Surgery rescheduled for this afternoon

When a nurse called me last night to go over my instructions for prepping for surgery, she gave me a new time to check in.  I’m estimating that it will be past noon when I’m in the operating room. 

Both Pat and I fell asleep early last night, even though we were in a hotel. I think I will have to ask where they got their pillows. I don’t know when I’ve been so cozy, snuggling up to Pat while he listened to an audiobook. I nodded off to sleep before I intended to. 

The past few days have been full of celebrations, from a baby shower to my nephews thirteenth birthday party, to a wonderful worship service, to a rainy outdoor Russian Easter gathering, to visits with friends from out of town.  I enjoyed a parents versus kids kickball game, a ping pong tournament, an outdoor concert, pickle pizza on the porch delivered by my brother and his wife, a sniffing investigation of baby foods, laughing while a dear friend demonstrated strategies for using a bed pan with my leg strapped in the air…

Yesterday, my students showed me so much love. So many homemade cards and letters. So many gifts and hugs.  I had a girl who isn’t even my student, and a beginning language learner, come up to me and ask me if I know Jesus, because if I do, and I pray, he will help me get better.   

But it was after school that I got the biggest surprise.  I had a bunch of my students help me carry all my gifts to the cafeteria, just so I wouldn’t have to make so many trips myself.  My buddy Pam must have thought I was trying to sneak out without saying goodbye (I really wasn’t) so she told me that Nadine had forgotten to give me something. She helped me load all my gifts on a push cart and then escorted me back into the mods. 

Imagine my surprise when I saw Kristina’s room, which is RIGHT next to mine, had been turned into a garden of hanging flowers and fairy lights.  And there were my beloved friends from my very first placement in Scranton twenty years ago — Lincoln Jackson, and then I turned to the right and saw more besties from my last school — Isaac Tripp. And of course all of the teachers I’ve grown to adore since I started at WSIS last year. What a wonderful experience to get pumped up with love with three groups of teachers before my surgeries. 

And it was a tea party! 

I came home with a car so loaded down with gifts, I’m half surprised I made it up West Mountain — ha ha. 

Still the night has more blessings, beautiful well wishes from my kids, the best sushi I ever had, and time chatting with my parents in their hotel room.

God is good.  He is the good who created all of the beautiful flowers I’ve been given the past few days.  He is the good that provided me the relationships with so many human beings who love me and I so love, and He is the good who will be guiding the surgeon’s hands in the operating room later today.  He will come alongside me as I deal with the pain afterward and whatever else may transpire.  There are no better hands to hold me and my loved ones than those of my Heavenly Father.