November 7 – “A bit of a new perspective”

Let me start out on an ethereal plane.  Last night I was in bed working a crossword puzzle.  I was in that realm just before sleep where dreams and hallucinations mix with and muddle the line between fantasy and reality.  I noticed out of the corner of my eye a movement over by the bedroom door.  Shifting my drowsy focus I was instantly able to recognize the figure stepping across the doorway and heading back toward our blue bedroom.  It was quite beautiful.  And graceful.  And had long, flowing hair.  Red hair.  Wait.  I know her.  Yep.  It was none other than Christi.  Great to have you visit, Christi, but next time go ahead and wake us up first so you don’t have to sneak into the bedroom. 

 

Now, on to more earthly things.  I stumbled across a bit of a new perspective yesterday.  It was rolling around in my head and finally made its way to the surface.  The elusive way of looking at things involved the new pain I spoke about yesterday.  See, my head was all wrapped around that casual thought tossed out by the neurosurgeon at one of my pre-surgical visits.  “We’ll do the surgery on Thursday, send you home that evening, take it easy over the weekend, and you’ll be good to go by Monday.”  Yep, I remember that one.  If you are a budding neurosurgeon, please be careful what you say to your patients.  They/We have selective hearing. 

 

I guess I should have re-evaluated my expectations when the surgery was changed to a Monday.  That messed up all prior “over the weekend” calculations anyway.  But here is the new perspective.  I remembered that I have had three or four neck surgeries in the past.  The first one took a good six months to recover from.  The others weren’t quite so long, but then they weren’t four days, by any means.  My knee replacement was a pretty easy one to recover from the surgery itself, but the ensuing physical therapy lasted for months.  Why would I not expect a major surgery on a portion of my back –a portion that isn’t usually involved in the type of issue I had, AND which is also really near the spinal cord - to take more than a weekend to fully recover from? 

 

Adopting this new perspective has allowed me to ease back a step or two on my personal rehab scheduling.  Maybe I do need to just rest for a day or two before jumping headlong into a walking regimen.  Maybe I should stick to the few laps around the interior of the house instead of trying to reach the end of the street and then a mile and beyond.  Maybe I should use the grabber Corey and Janell loaned me (Thanks, guys.  I love it, by the way) instead of trying to sneak a covert bend-over to reach for my shoes, like I’m getting away with sneaking a piece of forbidden candy or something.  OK.  I get it.  But for the record … I don’t particularly like it.

 

Hebrews 11:6 says, “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.”

 

Father, please grant me some patience as I deal with the little gains and setbacks that come after any surgery.  Amen.