There's a time for everything...
...including rest, even if you can't quite tell that's what is happening.
Some of you may know that over the past three months I injured my spine and then had two spine surgeries. The time hasn’t been easy.
Today is two weeks to the day after my second surgery. That means I’m finally allowed to bend down and pick up my phone when I drop it. Until now I’ve been relying on one of my teenagers to come get it for me.
For the past two weeks, you could find me anywhere in the house by following a trail of dropped pens, books, earbuds, and socks.
The nerve pain medicine the doctors have had me on also made me nauseated, dizzy, and lightheaded. So I spent a lot of time lying on my back and staring at the ceiling, both before and after surgery.
Instead of typing away and my computer or scribbling in a notebook, my mind was a drain clogged up with words.
But then, after a while, those words drifted away because the medicine, mixed with the passage of time, made me foggy. I felt like I was losing my physical body, the time I spend with my kids and my horses. And also my mind: I lived in a dark cloud.
For so long, I believed my rehab would focus on the core strength needed to support my back injury, but I see now how wrong I was. Every muscle in my body has withered. Including my mind.
Or has it?
This past Sunday, my husband took the cot I sometimes lie on outside onto the back porch. He carried out the special pillows I use and helped me get comfortable. Then we sat together.
The sky was crystal North Carolina blue. We looked at the trees with their bright green baby leaves.
We argued about Crosby, Stills, and Nash. (I think their music is whiny trash, but he thinks it’s fun and mellow).
I made him play Steely Dan’s one good song and then look up Ecclesiastes because it’s basically the same thing. I had to spell the book for him and insisted on the NRSV. I made him read the first three chapters aloud.
A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises, and the sun goes down and hurries to the place where it rises.
and
What is crooked cannot be made straight.
and then the part you might already know:
For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven…a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted.
Then a bright goldfinch landed on the porch rail and we hushed while it looked at us, cocking its head to the side, maybe wondering about this woman piled strangely on pillows. Or maybe not because I just looked like any other human to him, no different.
And then his mate swept down, her bronze feathers aglow, and like a golden bolt he followed her into the trees.
Until next time,
Katie