The Right Place

My sister remembers the trauma doctor explaining to her and my husband that there were fourteen successive obstacles I had to overcome in order to survive. Each time a treatment or surgery was completed my stats would have to return to forty percent before the next could be attempted. The surgeons would do what they could, but the stabilizing in-between was outside their control or skill. Fourteen times my body met or exceeded the target, and with each my survival was one step closer to being a possibility. 
Perhaps it was the same doctor that communicated to them on the eighth day, 
“She has an amazing will to live.”

I wasn’t really there for most of the drama. My heretofore lazy body was doing the work of fighting, fighting, fighting while my mind was following rabbit trails and gathering wool. And I wonder now, what made the difference?
I live in a community peppered with folks on the verge of Adulthood. They are so very torn -- because they want to do something great. They want to be someone spectacular. And they don’t know how to get there.

I’m thinking that was me in the hospital bed. Without the aid of my conscious mind, I was striving toward survival. Because the great thing, the spectacular thing, is to be alive. 
In all its facets of work and wonder, the created world is just right for the created me. The beautiful anticipation in the pre-dawn sky, the certain splendor of a mountainside blanketed with autumn trees, the electric wildness of an evening storm -- all are beyond comprehension. Sleep is a delight. It is a wonder to fill my lungs with air. 
It is exhilarating to push my legs until the muscles burn.

We wonder, question, debate, study...in everything we do. It is a vast world and there is more to know than we have the days for learning. And along the way there is friendship, with hands to hold through the dark places, and the comfort of the nearness of another human being for joys and trials.

When my second lung collapsed my mind joined my body as I became aware of the intense pain, and the medical crisis. I looked death in the face, certain it was upon me, and consciously thought, “Now I get to see what it is really all about.” 
Instead, I live in this present world, for as many more days as God gives me.

It is the right place to be.

Father, I know that all my life is portioned out for me,
The changes that are sure to come, I do not fear to see;
I ask Thee for a present mind  intent on pleasing Thee.

I would not have the restless will that hurries to and fro,
Seeking for some great thing to do or secret thing to know;
I would be treated as a child, and guided where I go.  
(Anna Waring)