My BFF from childhood is going to sleep tonight at Children's Hospital in Boston the night before her middle son's brain surgery. We normally talk everyday at some point, or at least every other day. I can't believe the topic tomorrow will be Charlie's brain surgery and not the "normal" things we talk about. When these things happen, the life we lived before the news seems so distant even though it was maybe just yesterday or two weeks ago when you did not know the diagnosis. It seems you step into a whole other life without warning or welcome. I have been praying all over town since the news of Charlie came over the phone ... praying on the road Amy and I used to walk to school on together carrying out matching Snoopy book bags ... in front of her childhood house on Seney Drive ... at the church we went to together for most of our lives, our middle school, high school and her favorite pizza place in the center of town.
It has been a difficult waiting period. They have had to wait for the surgery to happen at Children's Hospital in Boston and so it has been a long two weeks for them. We have been calling it "Holy Saturday," the "waiting time." Amy told me over the long weekend that it feels like everyone else's Memorial Day weekend is "normal" and she was having a hard time doing whatever it was she was supposed to be doing. I understand this feeling, even though it isn't true. I reminded her that everyone she was seeing out around her town had either suffered deeply during a past holiday weekend, is struggling now but may not look like it because they are running errands just like she is, or have a tough holiday coming. There is no escaping sickness and crisis in life, it comes to all of us at one time or another and if it hasn't found you yet, it will. And so will the grace of God if you are open to receiving it. This is a humbling thought ... tragedy will happen to all of us, it's an inevitable part of life. Grace is not so inevitable, it can come only if we open ourselves up to receive it. Grace itself is as real as the tragedy (even more real, but that's another story) but it has to be allowed in, whereas the tragic event comes uninvited.
Talking to Amy over Memorial Day weekend reminded me of when I called Lisa (another childhood BFF) in the wee hours of the morning when the calender changed to Sept. 12, 2001. I did not know if the sun was going to rise that next morning and I could not sleep. I called her at her house in Vermont from my own in Colorado. She answered on the first ring and I said, "I'm sorry, Lis, but I can't sleep." Her response was "No one is sleeping tonight, Megan." I was feeling totally and completely alone that night in the quiet of my kitchen, not realizing the thousands of other people, maybe hundreds of thousands, who were up that night for the same reasons I was. Just hearing Lisa's voice and knowing I was not alone brought great comfort to an unbearable moment. Fear creates such a feeling of isolation which is not necessarily real but it certainly feels like it is at the time. No one that knows Amy, Garrett or their three boys have slept soundly in the past two weeks. They probably feel so alone in that hospital room tonight, even though the amount of love being offered to them is staggering. I pray that they feel it through the thick fog of shock and fear. I have a feeling they do, because they are open to the grace part ... and the grace part makes the intolerable tolerable.
I picture Charlie falling asleep tonight (hopefully) and thinking about Harry Potter and some great lacrosse game he has played instead of his brain surgery tomorrow morning. They are in their worst nightmare and what I can do most for them today is pray and be grateful and present in my own life, and so I will pray, pray, pray, be grateful, be grateful, be grateful. Pray for grace for them and every other family waking up in a hospital room tomorrow as well as those out running errands around town, maybe not realizing the blessings of a day of errand running.
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