After my operation, I can remember briefly coming round in ITU, opening my eyes and seeing The Curate stood, smiling at me. "I'm alive" was my first thought, after all, I had been warned that I had a small chance of not surviving the operation. My next thought? Honestly? My next thought was "But, I don't want to be". I had never felt so ill nor been in so much pain (not even if you added up the pain of giving birth five times). I have never been so desperate to enter heaven in my life. I felt a huge sense of guilt , especially towards The Curate and our brood, but, I was convinced that I couldn't recover. I consoled myself that, whilst losing a wife and mother would be devastating for such a young family, God would get them through it. In my prayers, I tried to convince God that He could get my family through the loss. "No", came God's reply, "I will get you through it".
A week or so passed and I was making slow progress but it turns out that having some of your brain, spine and skull removed is not conducive to a quick recovery. I was still in a lot of pain but the painkillers were helping a bit, I was able to walk a short distance and was just starting to be able to keep a little food down. At that point, I felt that life was a gift and not one that I would squander. I was determined that the whole experience would miraculously transform me in to a better version of myself.
It's now just over two months since the operation and I'm 'feeling human' most of the time. But am I feeling grateful to be alive and joyful? Grateful to be alive, yes. Joyful? Not as much as I thought I would. Deep down I was feeling something that I couldn't quite put my finger on. That was, until last night, when The Curate and I finally caught up with the last season of the BBC's Sherlock (I'm glad that I didn't try to watch it before my brain had a chance of following the plot!). There was one point when Sherlock was explaining how he felt to John Watson following Mary Watson saving his life:
"In saving my life, she conferred a value on it. It is a currency I do not know how to spend." (Sherlock Holmes, The Lying Detective)And there it was. The explanation of how I had been feeling. I had not found the answer in my Bible, as I had expected, but on the lips of Sherlock Holmes.
Whilst my perspective on life has changed, life has gone on much the same as it did before. It's difficult to put in to words how hard that is. Realising that I have an abundance of life today, but not forever, has been an incredibly difficult gift to receive in my 30s. I still have time to make major changes and make sure that I don't regret how I have lived my life. This breaks the mould of 'you never know what you've got until it's gone'. There is a tension between freedom and responsibility that I am yet to work out. The possibilities in life are endless, yet life is a finite gift, so what do you choose?
As a Christian, I think working out how to spend my abundance of life is even harder. I know now, more than ever, that I want to spend this currency by serving God. I think having experienced that moment in ITU when I was ready to die and to face God, that I want the moment of anticipation before 'meeting my maker' to be one of joy rather than shame or regret. I know that I can stand there blameless because of Jesus' sacrifice for me but it's not about feeling 'good enough' to get in to heaven or even feeling assured of my salvation in spite of me. It's about feeling the love of God through his gift of life and wanting to give Him back a gift of a life lived for Him. I thought that I felt like that before. Now, I have truly felt the fragility of earthly life, I truly know that there is much more to life than this.
All I have to do now is work out how to spend this fortune. I think it's going to be an adventure.
Thank you for your honesty and insight. X
ReplyDelete