of my daughters grow into young women.  I've celebrated 10 years of marriage in Hawaii.  I've traveled to Florida with friends, toured my husband's college campus in Portland, taken a group of teenagers to England, ran through the surf in Oregon, flown in an impossibly small plane above Washington.  I've lived.

So tonight, I go to bed with the same prayer on my lips, crying out to the Lord to take this cup.  And there's peace.  I wait.  And I live.