The lesson on Sunday had a lot to do with hope. Earlier in the week, I had a conversation with a nurse about hope. She has a hard job. She works in a pediatric intensive care unit. She watches children die..some slowly, and some much more quickly than expected. With compassion, she watches the parents of these children as they struggle with the difficulty, and sometimes impossibility of letting their children go. They take every measure possible to keep the children here. I cannot say to keep their children alive because a child who is heavily sedated with a feeding tube, and on a respirator, is really not living, but the thought of not having them physically present is paralyzing for the parents.
Any little change in their situation gives rise to hope. The nurse asked me if there was such thing as unrealistic hope. I do not remember exactly what I said in reply. Maybe that yes, there is such thing as unrealistic hope, but as a parent, I can understand hanging on to any and everything that offered me any hope that my child might live, no matter how unrealistic. In the sermon on Sunday, Josh quoted someone who had been in Auschwitz for 3 years. I hope I do not totally butcher it, but it went something like this: "without food, we can live for several weeks. Without hope, we cannot live a day." That is what I wish I had said to the nurse about hope. Until those parents have no choice but to face that their child is not going to live, all they have is hope. And, while I imagine health care professionals everywhere who work with dying patients feel as though they are accomplishing nothing, they are extending hope to those who love the one who is ill. I like seeing the synchronicity of life....conversations about hope followed by lessons on hope.
Mr. Lincoln called me from work two weeks ago. It was fairly early. He had not been gone from the house long. When I answered, he said, "Cliff's son stepped on a landmine in Afghanistan." I began to pepper him with questions, of course my first being, "is he dead?" Once he had composed himself a bit, he went on to explain that Andrew Wilson, the son of an associate at the law firm, had lost both legs in this landmine incident. He was alive, being transported to Germany to a hospital there. On the same day, another young man from Tennessee had a similar event, yet he died. I began to weep, something I do not do a lot of, but if one cannot weep over a young man losing his legs then, well, I do not know. Maybe that is why we continue in the fruitlessness of war, because we have lost the ability to weep over the deaths and maiming of our young people.
We immediately sent the word to the prayer warriors at church. Please pray for this young man and his family. Andrew is at Walter Reed now. Cliff went to see him. He reports that Andrew is in great spirits and doing amazingly well. How in this world? I believe it is hope, and God's answer to our prayers. There is regret and thankfulness for this hope. Regret that so many soldiers, marines, and residents of war-torn areas have lost limbs because of other people's instruments of destruction ~ landmines. Thankfulness that there are people who saw the needs of these victims to not lose their mobility and independence. They create and perfect prosthetics.
Andrew is hopeful. He is in a hospital with many others who are learning to use artificial limbs. He is observing those who are a little further down their road of recovery. He knows stories of people who run marathons on 2 prosthetic legs. He has hope, and as he heals and works hard at becoming whole, he will be an instrument of hope to those who come behind him. Please, God, give us hope that we will find better ways to settle our differences than sacrificing our young people. Hope gives us life as we struggle through that which we first think will kill us.
On Monday, Mr. Lincoln called me from work. It was early. We had just said our good-byes and have-a-nice-days. Why would he be calling me? I answered and he said, "something happened to Michael Salas in Thailand." I immediately began to pepper him with questions. Once he composed himself, he explained that Michael, a good friend, had collapsed in Thailand and was paralyzed from the waist down. Oh, my goodness. Michael Salas, who loves his family, who is a homebody, who was reluctantly in Thailand on business, and who is now having a serious medical event. He had 8 or 9 hours of surgery. He is there alone, except for a co-worker, in pain, in fear. His life has been seriously interrupted.
Yesterday, he was gaining movement and feeling in his left leg. Nothing yet in the right leg. The doctors in Thailand are hopeful, that once the surgical swelling subsides he will regain use of both legs. There it is again....that word hope. Hope for recovery. That hope is what enables Michael to bear his aloneness, his fear, his pain, his knowledge that his two weeks in Thailand will stretch into four weeks or more. He has hope that he will be home, back in his beloved Tennessee with his wife and girls for Thanksgiving. We, and the prayer warriors at church, pray alongside all those who know and love Michael and hope for his recovery.
Where would we be without hope? Well, we would be hopeless...in every way. Is there such a thing as unrealistic hope? Perhaps, all hope is that. "But, hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But, if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently." Romans 8:24, 25.
For today, I wish you to remember Andrew and Michael in your prayers, I wish you a day of hope, and I wish you
blessings
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