tea and jammies

I had surgery last Friday. The ordeal was minor and, in part, miraculous, as one "to do" on my surgeon's list got crossed off when the area in question showed the infection had just "gone away." As surgery goes, it was a pleasant enough experience. A writer friend, Dana Williams, took a shuttle from the hospital campus where she works to the campus where I was being checked in ... all so she could pray with me. Aren't those kinds of friends amazing? Then Dave and my sister, Tarri, prayed with me. And then my surgeon popped in and said, "May I pray with you?"

I love my friends, and my family, and my surgeon. I'm not too fond of the nurse who called me out of my anesthesia fog, though. "Shannon? Shannon?" I despise my name when it's being used to call me out of that fuzzy trance. Probably because I'm always nauseated right then and there.

As I said, this surgery was minor. I'm sore, and I'll be dealing with wound care for several weeks. But I'm not immobile. It takes me a bit longer to get from one side of the room to the other, but I can do it. Still, I'm enjoying this quiet week of tea and jammies. Sometimes, God has to take drastic measures to white-out the pages of our daytimer.

Had this surgery not happened, I'd be smack dab in the middle of a typically rushed week. Instead, I've spent most of my awake minutes lying on the couch, holding court as an array of friends bring me their crockpots. I've also spent this time listening to Shakespeare with Tera, and playing chess with her when she finishes her math, and enjoying extended, luxurious devotional time, and knitting a hat for Dave. Only the hat provides evidence that I've been alert and active. All the rest just dissipates into air. And for a person who spends her life putting words to paper (where they stay put in indisputable black and white) and editing the work of other writers (with a bright, red font), it's difficult to feel productive in your jammies. But maybe this was necessary. Maybe I needed to feel unproductive for a little while.

How else would I have heard God's reminder? There it was, this morning -- that voice so full of kindness, so loving, but firm and authoritative as well. It broke through my sighs and set my thoughts straight. If you stayed on that couch forever, and never wrote another word or cooked another meal or crossed another task off your list, I'd still love you.

Oh, Father ... keep me right here, clutching that truth.