Our Life on Christ

Sunday, November 27, 2011

3 Lessons I Learned When I Thought my Husband was Dying

A few days ago I was contemplating how I was going to live my life as a widow. I was scared. My husband was in the emergency room and the doctor did not know what was wrong with him. He had a fever of 105 degrees, which apparently is normal for children but very uncommon in adults.

A few hours earlier, I was awakened by Wil as he was shaking in our bed.

“Stop,” I nearly yelled at him.

“I can’t,” he said through his chattering teeth, “I’m so cold.”

I touched him and he was burning.

“What do I do? What do I do?” I asked him (it appears that I’m not the best person to be around in a crisis). He didn’t respond so I did the only thing I could think of: I poured a bucket of water on him! No….I called 911. Did you really think I would douse him?

[smartads]

The paramedics came, did what they could manage to do in our small bathroom, and then took him down to their idling ambulance. I, along with our two daughters, arrived at the hospital shortly after the paramedics dropped him off.

As we sat in the waiting room at 3 o’clock in the morning, I felt that my husband would emerge from behind the electronic ER doors at any moment having been cured of whatever ailment brought him there. Four o’clock came and went. Soon it was after 5 AM and I was running out of magazines to shuffle through.



“What could be taking so long?” I wondered. With each minute that passed and every time I heard someone coming down the corridor from the emergency room, I began to fear the worst. “Is that the doctor coming to tell me that he died from some crazy complication?”

Wil is my best friend. I love him. We grew up together and every day we grow together even more. We have been through so much together. I love him. We created children together. We share everything. I love him…did I mention that?

Things haven’t always been great between us. We almost divorced twice. We have said very hurtful things to each other. Sometimes we wished some very bad things on each other. Sometimes we gave our affections to other people.

Luckily as I was sitting on the hard chair near the front door at Northside hospital, I wasn’t concerning myself with whether or not the last thing I said to him was covered in disdain. I was just thinking about how sad I would be and how different my life would be without him.

I prayed to God that He would keep Wil alive. Then I changed it to, “Lord, may your will be done.” I didn’t think that God’s plan was to take Wil but if it was, I knew that I would be able to survive.

I felt peace.

Around 8 AM (almost five hours later), I saw a man with a long hooded robe, long thermal underwear, and untied K-Swiss shoes walk up to within five feet of me. He gave me a sheepish smile. It was Wil. He didn’t smell the best or look the greatest but I was overjoyed to see him.

I learned three lessons from this experience that I want to share with you (I don't know why the bullets are letters instead of numbers!):
  1. Always trust God. No matter what. You may not understand why your life is the way it is but know that God loves you and He will keep you. Whatever you go through, remember that your story can and will be a blessing to someone else. Remember if you don’t have a test, you don’t have a testimony.
  2. As often as you can, make sure that people know that you love them. You never know if you will be able to tell them later.
  3. Make sure you have some clean sweat pants or even an entire jogging outfit available at all times so your husband doesn’t have to go out looking crazy!

Anji

2 comments:

  1. Good message! The story was lacking one minor/major detail... What did Wil have that started this story?

    ReplyDelete
  2. That's the crazy thing...we don't know! His shaking, fever, etc started out of the blue. The tests never revealed anything...

    ReplyDelete