I didn't mean to,
but I looked up. Though I had been sleeping in a room with a full-length mirror
for almost five days, I hadn't looked yet. I didn't think I wanted to look. And
I didn't mean to, but I looked. What my eyes took in made me think that a look
of horror should be on my face while I was looking, but when I glanced up and
met my own eyes, there wasn't one. It
was just of simple grief. A delicate, frail, deep-purple-eyed, pale expression.
As I slowly removed more of the clothes on my body from top to bottom, my eyes
were locked. It was everywhere. They were everywhere. My arms from shoulder to
elbow were stained with big, round bruises from needles that injected medicine
to keep my blood flowing while I was trapped in a bed. From elbow to fingertip,
more small puncture wounds than I could even try to count from attempted,
failed, and a couple successful IV sites. And on my fingertips themselves,
small red dots from being poked over and over and over, day in and day out for
the duration of my trial so I wouldn't go into shock. This was just the
beginning. My eyes then turned down and saw the massive purple hematoma on my
lower abdomen from the stress that was caused inside my body, and over to each
side of it were small spots trying to heal from where I had been cut open. As
my gaze kept going, I zoned in on the huge bruises at different levels of
healing that were on my inner and outer thighs from injections that had to be
administered to keep me safe from my own body. Beyond that, there was just one
more lone bruise on my right foot from a 4am blood draw that took an hour to be
successful, and unfortunately will never be forgotten. To add insult to injury,
there was stuck-on adhesive all over me from heart and lung monitors, reminding
me that I had been much more sick than I had even realized. As I had undressed
and watched my beaten body be revealed into the mirror little by little, I
hadn't watched from my own perspective…I had watched in the mirror as I gently
and painstakingly placed my fingers over each spot on which such pain had been
inflicted. There were so many of them. So many…
I love scars. I
always have. I think they tell stories and I think they are necessary for us to
see our own strength and what we are capable of enduring. Unfortunately for
most of us, scars come more often from the inside than they do from the
outside. We are never truly fully broken, but man, we sure are cracked. At
those moments when I saw how damaged my body was, I realized just how hard it
had cracked me on the inside. I'd never had anything even relative to a
near-death experience, but when you lay in a bed in a cold, empty intensive
care unit hospital room, mostly alone, for days on end just staring at nothing
in the silence, it gives you a little perspective on just how valuable this
earthly life is. This place is not our home, and oh, did I long for home during
those days and the few immediately following, but I knew which Home I was
longing for, and it isn't the one with a street address. The Home I longed for
was the Home where not only did the light shine through all the cracks, but
also that healed those cracks and made me whole again. All my many cracks. So
many…
It's likely that not
many of us know what it is like to come to the edge of existence in the middle
of the night, and once was enough for me. The great fear that has consumed me
since I came home and all the bruises faded is relentless, and it haunts me in
my sleeping and in my waking. To confirm my greatest fears, my records shared
with me after I got home had the word "septic" written in them.
Sepsis…that's where you die, right? I could have died. I could have died? How?
Why? What if I had died? It was so quick. Is that how it happens? Is that how
you die? I had and have so many questions. So many…
I have a friend who
faced a life-threating health issue just a couple short years ago. A very, very
scary issue. I reached out to her in the days following my terrifying
experience in desperation as to what to do with these hard questions that I
didn't know the answers to. It was both frightening and comforting to know that
she didn't have the answers to the questions either. To know that even if she
did, her answers would likely have been different than the ones I might could
muster up. However, she challenged me to the thought that we could really die
at any minute…any second, even, totally unexpected. That's a hard one to wrap
your head around. Her words made me cry tears of gratefulness. I had been given
another chance. I had been given more time to do the work I was sent here to
do. I was still alive, and I wanted to be ALIVE. I wanted to be a light. I
wanted to be a story. I wanted to be so many things. So many…
So, as I end this
thought, I must share some words that my dear friend gave me, the words that
helped me fall asleep that night beyond my wild imagination full of fear and
wonder. She told me…"At any moment, any day we could die. I have no idea
why we were brought to the edge and pulled back. I have to believe there's a
reason but maybe I'll never know". And every word she said is true. We
were pulled back. We tasted the end without even knowing it until later, and we
were pulled right back where we left off. Maybe to be lights. Maybe to be
stories. Maybe just to appreciate this tiny blip of time otherwise known as
life on earth. When it's time to go, we will all be brought to the edge, but we
won't be pulled back. We will fly. Bruises, holes, cracks and all. We will
fly…and that day will be a sweet, sweet day, for so many reasons.
Yes, so many…
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