TITLE:  2022

SUBTITLE:  WHAT I HAVE LEARNED

I better start off with things I still have not learned.  That list would include patience.  Often, I have threatened to take white-out and use it wherever that word appears in the Bible.  Rest assured.  There is not one drop of white-out to be found in my Bible. 

Many will agree I still have not learned to keep my mouth shut or to keep my political and social views to myself.  Pretty sure changing me on this is a lost cause. 

Finally, I continue to hold to the belief that “speed limits” are suggestions instead of actual laws.  If people can rob stores and receive no punishment, then I can drive a mile or two over the suggestion on the sign.  Okay.  Yes, my lead foot does seem to go a bit more than a mile or two over.  And that would be a big bit more.

WHAT I HAVE LEARNED

I have learned to trust.  If you have read some of my blogs, you realize this has been an extremely rough health year and trust has been front and center.  I have trusted:

• medical staff to be responsive to my condition, care, and medications
• operating room personnel to monitor my condition during surgery and to work as a team
• doctors to make wise and informed diagnoses and to give us the facts we needed to make decisions
• my friends and prayer warriors to pray when I no longer had the words
• my family to listen, observe, advise, and support me during this journey
• God to be there and give me the strength to recover and the ability to know when I needed to rest

I have learned that I do not have to understand or give into the why/what if game.  Let me explain.

This year has been rough, but the hardest part was the blood infection and the aches and other issues the antibiotics have left behind.  A blessing is that tests show the infection is no longer in my blood.  I am a puzzle to the infectious disease doctor because he cannot figure out how the infection got into my blood.  There are two things that caused my mind to play the why/what if game.  At my follow-up appointment, the infectious disease doctor made the comment that I almost died.  In the back of my mind, I realized that but tried not to focus on it.  Then I received a Medicare statement and one of the doctors I saw was referred to as a “terminal emergency doctor.”  Even on the first day …. Terminal doctor… You almost died. 

And the game began.  “Why didn’t I?”  “What if I had?”  “What now?”  “If it wasn’t my time, what does God have for me to do?”  Why?  What?   This is not a fun game.  It is a game I did not want to play, but I could not get those words terminal and almost died out of my mind.  I pondered.  I tossed them around and around – Why?  What if?  Friends are amazing.  I spoke with three lady friends and they listened.  They prayed with me.  They gently helped me see that I did not need to know why.  My hubby is a worrier!!!  So I waited until my mind had settled and then I shared with him what I had learned.

God knows the why/what if and I have faith and trust in God.  I do not need to know why I did not die.  Once I figured that out, I quickly declared I would not allow words to control my mind or make me afraid. 

I did not want to play the why/what if game, but play it I did.  AND ONCE I HAD GOD AS MY PARTNER, WE WON!!!