August 30 – “The pastor thing”

I spent the day yesterday doing the pastor thing.  Jennifer, a friend and Seasider, was having surgery in Houston to reconstruct her ankle.  I drove up to pray with her and to hang out with her husband while she was being rebuilt.  I loved the doctor’s description of the surgery.  He said he was going to add a centimeter of cadaver bone to her fibula, then reset it and tighten up her ligaments so that the ankle would be oriented back to the front instead of off to the side.  Her husband Bryan jumped all over that description, and from that point on it became, “She’s having a front end alignment.”  Sounded right to me.  

We tested out one of the grill areas in the hospital for lunch.  I have a cheeseburger and Bryan had a Philly cheesesteak.  He’s from Wisconsin, so the Yankee cuisine was just what the doctor ordered for him.  A friend of Jennifer’s joined us.  Actually she didn’t really intend to.  She works there and was just stopping by for some lunch of her own when Bryan spotted her.  She ended up taking us on a tour of the hospital.  Interesting.

Jennifer came through the surgery with flying colors.  I was going to head home when they called Bryan back to the recovery room, but the nurse who came out to get him informed me that if I was the pastor, “Jennifer is expecting to see you.”  Well, then.  I went on back and said hello.  Jen said she wanted to see us both to make sure she was still alive.  You did just fine, Jennifer. 

I left the hospital at exactly 4:00.  Great.  Now I faced rush hour traffic all the way home.  However, there was a wreck right at Interstate 45 and Loop 610.  Pretty much all of Houston was bottled up behind it.  For some reason I decided to wait “just one more entrance” to try to enter the freeway.  As a result, I managed to pass by two fire trucks blocking all but one lane of the freeway.  That was a close one.  Coming to Galveston there was not much traffic.  In fact I was keeping up with the guy on a motorcycle who was the only vehicle in the carpool lane.  Hmm.

Psalms 25:12-14 says, “Who, then, is the man that fears the Lord?  He will instruct him in the way chosen for him.  He will spend his days in prosperity, and his descendants will inherit the land.  The Lord confides in those who fear him.”

Father, thank you for standing with Jennifer through her surgery.  Walk with her now through recovery.  And give Bryan patience and peace.  Amen.