We’ve just had another round at St. Luke’s where Joe had stents inserted into stents which were formally inserted into one of his challenged arteries. One simply never knows what lies around the next bend.
Yesterday, after 2 days and nights in the hospital (where I slept on a cot beside Joe’s bed in the cardiac unit) I made the hour drive home at 6:00 a.m.
Joe was discharged later in the morning. Our son, Eric, brought Joe home and picked up our Baby Dylan at his “social club” (our vet’s boarding kennel) en route.
The few hours at home alone gave me time to relax from the hospital pace, catch up on laundry, water the garden, and resume my routine which had been abruptly severed when we made our emergency run to St. Luke’s earlier in the week.
When my tasks were completed, I poured an iced tea and rested on the patio. I thanked God for the medical technology which keeps Joe’s arteries open, for our freshly watered garden, and for all of God’s goodness and grace. I mused on how the Girl Scout motto of my childhood has served me so well throughout my life: Be Prepared!
This is life, I mused: never knowing what lies ahead; always being prepared with a tote bag containing a change of clothing, toiletries, knitting, and a book; always being prepared in a spirit of prayer, with a grateful heart and an attitude of flexibility!
Now Joe is home again, with his new stents inside the old ones. One might say Joe has arteries of steel. Home again! Life is a series of comings and goings. When we are in Christ, we carry God’s peace and the serenity of home with us wherever we are called to go.
Someday, rather than “Home Again” we will be “Home Forever!”
Margaret L. Been, ©2010
