Falling away.

(Photo by Tom Heine, Chinua singing with friends at a charity event in Goa this year)

It’s been rough around here lately. My Superstar Husband was hospitalized for severe hypertension (very very high blood pressure) on Monday and finally came home yesterday. He was on an IV with anti hypertension drugs and it still took a few days for his blood pressure to come down. (It was at 245/135 when he went in to the hospital.) This is his first inkling that he has high blood pressure, and it means a lot of thought about how to make life different. His diet is great, exercise could be better. Stress could be better. So. This precious, precious person is not well. He was sick in the hospital with an IV and it was very scary. Everything else falls away.

My week was about cycling or riding the motorbike back and forth between my house and the hospital (thankfully very close together), bringing him food, visiting, staying there at night while Miriam stayed at our house with the kids. My next weeks are about taking care of my family, my husband being one of the people I need to extend all of my care toward. Everything else falls away. 

I feel like we’re standing on the edge of a canyon and I can’t see to the other side. I don’t know what I’m stepping into, how our life will change. Last night a very kind American cardiac nurse came over to talk with us. Chinua is still on bed rest and she was lovely and funny and helpful, but also told us how to tell the difference between a stroke and a heart attack and I looked at her and thought, “You’re using naughty words, those words aren’t allowed in this family.” Like she had said stupid, or hate, or ugly, or divorce, words that we are not allowed to say. Heart attack and stroke are naughty words that we’ve never thought of, and what happens now? Does it go back to normal? Is there a normal? How come every time I get my breath I feel like my feet get knocked out from under me? 

All of this happened after a trip that was a bit wild, in the insane Laos April heat, with a few too many obstacles, and does it also mean that we can’t be quite the wild travelers that we are used to being? Do we need to calm down? (For instance, Solo’s passport only had three months left on it and I knew this could be a problem at the border to Laos, but I said, “It’s okay, we’ll be able to talk them into letting us in,” which was TRUE, and we were, but maybe talking border officials into letting us do things is too stressful and we shouldn’t do it anymore. Maybe?) And how much of this is my fault, for not recognizing the stress that Chinua has been feeling? How much is it my fault for being a bit of a basket case of a wife? And when the things that are difficult or stressful are things that I can’t change, like quarreling kids or finances or all the unknowns we are constantly facing, then what can I do to help? 

I feel like very suddenly things have stilled or quieted, like a movie on pause, and I look around and see all the things I’ve written or declared for myself, the independence I’ve longed to strike out for, the labels I’ve longed to give myself (I'm an Artist. I'm a Writer), and everything is very suddenly quiet and in the quiet I see that God has given me this family, here, in this place, and this is what I have, and this is what I do. The palm fronds are still, the animals are quiet, my hands are full, my heart is full. I’m in love with them, with all of them. They are the art I make with my every day. 

And I’m so thankful. Thankful that Miriam came from India the day before Chinua got sick (I don’t know what we would have done without her), thankful that I have a new partner-in-crime (house helper) who is helping me for a few hours a day, thankful for the food we eat and the days God has given us and the goodness of lying in bed with Chinua at night, talking about nothing and everything, laughing at silly things we see on the Internet, thankful for visitors in the hospital, for the sunshine, for love and each other and most of all for God sustaining each breath. For in Him we live and move and have our being. Acts 17:28

We could use your prayers.