Trish #28

Trish is making amazing progress.

The likelihood that she will fully recover is becoming ever more apparent. The actual damage to her brain tissue was rather slight, according to the MRIs and CT scans. However, clinical analysis of her behavior and cognition has revealed a more serious brain trauma than what the physical examination indicates. What this means is that her cognitive "hardware," the brain tissue, has not been significantly damaged. There is no physical reason to prohibit her total rehabilitation. However, the damage done to her "software," that is to say to her mental processes, was significant. She will require extensive therapies of various kinds if there is to be any possibility of her reassuming life as it was.

The therapists are delighted with her progress though. Last week, when asked to finish drawing a clock inside a circle, Trish drew the numbers 1 - 5. They were all crowded into the top right hand quarter of the circle. She left the rest of the circle blank. Today, when asked to do the same thing, she put down all 12 numbers, completely filling in the circle, even though she began by placing the number "12" in the "10" slot and finished by putting the number "11" in the "9" slot!

(Something very similar happened yesterday. When Trish was asked to list the months of the year, she began with March and then named the other eleven months, ending with the month of February.)

These kinds of organizational mistakes indicate frontal lobe damage. Brain damage to the frontal lobe affects our so-called "executive" functions, the part of our mental life that that arrange details in correct sequence. Once again, however, because she has made such rapid progress in such a short time, there is every reason to expect that these cognitive deficits are probably temporary.

We went to the chapel at St. Joseph's today to give God thanks. During our prayer, I anointed her. I prayed that her healing would keep unfolding until she is completely well. Afterward, I asked if she would like to play the piano. "I think I have forgotten how," she said. But I wheeled her to the piano anyway. With great hesitation at first, she put her right hand on the keys. Slowly, she began to sound out a tune: "Through it all, through it all, I've learned to trust in Jesus, I've learned to trust in God." Then she added her left hand. Her rhythm was awkward and her left and right hands did not always agree about where they ought to be in the song. Nonetheless, the tune was discernibly there and she was happy. Her ability to enjoy and to create music had survived! Glory to God.

Now I must tell you about something funny that happened. When we left the chapel and went to her room, I asked Trish if she wanted to read the Bible. When he said that she did, I asked her, "which book?"

"Ruth," she replied.

So I opened up Peterson's The Message to the book of Ruth. She read the entire first chapter aloud. When she finished, I noticed that she was looking at me as if there were something she wanted to say. I asked her what it was.

"Ruth must have uncovered more than Boaz's feet!" she said.

We looked at each other for a minute and then really laughed. We have experienced many funny moments like this since Trish first began to communicate. I can't write about most of them so I chose this one to share with you. (One day after a real funny occurrence, she said, "you must not write about this!" I assured her that I wouldn't. Today I promised nothing.)

One of the most common features of brain trauma is the suppression of inhibition. People who suffer a brain trauma will often say (or do) whatever crosses their mind at the moment. For example, the first day she could even whisper, Trish found surprising joy in using a popular four letter word. She used this word to describe the quality of her food, the appearance of her hair, and the smell that sometimes filled the hospital room. This has been amusing for me and for our daughters. Trish has rarely used even the mildest of swear words. On the few occasions that she did use a swear word, she always added a vehement denial.

"I don't use that kind of language!" she would say.

Though she has recently slowed down the use of her newly discovered explicative, in the last couple of weeks it has come up rather often. This has sometimes been hilarious. For example, one day after she had just received her food, she looked at it for a while, sighed deeply and then said, "this food tastes like s--- but we must give the Lord thanks for it." Then she reverently bowed her head and began to pray!

(The food at St. Joseph's is actually very good. Its just that Trish is on a limited diet that often lacks taste. So I doubt that even her admittedly bland food deserves as severe a judgment as Trish has inflicted upon it.)

Contemporary society has debased our language and cheapened our public discourse. Even our vice President saw no need for apologizing after he recently used foul language to insult a U.S. senator. He was wrong. A certain discretion in language and manners is necessary to preserve human dignity and to promote the shared life that our diverse peoples must experience if we are to live peacefully with one another. Even so, I sometimes find the contemporary Christian control of language and thought stifling and irritating.

We are not nearly as free with our language and thought as even the Bible writers were. This is not because we are so pure of heart and mind. It is because we often equate holiness with prepubescence. There is a strand of American Christianity that seems to believe that God finds us more acceptable when we try to be little boys and girls. In the last few years, we have experienced something like a Christian "cultural revolution" (such as China experienced a few years ago when it disowned all of its thinkers and artists.) We gradually have accepted a notion that loyalty to God and to His church means that we must never ponder or reflect, never question nor debate. And we must never, ever use adult language in any context. Within this view of faith, any allusion to sexuality or other natural physical functions gets perceived as being somehow unrighteous and unworthy of true men and women of God. That's why you have to be brain injured before you can say openly that Ruth may have uncovered more than Boaz's feet at the harvest site!

I am going to admit here -- I'm even going to put it in writing -- that I have often thought the same thing about Boaz. OK, the truth is, since the sixth grade, I have thought about this every time I read the story of Ruth. At first I prayed that God would forgive me for such a terrible, sinful thought. As an adult, I have just hidden it from my fastidious brothers and sisters in Christ. But unless times have really changed the way men think since the days of Boaz, it is difficult to imagine any man, godly or otherwise, being as moved to action as Boaz was by the mere removal of a blanket off his feet!

I don't like crass people or crass language. I do like honest people and honest language. The attempt to convince one another that holiness of life somehow involves a denial of nature or a suppression of the body ends up making our expression of piety real slimy. It gets slimy because it becomes a lie, a false piety. The way a holy life submitted to God really works is not through denying our questions nor by piously saying prayers over things that we don't like. A life committed to God is one that acknowledges our actual feelings while expressing gratitude to Him for His blessing and submitting to his ultimate governance.

Trish played the piano today. She drew a clock -- not yet one you could actually use, but a real discernable clock nonetheless. ( I told her not to worry about it. "Just tell the therapist it was an Appalachian clock!" I suggested.) She walked without a walker while two people helped her. She read the first chapter of Ruth and made a worthwhile theological comment about the text. And she blessed her food, even though she used a choice explicative to describe it first. About all of that I have only one thing to say: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."

Trish #27

Trish came home today for a therapeutic visit. The visit came about suddenly. Last Friday, one of her therapists said to me, "Trish is doing quite well. Monday most of us will be off work anyway, why don't we consider allowing her to visit home? I think it will be good for her."

The neurologist came in, looked at Trish, talked with me a bit and agreed.

So this morning, I went in and signed a paper promising not to allow Trish to drink any alcohol nor to drive a car. (Trish thought that was really funny.)

The day went well. I brought Trish home. She promptly had a nap and then ate lunch. She then took another nap. After that nap, she got up in time to have dinner with us. I returned her to the rehab center where I helped her get a shower, dried her hair, coached her as she brushed her teeth and so forth. After all of that, it was time for bed. As I tucked her in and said goodnight, she looked up at me and said, "thank you for a beautiful day. Aren't those grandchildren the most gorgeous kids you have ever seen?!"

I am now trying to make sense of the thoughts and emotions I have experienced today. ( I thank you, by the way, for allowing me to do this. I know that many of you are copying these e-mails and passing them on. I know this because I hear back from thousands of people who read them. I have too many e-mails from all of you to respond immediately but I am resolved to respond to every single e-mail as I am able. Your willingness to walk with me through this illness has been a life-saver.)

Today I learned that when you are caring for someone who is disabled, it takes a lot of time to do simple things. Many years ago, I remember hearing folk complain about how the government was forcing businesses to make buildings accessible to the disabled. Back then, I had no opinion about this because it made no difference to me. Tonight, I can assure you that if you ever have to deal with wheelchairs and the other kinds of paraphernalia that disabled people must use to make life work for them, you will never complain about any of the regulations requiring ramps, Braille and the like. For when a building is inaccessible to the disabled, it is not only them who are kept from using the space but those who serve them as well. (All of you who are planning some building or remodeling project, please take note.)

Another thing I learned today is how crucial the concept of "home" really is. We did a lot of work to get Trish home today. We did it because her therapists thought she might make greater strides toward recovery this next week were she to go home for a few hours and remember who she is and where she belongs. For weeks now, she has been in bed. Strangers have taken care of her most basic needs. She has been subject to a hospital schedule. She has had to eat what the hospital serves. She has been wearing clothes that are convenient for those who care for her. She has been surrounded with sounds, odors and tastes that are not of her choosing. Even though she has received excellent care, a hospital is an unavoidably alien and strange world. To the extent that she has been adapting to that world, she has been losing something of her own being. Home is where you don't have to struggle to remember who you are. Trish needed to go home so she could remember who she is.

Trish and I have an upstairs bedroom. My sons-in-law were kind enough to help Trish up there for her nap. When we laid her down on the bed, I lay down beside her. I looked at her for a moment and then asked, "what does this feel like?"

"It feels like home," she replied. "I had began to imagine it differently. Now I remember what its like."

Almost immediately, she was asleep.

The word "home" presses all kinds of emotional buttons for me. In a therapy session a few years ago, a psychologist asked me, "If I pushed you to sum up your life's theme in one word, what would it be?"

"Exile," I replied. "I am an exile. I have lost my home."

I won't bore you about why I had come to feel that way. It had to do with my birthplace and with our mountain people's deep connection to their land. It had to do with what I perceive to be the drastic changes that have taken place to the spiritual landscape of Christianity in America. It had to do with a season of life in which I could not seem to make anything work. It had to do with a hunger to return to a people whom I believed might possibly understand me and what I was about. It had to do with a profound feeling of being 'out of sorts' with the modern world and its values. All of these things compounded into a stew that was cooking my insides. Everyday I longed to return "home." The trouble is, I had come to believe that "home" was irretrievably lost.

In many ways, this nostalgic homesickness was for a place that never was and for a time that never existed. In that sense, homesickness truly is, as the word implies, a "sickness." Such homesickness can eat at the foundation of your emotional life until nothing satisfies. It becomes an insane fixation that corrupts ones' soul. In another way, though, homesickness is a cure for illusion and idolatry. For Christian spirituality can be characterized as a sort of homesickness.

"Why is the heart of the Christian heavy?" asks St. Augustine. "It is because he is a pilgrim and he seeks his own country."

I can assure you that tonight "home" is no longer a geographical location for me. Tonight, home is wherever Trish is. Home is being with my children and their families. As I have learned these past five weeks, family can be gone in the bat of an eye. It has, therefore, become exceedingly precious.

I spent years grieving the loss of "home." I grieved so hard for "home" that I couldn't seem to get on with making peace with the location where God had placed me.

Tonight I know how silly that is. Tonight I know that Trish is my home. Tonight I realize that you, my dear friends, scattered as you are throughout North and South America in the many places where Trish and I have lived and ministered -- you are our home.

Trish now knows this better than I. When she was just beginning becoming conscious, before she could talk above a slight whisper, she said with a lot of emotion, "Take me to the Merimishe." (New Brunswick!)

"Why do you want to go to the Merimishe?," I asked, amused at this reference to a place we had not visited for over twenty years. "Because I want my grandchildren to meet Gerald and Ermine," she replied.

Gerald and Ermine were our friends in Montreal when Talitha and Tiffany were infants. They were so kind and dear to us then. The years have gone by since then and we have seen them twice in these two decades. But to Trish, coming out of a coma, the Merimishe, which is the Price's ancestral home and where they returned after their retirement, does not seem so far away or so difficult to visit. Since the day she talked about Gerald and Ermine ,she has asked about friends in Nashville, and Kentucky, West Virginia and Montreal, Mexico and California. Her spirit seems totally unhinged from geography. She seems to have pulled people who are precious to us in Phoenix, Nashville, New Brunswick, and South America all together in some "place" in her head where distance means nothing.

Of course, that is what the Communion of Saints is all about. It is the relationship among the living and the dead, those far and those near, ones we met just today and those whom we have known since birth. Most people never get an opportunity to gather all the friends they have known until the moment of their death. Trish and I have been given a great gift in this regard. For through these e-mails, God has allowed us to gather together almost everyone we have known throughout our lives. Even after all these years of separation, my people in the mountains of West Virginia didn't fail to reach out to us in our hour of trail. The folks in Canada who cared for us when we were just starting our family -- they have been here once again for us. Our Latin American friends, who allowed us to adopt their language and their culture -- how precious their support has been. My Nashville family -- they have never abandoned us, have never let us drift away from their hearts and they have given us their overwhelming support these past few weeks. And then the people of Phoenix -- when we had to walk through the fire, they did not hesitate to walk into the fire with us. All of these wonderful friends and loved ones have gathered around us and have not allowed us to fall. Wherever you may be tonight -- that is my home for you are my family.

Like Trish said, it was a beautiful day. Struggling with that wheelchair, trying to fit it into the car, huffing and puffing to get Trish from the hospital to the house and then back again, washing her hair and drying it, putting her into the hospital bed once again and then saying goodnight -- it was all beautiful. How could it not be beautiful? Knowing that God is going to allow us more time together to visit the Merimishe, the Appalachian Mountains, the hills of Tennessee, the enchanting city of Santa Fe, the peaceful and hospitable cities of Latin America and the cities and towns of the Sonoran desert where we have lived these past ten years. All of these places are home now. We can live in any of them with joy and peace until the day when God calls us to the home of the soul.

Life is largely about discovering the nature of the irresistible and irrepressible longing that haunts our dreams and woos our hearts. It is about looking down one avenue after another, pursuing first this adventure and then another. It is about daring to do more than to merely exist. Its about risking one mirage after another in order to find, if possible, some piece of earth that will not move that we can call our own. In all this exploration, one turns down many a blind alley and hits many a dead end. But then, sometimes someone discovers, as Trish and I have, the pearl of great price -- the Holy Grail -- the gold at the end of the Rainbow. It is the realization that we have never really longed for any geographical place nor for any title or material possession. All we have been struggling for is to know, beyond any doubt, that home is simply God Himself.

Trish #26

Trish has suffered a major brain trauma. For a subarachnoid hemorrhage is like an atomic bomb that explodes in your brain. It is a long time after the explosion before one knows exactly what has and what has not survived the blast.

After struggling for nearly three weeks; eating through a feeding tube, breathing through a respirator and experiencing the paralysis of the left side of her body -- not to mention that one of those weeks was spent in a coma and the next week hardly awake -- it is no wonder that Trish has walked a very rough road toward her recovery. When people visit her for a few minutes, they are understandably amazed at her awareness and at her ability to engage. However, her family knows that all is not well. There are serious gaps in her knowledge and ability. She sometimes expresses rather skewed perceptions of reality. All in all, her progress is indeed remarkable and consistent. We have every reason to believe that she is on her way to full recovery. That doesn't mean that we don't get alarmed and a bit scared though. The blunt truth of the matter is, for the moment, she is not yet herself in some important ways. Her perceptions of herself and of the world and the judgment she forms from those perceptions, are unreliable. They are often accurate but sometimes they are not.

This morning, I was later than usual getting to the hospital. I had spoken at a funeral and so didn't arrive until lunch time. She was not in her room. So I went to the rehab dining room and found her there, staring at her plate.

"Are you hungry?" I asked.

'Yes," she replied.

"How long has your food been here?"

"About thirty or forty minutes," she guessed.

"Then why aren't you eating it? I asked.

"I don't know," she said.

Actually, her food had been there for about five or ten minutes. The reason she was not eating was because her brain is not doing an adequate job of instructing her body how to feed itself. To satisfy her hunger she must find a way to direct her hand to take the fork and move the food from her plate to her mouth. So, even though she wants to eat and is physically capable of feeding herself, she doesn't always make the connection between the ability to put her hands into motion and the need to do so in order to satisfy her hunger. She seems to wait for her hunger to get satisfied magically. She can't seem to remember what actions are required to make it happen.

"Darling, you have to move your fork to your mouth," I said. So she began eating. I had to remind her a few more times but soon she had fed herself all she wanted to eat.

All was well until she suddenly said, "I want my apple pie! Someone has taken my pie."

I looked around. Indeed, the other patients had apple pie. She did not.

"Honey," I said, " You can't eat apple pie. Your swallowing is not yet at a sufficient level."

Exasperated, she said, "I want to go to the next level. I want to be in the apple pie level!" But soon she was laughing and we went on to her room.

A few minutes later, she asked me to bring her a bottle of water.

"Trish, you can't have water." I answered. "You can only have thickened liquids."

"All human beings have a right to drink water," she insisted.

"Yes they do. But in your case you might get strangled. Its too risky. I just can't give you water until the doctors say that it is safe."

The day seemed to go on like that with Trish exploring reality, pushing the limits, trying to understand why the world seems suddenly "out of whack." As I got steadily worn out, I kept thinking about Bob Dimon.

Bob was the man for whom the funeral was held today. He was a man in our church who experienced the most remarkable miracle two years ago. He had been a violinist with the Phoenix Symphony before sinking into a mental illness over twenty years ago. So, for years, he sat in the back of our church staring at the floor, in a near catatonic state. He walked slowly about the church with his walker, seemingly unaware of much of the world around him. However, one night a couple of years ago, an African pastor who was visiting our church, suddenly shouted out at him from the platform. "Brother, I command you to throw away your walker and run," Isaac Ogbeta said.

I nearly fainted. I saw lawsuits and newspaper articles on their way. I was ready to step up and put an end to the foolishness when, to my surprise, Bob threw away his walker. He began to run around the church in a steady gait, smiling from ear to ear. Within a few weeks, his psychiatrist took him off nearly all his medication. After twenty years of darkness, Bob was restored to his right mind. He began playing his violin and conversing freely with everyone. He became a constant joy and delight to us.

The sad part of this story is that soon after this miracle, Bob found out that he had cancer. In his hospital room one day I remarked that it seemed cruel that God would heal his mind only to allow him to suffer an incurable illness. Bob kindly rebuked me.

"Not at all,"he said. I have been able to make things right with people I have wronged. I have enjoyed the sunrise again. I have been able to read my books. I play my violin. These two years have been a gift. I would not have wanted to die with a clouded head!"

Bob then pulled out the violin that he did not play for twenty years and played Mendelssohn's Elijah for me. Before I left his room, he put down the violin and said something that will stay with me forever. "Pastor, it is far better to live in reality no matter how painful than to live in fantasy, no matter how pleasant. For years I lived in a world that I created in my own head. That was the ultimate idolatry. Now I am living in the real world and the real world happens to contain cancer."

I have rarely heard such wisdom and grace.

When we insist on creating our own isolated perception; when we will not allow our perceptions to be challenged, we descend into mental illness. For mental health is the humility and the wherewithal to constantly check our perceptions against those of others. Every human being has the ability to create whatever world he or she wishes inside the privacy of his or her own head. But to the extent that we create an inner world that does not correspond to the world outside our heads, we lose our grip on sanity. Sanity, in other words, requires humility and accountability.

Trish loves me. She calmed down after I told her that in her present state, apple pie can seriously harm her. She even accepted my claim that the water she craves is not safe for her to drink. Though Trish is a very independent woman and is not usually prone to give up her own opinions so easily, she is able somehow to understand that her brain is not yet working as it should. So she is allowing me for the moment to keep her perceptions accountable. She is not likely to get into serious difficulty as long as she does this, as long as she keeps submitting her perceptions to a "reality check."

Once again, Trish's struggle reveals an important truth. We all get mad as hatters when we become unaccountable. If no one can challenge us, rebuke us, differ or disagree with us, we are well on our way to mental illness. I have lived long enough to see spiritually powerful people become just plain nuts because they come to believe that they were too spiritual to accept correction or challenge. I have worked in mental health with patients who had become so highly respected in their fields that they rose above all correction and accountability until no one could challenge their judgment. After a while of living this way, their sanity began to unravel. Unaccountable imagination and unchallenged cognition is like a river without banks; it soon becomes a swamp. This is true in the board room and the courthouse, in the ball field and on the battleground.

In his mercy, God will place us in situations that force us to reexamine our thoughts and actions. Sometimes, he will withhold from us things that we really believe are ours by right. Sometimes, no matter how much we plead, he will not advance us to the "apple pie level" because he knows we will choke on the sweetness. The question is, will we trust him? Will we accept God's invitation to live in reality even when it is painful rather than flee to fantasy because the world we can create for ourselves is so much more convenient and pleasant?

Trish will keep emerging from the shadows. Her mental life will steadily improve. I believe this because she has the humility and the grace to trust that I love her and that I will not willingly deceive her. She believes this so strongly that she is willing to turn away from a glass of water because she suspects that for the moment her own judgment and perception is not as trustworthy as mine. When she gets well, that level of trust in me (and that level of distrust of her own judgment) will be inappropriate. As she improves, she can (and should) question my judgment and mental clarity when it doesn't seem right to her. (and believe me, she will have no problem doing that!) For the moment though, she values the search for sanity more than the sweetness of getting her own way.

I honor Bob Dimond tonight. He now has a clearer mind than any of us here below. I have no doubt that as you read this e-mail, he is meeting with Jesus and Bach. I also honor my courageous wife. She is still in the middle of her greatest struggle. But she will win. For she is armed with the same grace and humility that Bob discovered two years ago: the belief that is worthwhile to work for one's sanity by turning away from self -serving illusion in order to accept community and appropriate care from others.

In the end, sanity is merely the ability and the willingness to live in a mental environment of mutual accountability. Outside that environment lurks madness.

Trish #25

In a hospital, one must confront the "underbelly" of life. Death, defecation and physical deformity simply can't be hidden here. No one can disguise the odors, disabilities and misfortunes of human existence. So it doesn't take long before one realizes what a sanitized existence we have made for ourselves in modern times.

The quality of human life cannot rise above the level of animals until we learn to clean ourselves and to keep the more unsavory parts of our existence discrete. Hygiene and good manners protect the space we must share with others. Thus, discretion and appropriate self-care allows us to transcend animal existence. Taking care of our animal needs with appropriate dignity and grace sets us free to expand our nature into art, spirituality, economics and all the other kinds of soul-enriching tools we use in our quest to become fully human.

On the other hand, the "baser" parts of our natural lives remain, (as the word "baser" implies,) the "base," or the foundation, upon which we build all that we are. As Trish and I have learned this month, no one can enjoy art, Bible study, political discussion, economics or much of any thing else if his or her basic existence gets threatened. If you can't go to the bathroom or feed yourself then the other parts of life, however noble and important, become irrelevant and even superfluous. Hospitals rebuke our attempts to be other than human.

Somewhere in his writings, C.S. Lewis reflects upon the curious fact that human beings seem constantly amused and even embarrassed by their basic animal needs. We seem amazed that we cannot become so mature or sophisticated that we no longer need to defecate, for example. Most adolescents can be reduced to spasms of hilarity by the silliest allusion to flatulence. This amazement is amazing. It is as though we can hardly believe that we have bodies.

Of course, we do have bodies. And, according to the New Testament, we always will have bodies. For "we believe in the resurrection of the body." We are a species of embodied spirits. We touch our spirits through physical and material means and we alter our physical selves and our material environment according to our spiritual and intellectual beliefs. Spirituality and materiality interpenetrate in creating and sustaining a life that is fully human.

When Trish makes progress in her walking and swallowing, she seems to also advance cognitively and emotionally. As she gets a clearer picture of her situation and thus increases her ability to participate in her own recovery, her physical abilities seem to take a leap forward.

Christopher Reeves describes his own remarkable journey toward recovery in similar terms. He tells us that even though he was totally paralyzed, he continually imagined himself as moving and working. However, he is not trying to make a New Age kind of claim that he healed himself through imagination and mental prowess. He also found machines to move his physical body as though it were actually doing the kinds of things he imagined. This combination of applying both mental force and physical motion to overcome his disability resulted in such astounding progress that the field of neurology has had to take notice.

The lessons are clear: because we are incarnational creatures -- beings whose essence involves a state of spiritual embodiment --recovery of any sort requires both material and spiritual components.

During this current hospital adventure, I have drawn strength from the more earthy and practical parts of the Bible. The Proverbs, the Epistle of James, and even the dietary laws of ancient Israel in books like Leviticus and Deuteronomy, speak to the natural and "baser" side of our spirituality. By temperament, I am more at home in books like Ecclesiastes, St. John's Gospel and St. Paul's Epistle to the Colossians. I like soaring like an eagle. But life has a habit of teaching us that if we don't do practical things like taking a day of rest, or passing up the wrong kinds of food most of the time, or forgetting to feed hungry people, all of our pretended spirituality will sooner or later collapse. Castles in the clouds are very impressive in the comic books. In real life they are impossible to build. Real castles need a ground and a base. I suspect that the same is true for our theologies, philosophies and all other kinds of cute and complex abstractions that mesmerize and mold our thoughts.

Human beings, as it turns out, are created for transcendence. They are also created to need bedpans.

These are the two borders of our existence, the God-decreed limits of our being. No one becomes a truly spiritual person without coming to grips with this reality.

St. Joseph's hospital is filled with spiritual people. On every hand one experiences prayer and love. The kindness, the servanthood, the consistent care for the spirits and emotions of the patients and their families is remarkable and laudable. However, if the bedpans were not emptied and sterilized; if the wounds were not cleaned and dressed, all the love and concern in the world would not heal these sick people, one of whom is my wife.

Well, I'll stop now. For if I am not mistaken, I believe I have just rewritten the Epistle of James.

Trish #24

Trish was tired today. In fact, she spent much of it in bed. Her neurologist tells me that her team is delighted with Trish's progress. After all, last week she came into the unit unable to walk or swallow. Today, she can walk slowly with the help of a walker. She can eat many things and she can swallow, at least thick liquids.

Thanks to God for all of that.

Tonight, as I was getting ready to leave the hospital, Trish said to me, " I think I need to listen to a lot of music. I think music will help me recover my thoughts."

"How about us singing Amazing Grace?" I asked. "You know that really well."

"That sounds good," she agreed.

So I began to sing:"Amazing grace how sweet the sound ..."

To my sorrow, I heard her quote all the words to the song but without any melody.

"Honey," I told her, "you are SAYING the words. Talking is not singing."

"I know,"she said. "I hear the melody in my head. I just won't come out." "Lets try again," I suggested.

So I started to sing again. This time she tried to vary the pitch of her voice as best she could.

I noticed that she was finding a few of the notes. Then, for a few bars at least, she found the harmony. In her shaky voice, colored by all the trauma and confusion of this month, she sang with me:

"Through many dangers toils and snares, I have already come
Tis grace that brought me safe thus far and grace will lead me on."

I lost it. I held her and began to sob.

Tears filled her eyes in response to my own emotion.

"I don't want to upset you," I said.

"I love you," she responded.

"I want nothing in this world more than for you and I to just sing together," I told her.

"We will. We will" she responded.

Weeping endures for the night. But Trish and I have already been through the night. Its morning now; it is time for joy.

The nights of our lives have the power, if we will only allow them, to wipe away the illusions and foolishness that grip our souls. Each morning thus brings a fresh opportunity to recover all that is truly valuable and important in our lives.

The performance tonight at Barrow's Neurological Institute, Rehab Unit # 18, will win no Dove Awards. But it sure was music to my ears!

Trish #23

Trish walked today. She has been walking slowly for several days now, between the parallel bars, anyway. She has taken little baby steps with her wobbly legs. Today though, she used a walker. With a little help from her therapists, she walked down the hallway, sat down in a chair, rested a bit and then returned to the parallel bars. She was exhausted afterward and had to go to bed for a nap but she had walked. I watched as her feet began taking the kinds of natural steps that showed that her brain is beginning to remember how to walk.

I thought of a verse of Chris Rice's Untitled Hymn:

Like a newborn baby, you have to learn to crawl

Just remember when you walk sometimes you fall;But fall on Jesus, Fall on Jesus, Fall on Jesus --and live!

If Trish allows herself to get paralyzed by the fear of falling she will never walk again. Falling may happen. It's a part of walking. But she can't worry about that. She has to focus on throwing her energies into walking.

I remember first hearing Chris Rice's song at a funeral. We had gathered to honor the memory and the ministry of Jim Roam, surely one of America's finest pastors. I listened as Dan Dean sang the song. When he got to the verse about walking, I nearly came unglued.

Somehow, as I was growing up, I got the idea that falling was the worse thing anyone could ever do. I remember a number of times hearing people whispering about others who had made some kind of mistake. "well, brother, he fell!" they would say. I recall how the atmosphere would fill with sorrow and dread, like someone had died that would not be coming back. How I wish I could go back in time. I would ask those mourning people a question, "well, did he get back up?"

When I heard Dan Dean sing Untitled Hymn, a most powerful revelation broke through to my soul. I grasped at the core of my being it seemed that when you walk, sometimes you fall. That's the way life works. Just make sure you "fall on Jesus and live." The apostle Peter fell on Jesus and lived; the apostate Judas fell and never got up again.

How you fall and what you do about it when you fall, is everything.

Trish has the most wonderful therapists. They encourage her every step. When she makes a mistake, they give her feedback about how she can avoid making the same mistake the next time. As a result, she keeps walking -- however slow, however crooked and however wobbly -- she keeps on walking.

What would happen to our churches if we could learn to pastor the way those therapists care for their patients? What if we told people,

Like a newborn baby, you have to learn to crawl

Just remember when you walk sometimes you fall;But fall on Jesus, Fall on Jesus, Fall on Jesus --and live!

Maybe more people would learn to walk.

Trish #22

I woke up at 6:00, got up from the old cot in Trish's room and got quickly dressed. I picked up Peterson's paraphrase of the Bible, his A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, and my journal. I then walked down the long hospital hallway, went outside and sat down by a little lawn and flower garden. The birds were singing and looking for breakfast. The Phoenix heat would be making itself felt soon but for now the temperature was mild enough. I soaked in the solitude and the morning silence.

After a while, I took up my journal and wrote:

"I wonder how many fights the hospital personnel have had to keep this lawn from being made into a parking lot? How wonderful that it is preserved! Nature and nurture -- these are the two essential ingredients in any healing environment. This garden is yet another example of the principle expressed in that ancient prayer, thanking God for the wine and the bread, which he has created and human hands have prepared. Divine creation must be matched with human intention and preparation if worship is to take place. This garden is also a combination of divine creation and human intention and preparation. I am thankful for it."

I then read in A Long Obedience.

After awhile, I took my journal and wrote once more.

"I am aware this morning of the deepest sense of joy. Why is this?"

In this book, Peterson defines blessing as a sense of well-being that one experiences who feels connected to life, aware of his or her own soul, conscious of the presence of God and reasonably free of anxiety. It is the quality that Jesus, in his Sermon on the Mount, promises to all who follow him.

For most of my life, I have experienced this sense of well-being. Especially in the Latin American years, I awoke every morning to the warmth of Latin American culture. Even in the midst of poverty, I was aware of how that culture's committeeman to hospitality and mutual concern fed my soul. Early in the morning, the church bells called the Roman Catholic faithful to mass while the sounds of Protestant hymns filled the air. The smells of coffee, freshly baked bread and tropical fruit awoke my physical appetite. Life was put on alert. My spirit was stirred. A brand new day was breaking. Even after sleeping on a straw bed, I could feel the vibrancy of my own soul resonating with the awakening world around me.

For the past many years, I have incrementally lost that sense of well-being. Living in the midst of modern American culture, I have steadily allowed myself to accept a definition for blessing that views it as the state of being materially prosperous. For the last few years, I have been trying to put into words the quality of life that I have missed even as I experienced ever increasing 'blessing" as this culture defines it. This morning though, sitting in this little corner of grass, surrounded by the tress and flowers that the medical industry has somehow failed to conquer in the name of progress, I feel that old sense of blessing. I even find myself humming. What is it? Ahhh ...

"This is my Father's world; He shines in all that's fair ..

and though the wrong seems often strong, God is the ruler yet."

I would rather have this sense of blessing than any amount of wealth or power. Without it, I don't even really wish to live.

So how do I permanently surrender my idolatry? How do I give up my excruciating bondage to complication and complexity? How do I return to loving God and loving my neighbor as myself? How can I relearn the joy of discovering delight in a single flower? How do I throw away the foolish concern about the value of stock or stop wasting my valuable time and energy on the ceaseless expansion of my personal power and influence? How can I keep returning my soul to sanctity? How do I escape the prison, the cruel mirage, of this present world?

How does one consistently live in blessing by centering his or her soul in grace, especially in our times?

Trish is here to rediscover how to walk and talk. She will have no time today for any worries about new furniture or buying some amazing gadget she saw on TV. She will not care one iota about whether or not her clothes are fashionable. Yesterday, after she finally realized that half of her head had been shaved, her only comment was, "that sure was an expensive haircut!" She is just glad to be alive. She is delighting in being able to express love for me, for her family and for her friends.

For both of us, life suddenly got very basic.

I have just slept on an old cot that was terribly uncomfortable, my sleep constantly interrupted by hospital personnel going about their work. She has been fighting to remember who she is and what her life is all about. Most people would say that we have experienced a catastrophe. No one I know would want to trade places with us.

So why am I happier this morning than I was a month ago? Where did all those worries about silly things go? And is it Trish that God sent to rehab or is it me?

Trish #21

Last night I awoke to strange mechanical noises. Trish was pushing the buttons on her bed and moving it up and down. So I got up and went to her side. I asked her, "honey, why are you moving your bed?"

"Because I want to," she said.

She was obviously worried, so I talked to her for a while. For the first time since she woke form her coma, she started talking about aspects of her recovery that causes her distress. Among the indignities she mentioned was "wearing boots to bed."

"That's not right, " she said. "I don't like wearing boots in bed."


At night the nurses put a boot-like contraption on her feet. Under these, she wears some legging-like things that constantly message her feet and legs. These work to prohibit the formation of blood clots. She has worn them for weeks. Last night was the first time she seemed upset about them.

I called for a nurse. When I had explained what Trish was saying, the nurse turned to her and said very tenderly, "you're right dear. Normal people don't wear boots to bed. The first step toward not having to wear them any more is becoming aware of what normal is. You are getting better, That's why you're suddenly upset with things."

A few minutes later, as I listened to Trish's breathing fall into a normal breathing pattern for a sleeping person, I lay awake a while thinking about what the nurse had said. I thought about the paradox of Trish's recovery actually making her more distressed. It made me think of one of the verse of Amazing Grace, "Twas grace that taught my heart to fear and grace my fears relieved." One of the best definitions of the process of recovery in the field of addictions involves four steps:

1. Unconscious incompetence (I screw up and don't know why)

2. Conscious incompetence (Now I know why I screw up)

3. Conscious competence (I don't screw up so much when I make myself focus on what I know I am supposed to do)

4. Unconscious competence (Most of the time I act in healthy ways without really thinking about it.)

Obviously, people at stage #1 & stage #4 of recovery are the most content people in the process! The folk in the other two steps may sometimes wish that they had remained unconscious of their incompetence! In recovery, people who "put their shoulder to the plow" must not look back. For once one becomes aware, there is no way to go but forward.

In addictions work, we often see family interventions. In these, one family member after another will say things to the addict like "Mom, you are addicted to pain medication. You are hurting all of us and we are tired of it." Or, "Sally, I am not sure I can live with you any more if you intend to keep using your drugs." For the addict, intervention feels like the worse day of his or her life. But it can be the beginning of a new and healthy life. The addict's self-created world gets shattered because it is a sick and counterfeit world and must be shattered. However, if it is the only world he or she knows, then for a while it will be difficult to imagine how life is going to work.

In the spiritual journey, those moments in which we become suddenly aware that we have been hateful, or selfish or a bore or addicted, are terribly difficult to bear, When these moments happen, we are actually making progress in our personal lives. Even though we feel worse we are actually getting better.

Grace teaches our hearts to fear before it moves to relieve our fears. We fear before we heal because we cannot heal ourselves and that vulnerability can be terrifying.

Last night, one of the nurses said, "Mrs. Scott, we are here because we want to serve you. If any of us had suffered what you have suffered, we would require the same care you are getting. We chose this profession because we are called to do this. We know that you are anxious tonight because you are getting better. You are a lady. Naturally, you are uncomfortable doing things ladies don't ordinarily do. But soon you will not have to do things like wear boots to bed. You have to wear them for a few more nights because you are still sick. You were so sick before that you didn't even care. Now that you are better, naturally you want to be totally well. But it is unfolding as it should. Be patient."

As these two servants of health and healing talked, Trish relaxed. Soon she was asleep. Amazing how a truthful explanation can soothe the soul.

"How precious did that grace appear the hour I first believed."


How gross our faults can appear to us the moment we are first willing to actually see them. We may have spent a lifetime not even believing we had faults. Then, for some reason, we receive grace to see our own faults as others see them. The sudden awareness of our own sinfulness and even wretchedness can be devastating. Even though our faults have been there all along and even though we realize that others are no different than we are, it is devastating to know that we are not in some kind of special category of sinlessness after all. We are in the same boat as all humanity and the things we hate in others have been in us all along. When we realize this, we naturally want to be completely well -- right now!

I hear the words of St. John's gospel, "God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world but that through Him all might be saved." Without words like these, ignorance really would be bliss. One we hear them, our awareness of our own sin becomes an assurance that we are actually being saved. For the grace that makes us aware is the same grace that works mightily to relieve.

Consciousness has its price!

Trish #20

Trish is working hard to do simple things now; things like keeping her head up straight. She has to really focus on this because if we leave her alone for very long, her head leans over to the right until it almost touches her shoulder. Her neck then gets stiff. She seems frozen in place and it is difficult to straighten her up.

I stay with her most of the time now. The time that her doctors, nurses and therapists can be with her, though extremely valuable, is limited. So I help her carry through with what she learns during the various therapy sessions. Today, every few minutes, I have been telling her, "Trish you have to hold your head up. You are leaning to the right. You must retrain your brain." Or, "Trish, you have to take care of your left side. Your left hand is a part of your body too. Use it. You must retrain your brain."

Nearly everything I said to her to her today, I would add the words, "you must retrain your brain!"

Right before lunch, I pushed her in her wheelchair to the outside. We parked the wheelchair beside the small lawn and some flowers. While we were sitting there, I just started talking about this and that. Somewhere in the middle of a lot of nothing, I said, "Trish, you have to get well. You have to come home. Look, I have been washing my own shorts! I am getting desperate."

She was quiet for a long time. Then she slowly whispered, "Why don't you retrain your brain to wash your own shorts?!"

Hmmm. What if therapy works too well?

I stayed with her last night. The nurses gave me a cot and allowed me to sleep in Trish's room, right beside her bed. Several times in the night, her hand searched in the dark for me. When I was aware of it, I touched her hand. Each time I told her that I was still there. She would then go back to sleep.

I grieve watching my intelligent and independent wife struggle with the most basic issues of her personal care. I suffer watching her ponder so long before she can do the simplest things. I will be glad when she completes her therapy and returns to some semblance of her normal life. In a hundred ways, this ordeal has been a nightmare. But in one way, it has been a honeymoon. For when she looks into my eyes, she finds a way to express her love for me; the deepest love I have ever felt from a human being. Underneath all her confusion and difficulty, she finds a way to prove St. Paul's assertion; "love never fails."

I would not have wanted to live my life without knowing that this famous statement is more than a cliché.

We live in such cynical times. Many people really believe that love is just "a second hand emotion." Millions really believe that we express love to get people into our beds or to otherwise meet our needs. When gifted people make movies and write novels about love, we pay to see their movies and to read their books because we dare hope that such love really exists. We dare hope that we might even experience such love one day for ourselves. Nonetheless, many of us live with at least a shadow of the cynicism of our times, fearing that "love" is really just a myth and a longing impossible to actually fulfill.

Trish and I fought a long, hard battle learning how to experience love. Because of a number of factors, we struggled with our romantic connection from the very beginning of our marriage. On the second night of our honeymoon, I began a two week revival service for a little church in Eastern Virginia. From that moment onward and for many years afterward, I preached somewhere nearly every day. Time past. Both of us, for different reasons, found it difficult to connect to each other in any way other than as "ministry partners" and as parents.

The human part of our love was sad and empty. We had so spiritualized everything in our lives for so long that normal human love had become nearly non existent for us. Several years ago though, we went to marriage therapy. Once we began, we went at it full steam -- week after week, year after year, trying to learn how to be human adults, capable of experiencing adult love for one another.

We had rarely vacationed.

We had rarely gone on dates.

We didn't speak of much to one another except about "the work of God."

Ours was a false spirituality. It was even idolatrous. And it nearly destroyed our marriage and our family.

The reason I say "false spirituality" is this: a spirituality that rejects common sense and material life has an appearance of godliness but it is really soulish and devilish.

Aquinas wrote that God made only three creatures -- spiritual creatures (angels), material creatures (animals), and incarnational creatures, that is to say creatures that are both material and spiritual ( humans). He said that this state of incarnational life is our appointed realm. The enemy of our souls, he said, is continually trying to deceive us into either denying our spirituality (to become animals) or into denying our materiality (to become angels). Of the two deceptions, he claimed, trying to become angels, that is to say trying to be wholly spiritual, is the most dangerous assault upon our souls. For when we try to become angels, we are rebelling against our God -appointed realm, trying to rise above the station in which He created us and placed us. When we try to become wholly spiritual, we get into territory that is really over our heads, into places in which we can get easily deceived -- even become mad!

Human love, human intimacy, and human sexuality are all blessed parts of our "God-appointed realm." Trying to become so spiritual that we finally "rise above" our need for deep connections with our loved ones is really not spirituality at all. It is a cruel Satanic deception. Trish and I spent untold hours of many weeks for many years exposing this deception in our lives. We came to realize that this same deception has a hold upon many of God's children. There is much needless devastation and untold pain in Christian marriages because of it. For some time we have been talking about how to address this.

Last night in the dark, when her hand touched mine, even surrounded by hospital noises and the surreal weirdness of our situation, I knew what love is. Human, romantic love is not a "second hand emotion." It is not a base thing to be surpassed by some super spiritual experience. The love I felt for my wife last night is, to the extent human beings are capable of experiencing it, the same quality that is the very essence of God. In that sacramental moment, when our souls touched through the material medium of our interlocked hands, we experienced as much of God as we have ever experienced in any church. For there was a third hand upon ours last night. The One who in holy matrimony made us man and wife, smiled as we touched and He said "it is good."

"Many waters cannot quench love," for "love is stronger than death." "He that loveth, knoweth God for God is love."


I know I speak for both Trish and I when I say to all of you, Don't settle for a cold and lifeless marriage. Don't tell yourself that this is just the way things really are. Don't give up your dream for a meaningful and loving marriage. Fight for it. Dare risk stability in search of it. We are living testimonies that married love doesn't just happened, that it must be fought for.

Whatever our present circumstances, I rejoice in God. I thank Him for freeing Trish and I to love one another. Even brain trauma has not conquered what He has worked in our lives these past few years. I will not die without knowing what married love is.

If God was able to do all of this, helping us to "retrain our brains" so we could experience some degree of normalcy in our love and our marriage, then learning to walk again should not be all that difficult for Trish.

And for me?

Well, I may even be able to learn to do my own shorts.

Miracles do happen! They already have.

Trish #19

When I arrived at the hospital yesterday, I asked Trish what she had done earlier.

"I learned to get out of a chair and to sit down in it again," she said.

Trish is busy this week learning to walk, eat and otherwise care for herself.

Trish is relearning behaviors that most of us perform many times a day without conscious thought. It turns out that these behaviors are far from simple. I have been watching as her therapists teach her the serious business of walking. She very slowly rises out of her wheelchair (with the help of two strong men, named, I kid you not, David and Obed!) She carefully ponders about what to do next.

"Grab the bars of this walkway," the therapist says. "Bring your right foot forward. Now, shift all your weight to the right side. Good. Now put your left foot forward. Shift all your weight to that left side. Great. Now lets do the same thing again with the right side."

Habits are deep structures of complicated behavior. What we observe on the surface as a person walks, is the tip of a mental and physical ice berg. The brain and muscle coordination, the constant feedback from the environment that assesses things like uneven surfaces, the constant balancing of the body -- these are enormously complicated things. The reason we do them so effortlessly is that human beings are capable of learning complicated things by arranging them into a series of steps that become physical and mental programs. Once we have molded complicated behavior into a program, the program nearly disappears into the deepest parts of our mental life. After that, we need only to consciously initiate the first step of the program. Once it springs into action it is usually off and running without much conscious thought on our part. That's the way we are made.

The brain trauma Trish suffered erased many of these programs for Trish. She has to relearn them.

(Trish would probably insist that I point out here that addictions operate the same way. I would argue with her that addiction is not the subject of this e-mail but finally I would get exasperated and put in a sentence about addiction. We are such creatures of habit!)

For a long time now, we have been trying to believe that spiritual life differs from natural life. We have tended to glorify the spontaneous, the unpremeditated, the non-habitual acts of devotion and service. We have tended to sneer at the rehearsed, the prepared and the habitual acts of spiritual life. We have known that past generations of Christians set hours of prayer, practiced daily devotions and Bible readings, honored rhythms of spiritual seasons and, of course, maintained a once a week observance of a day of worship and rest. Our ancestors knew dozens of verses to hymns that they sang so often that the words and melodies got pushed deep inside their minds and spirits. We know that their spiritual life was formed and maintained by habit but we have been taught for a couple of generations that we are different from them in that way. We have been taught that we don't need all of that habitual structure.

Is that true?

Most of us know first hand that habitual patterns of spiritual life can be turned into very boring and lifeless rituals. What person raised in church can't recall some prayer meeting that felt like a root canal? That's why, for a couple of generations, we have been turning away from any hint of the habitual or contrived in our spiritual lives. But can spiritual life really exist without habits? Where does spiritual spontaneity come from is there is no spiritual foundation?

This time next year, Trish may see an old friend and jump from her chair in a spontaneous burst of joy. She will run to her friend, shouting while throwing her arms open to embrace her. But Trish will only be able to do that next year if today she maintains enough patience to slowly relearn a complicated series of behaviors. "Right foot forward, shift your weight to that foot, stand a moments. Now the left foot, etc." If she practices walking today, does it again tomorrow, repeats it the next day and the day after that; if she keeps on with this until walking once again becomes a habit, that is to say until the complicated parts of walking get reduced to a program that operates at the deepest parts of her mental life, then spontaneity and fun will once again become a possibility for her. If she gives up on practice before the practice becomes a habit, she will never again experience the joy of spontaneously running to greet an old friend.

Speaking of spontaneity --

We usually love it. However, there are kinds of spontaneity that adults don't really want. For example, my granddaughters are totally spontaneous. When they need to use the bathroom, they do so. Wherever they are and whatever the environment may be around them, they are not ashamed to just let it fly! They do not premeditate.They do not plan or prepare. They just abandon themselves to the moment and experience the sweet release of their pent-up frustrations. They do what they feel. They do it with great joy. (That is, joy for them!) Adults do not get joy from that kind of spontaneity. Adults learn to structure their needs and plan for their fulfillment. (Sometimes they overstructure their needs but that is another subject.)

When adult spontaneity brings delight it is because the spontaneity springs from seasoned, habitual and mature behaviors. A man may suddenly decide to make pancakes at midnight because some old friends have showed up. They all start talking about the pancakes that he used to make at college and suddenly, on impulse, he blurts out, "well, lets have some right now!" However, as he gathers the ingredients and begins to prepare to make the pancakes, he draws upon deep habitual structures that were placed there long ago. Those old programs spring into action so he can keep talking to his old college friends while he almost thoughtlessly creates a wonderful spontaneous experience. That is the nature of adult spontaneity.

I can't imagine that spiritual life works any differently.

Well, my brave and persistent wife is laughing her way through learning the simplest of things. Just a month ago, she could do those things while she thought about other, apparently more important things. Today, once again, she will practice: "right foot forward, shift the weight, That's right. Now the left. Do it again. Good job. Tomorrow we'll do this again."

And now, if you will excuse me, it is time for my morning Bible reading and prayer. After that, I am going to work out. I don't feel like doing either of them today but perhaps if I will just get started ...

Trish #18

This was quite an eventful day!

Several doctors, social workers and therapists came by Trish's room and administered various kinds of tests. I'll try to recap the results for you.

They determined that Trish can swallow. However, she cannot swallow well enough to drink liquids unless they are thickened with corn starch. The preliminary cognitive test revealed that Trish has made remarkable progress. Though, when looking at a clock, she could not tell the time. (I asked her if not being able to tell the time distressed her. She laughed. "No!, she replied. For an hour she sat up in a chair (a normal one this time, not the therapeutic mechanical chair.) She wrote a few sentences for me on her little white board. From the tests and from observing her progress, the hospital recovery team decided to move her to rehab. So, this evening, Trish moved into the facilities where she will relearn to walk, go to the bathroom, eat normal foods and, in general, live the normal life that we take for granted.

One doctor told me that given her progress so far, it is entirely possible that Trish will return to normal in most ways in a year or less. But this will happen slowly, slowly, slowly and only as a result of much work and persistence.

People have been asking me what I have been reading these past few weeks. Not much of anything! On most days, I can't focus enough to read. I have been slowly reading Eugene Peterson's A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, though. I began reading this book the day that Trish went to the hospital. I have also been reading Peterson's translation (and paraphrase) of the scripture which he calls The Message. Though I usually don't like paraphrases (or very many contemporary translations at all, for that matter,) Peterson 's version of Ecclesiastes and the Proverbs have really blessed me. So, I am making an exception for his paraphrase. I'm sure he'll be delighted!

Peterson begins his book with a quote from Nietzsche, "the truly great men of the world have been those who have maintained a long obedience in the same direction." Peterson's book by that title is worth the reading, to be sure. But even if you just read the quote from Nietzsche and meditate upon it a bit, you'll gain some important information for the journey of life.

Trish can only heal and recover if she undertakes and maintains "a long obedience in the same direction." Her recovery will require an acceptance of boredom, monotony, frustration, practice and failure then practice and failure again, weariness and a quality of character that the King James translators render as "longsuffering." Without longsuffering, Trish will live a very diminished life from this point on. If she just does what feels good, just watches TV and shuffles around from chair to dinner table to bed each day, what she will experience the rest of her earthly existence will be a kind of "sleepwalking through twighlight."

A return to a responsible quality of life will require something else altogether. It is no different for any of us.

In the first part of his book, Peterson says that never in the history of Christianity has it been easier to make converts but more difficult to make disciples. He asserts that our churches and even our pulpits are filled with believers in Christ who have never accepted "the long obedience in the same direction." You can, after all, accept Christ in a moment. You can memorize the Ten Commandments, the Apostles Creed, the Lord's Prayer and the Twenty First Psalm in a few days. If you really get ambitious, you can do a ten week Bible study easily enough. But becoming a disciple requires a commitment to slowly, slowly work the teachings of Jesus into every fiber of your life.

The quality of spiritual life that God offers us requires the "long obedience in the same direction." For spiritual life is never a quick fix. It is never a sprint. It is never accompanied by drum rolls and the sounding of trumpets. Much of the time, the formation of spiritual life within us feels like we are missing out on exciting things. The little decisions we make when no one is watching and the uneventful actions we undertake when we would rather do something else -- simply because we have decided to be a follower of Christ -- are, to tell the truth, often boring and repetitious. Deciding to not pass the juicy gossip on, putting up with that boring old lonely man who wants to talk to us every Sunday after church, stopping to pick up the piece of paper on the church grounds that someone carelessly threw down -- these are the kinds of things that really make a disciple over long periods of time. They are not things that provoke people to write our names in the sky. Over time though, such simple actions push out the selfishness, pride, hunger for power and the like from our souls. Since spiritually toxic attitudes like these destroy our spiritual life, learning how to neutralize them is of major importance. The actions that we slowly adopt in order to move away from these idols of the age, reflect transformations that are taking place at the deepest levels of our being. Usually, we do not even know that these transformations have been happening to us or to our loved ones until some life-altering event comes to reveal them.

That is what has happened in Trish's life.

Today, the lady doing Trish's preliminary cognitive evaluation asked her to write down a phrase of her choice -- any phrase at all -- on a space at the bottom of the paper. I watched as Trish slowly, painfully, scribbled out: "count your blessings; name them one by one." I stared at the paper. Here is a woman who has lost her ability to tell the time. She can't turn over in her bed. She can't even drink water without choking. Where did such a phrase come from? Why did she choose it?

Such a phrase could only come from a beautiful soul who has been steadfastly maintaining "a long obedience in the same direction."

Poor Nietzsche wrote that wonderful phrase. He nonetheless died a raging lunatic. For him, meaning in this world got reduced to a quest for power over others. He deplored the weakness of character and the erosion of willful strength that he believed Christ had introduced into the classical Roman world. I am afraid that most of us in contemporary life have adopted his philosophy. Even many Christian leaders seem to have adopted it. They quote the words of Jesus but live the life of Nietzsche. In the end though, our nervous avoidance of all things tedious, repetitious, boring and obscure -- our cynicism about servanthood and our secret disdain for humility of heart -- leaves us addicted to a need for ever-growing doses of adrenaline and stage presence. It is often not until that dark day when the stage lights go out for us that we realize we never really had an audience; that we have been alone on an empty stage created by our own imagination. Nietzsche's way is death and madness. It can't be the road to a meaningful Life.

Trish, even in her present state of trying to recover from her brain trauma, is at peace. For she is counting her blessings and she is naming them one by one. Her struggle has become an aroma, the incense of a God-centered life rising from a soul whom Satan has attempted to crush but whom God has chosen to honor. It is the life I want too. It is the kind of life that leads us home.

Trish #17

Well, Trish has her own room.

She ate a little bit of food today (fed herself as a matter of fact! Did it very slowly, but nonetheless ...)

She's still a bit confused but sometimes but that's not all bad. For example, today when the nurse asked her to look at me and say my name, she paused a bit and then said, "sweetheart, his name is sweetheart." That may sound corny to you but it sure sounded good to me!

Since Trish's aneurysm ruptured, the events of each day have seemed to arrange themselves around a core thought. Today was no exception. Someone wrote me yesterday to say that they had been sending copies of my e-mails to their friends. The same person told me that those friends have been enjoying the news about Trish. However, they had wondered if they could get abbreviated versions of my updates, e-mails with "just the facts, " since, as they put it, I tend to write a bit "flowery."

So, today I have been asking myself, "why have I made Trish's trial 'flowery?'"

What came to me as an answer reflects my views about the purpose and nature of art. Of course, I use the word "art" in the broadest sense here. My e-mails are not anything like Paradise Lost or The Divine Comedy, to be sure. However, there is more to art than just "high art." The word "art," after all, consists of the first three letters of the word "artificial," that is to say, "something made by humans." In one way of looking at it, anything human beings make is art. We must also say that ONLY what human beings make is art. For nature is often beautiful but it is never "art." The materials and events of nature are raw products that make art possible but no thing becomes "art" unless and until a human being decides to arrange it in some meaningful way.

Of course, human beings do not always decide to make art out of the materials they discover. Most individuals have an opportunity at some time to hold a lump of clay. Few will decide to mold it into a magnificent piece of pottery such as the ones Native Americans in the Southwest create. Likewise, every day people win lotteries, get serious illnesses, get married, get divorces, and see sunsets. All these events are raw products that nature and life present to these individuals. However, each must decide what he or she will do with these "raw products."

In some of the old liturgies of communion, Christians pray, "We thank Thee Lord God, King of the Universe for this bread and this wine which you have created and which human hands have prepared ..." The prayer acknowledges that only God can create wheat and wine. It also acknowledges that human beings are requires to make bread and wine from these raw products. For bread and wine are not found in nature. Fine bread and wine are pieces of art. They require "artists" to craft them if they are to exist at all.

From the second day of Trish's illness, I wanted her pain to pay. I was not prepared to let this wonderful woman go out of this world without people knowing about her. I decided that her light had been under a bushel long enough. The e-mails were my way to put her light high upon a lampstand, so you could see her good works and glorify her Father in Heaven. As a result, many have prayed. Many have written. Many have renewed their sense of marriage and family. Only God can do that. However, He only does it when we give Him the opportunity.

I am rambling but I forgot to quote the rest of that old communion prayer. In that prayer we don't just thank God for "the bread and wine which you have created and which human hands have prepared." We go on to say, "and they shall be for us the body and the blood of Christ." We pray that prayer as a way of recognizing the process by which God makes things redemptive, by which he makes them into vehicles of blessing.

The process goes something like this:
1. God, life and nature offers us materials and situations.
2. We decide how we will mold those materials and situations -- what we will make out of them. 3. We give what we fashion from those "raw products" to God.
4. God pours grace upon our gifts in order to transform them into something capable of bearing "the weight of glory."

Trish has really suffered. Those of you who know her would not have enjoyed seeing her these past few weeks. Her body has been beaten and bruised from the operations. The tubes, the loss of blood, the indignity of her exposure -- well, you get the picture; it hasn't been pleasant. For two weeks she hardly opened her eyes. Her brain had fever. She hung between life and death.

Why? Why? Why?

Because she is a human being. She is subject to all the difficulties and tragedies of any creature living in a fallen world. Others will face other things; she faced an aneurysm. But there is a wonderful thing about our faith: it centers upon a cross. When tragedies cannot be avoided, they can at least become redemptive, if we so choose.

For three weeks, Trish has joined our Lord "in the fellowship of His suffering." She could have just laid there and cursed. But I knew she that wanted to make her tragedy into a piece of art.

I knew she would want to find some meaning that might possibly lurk in the things she has been facing. I knew that she would want to offer her ordeal as an offering, as a piece of art.

These e-mails have just been my "amen!"

Trish #16

Dear Friends,
This is the e-mail I have longed to send to you.

Trish woke up today -- really woke up!

The doctors had removed her ventilator at 7:30 AM. Since she was able to swallow and breathe just fine, there was no need for a tracheotomy. They are still giving her a little oxygen through her nose because she is not yet taking deep breaths. Tomorrow they plan to move her out of ICU!

She can't talk very well, not because of any neurological impermanent but because of the nearly three weeks she has had a tube down her throat. Her body is also very weak. But I sat in a chair and put my ear down next to her mouth so she could whisper to me.

I thought I would share a bit of our conversation with you. "Why aren't you taking care of the evening service?" she asked. (Pastors wives will understand this question!)

"Someone else is taking care of it tonight," I replied.

"Is there food in the house?"

"More than we can eat, " I assured her. "People are helping us with food."

"Did you dream while you were asleep so long?" I asked

"Yes," she answered. " I kept looking for my grandchildren. I wanted to hold my babies."

"Thousands are praying for you, " I told her. "Praise the Lord!" she whispered.

"You are going to my all right. God is not finished with you yet."

"No he's not. We have things to do."

"Well, we have been feeling that God was about to take us into a new season of fruitful ministry. I just didn't know it would happen like this!"

"It's all OK." she smiled. (Our conversation was not all holy. Here is a sample of some of the other stuff. Things I am willing to write!)

"Marty (our brother-in-law) fell through his shower door. He sprained his other ankle. (He recently broke one of his ankles.) He's OK though. Your mom and dad were in the next room but they couldn't help him because he was naked."

She looked very concerned for a minute. Then she laughed -- so hard I thought I should call a nurse.

I have no more commentary than this tonight. The road to her recovery is now before us. There will be many weeks and months of exercise and therapies of various kinds to face, no doubt. But the person I spoke to tonight was my Trish. The grace, love of God, concern for her family and her unquenchable humor is all there.

God be praised!

I thank you all for your fervent prayer. I thank you for your encouraging e-mails. I thank you for not getting angry at me for adding to your e-mail spam! Most of all, I thank you for being the church. For I discovered in my hour of trial, that this ever dysfunctional mess we call the church, really can, when the situation requires, "rise up as an army with banners." I have been walking with Jesus Christ these three weeks because you reflected Him so wonderfully. I hope I have learned to do that for your hour of need. If so, then you have taught me some things I really needed to be a Christian.

I may write you much less now. I will do my best though to keep you informed of her progress as she prepares herself for what I believe will be the best and most fruitful years of her life and ministry -- and mine.

Trish #15

Today, the doctors decided once again not to remove Trish's ventilator.

This time they were concerned about her inability to do without the external drainage tube that they installed to keep her intercranial pressure down. Her brain's natural drainage system, the ventricles, were clogged from the hemorrhage she suffered on June 1. So tonight they have closed the drainage tube to give her body one more chance to reabsorb the spinal fluid naturally. If this doesn't work, they will operate on her first thing tomorrow morning to install a shunt, that is to say an internal drainage system. After they have installed the shunt, they will attempt once more to remove her ventilator. If she has any difficulty breathing or swallowing, they will also do tracheotomy.

Obviously, tomorrow is a big day for her.

My prayer is that she will need neither the shunt nor the tracheotomy. However, we have placed all of this in God's hands.

Something else happened today.

A few days ago, one of the hospital chaplains asked if Trish and I would welcome a visit from Bishop Thomas O' Brien. (For those of you who do not live in Phoenix, O' Brien is the former bishop of Central and Northern Arizona. He was in the news here for several months because of his mismanagement of priests charged many years ago with inappropriate sexual conduct. He returned to the news because of his involvement in a hit and run accident. He was convicted on that charge and sentenced to several thousand hours of community service. Of course, he also lost his position as bishop.) I told the chaplain we would be glad for him to visit us.

Bishop O' Brien called me later that day and thanked me for allowing him to visit Trish. He said that he would serve our family in any way he could.

So this evening he came into Trish's room.

It helps to have a context for this story. O' Brien was consecrated to his office by Pope John Paul II. He has hosted both Mother Teresa and the Pope in their respective visits to Phoenix. So he is a man who has known great power and responsibility. But this evening he walked meekly into Trish's room and asked me permission to pray for her. Trish had been asleep but she suddenly opened her eyes. When she saw bishop O' Brien, she smiled. So I asked her, "do you remember Bishop O' Brien?" She shook her head "yes." Then she smiled as best she could with that breathing tube in her mouth.

O' Brien smiled back. He knew he was welcome there.

That's the way Trish is. She has always been concerned about people who are being excluded. I remember when the bishop was in the news every night, she commented that though he had done wrong and would, like anyone else, have to face the music, he was nonetheless God's child. She kept saying to me, "we have to find a way to reach out to him." Well, today she did reach out to him and I wondered whether he was there to minister to her or whether she was there to minister to him? Then I thought, "does it matter? Does ministry ever really flow in just one direction?"

Also today, a respiratory doctor came in Trish's room to check on the various machines to which she is hooked up. He said to me, "this is my favorite room to come to. I like the music. I like coming in here to check on things."

Trish's corner of the ICU has become a center for healing; healing for her, naturally, but also for all those trying to help her.

After all of this, my children gave me a Father's Day present this evening. It was a two volume, leather bound edition of the Far Side. I reverently opened volume I and began to laugh from the very first page. Now I still had fresh tears on my cheeks from leaving Trish. I was worrying about her facing those procedures in the morning after all she has been through. I had cried because I miss her. I had cried because I was enjoying my family while this huge hole is in the middle of us where she is supposed to be.

But I still laughed. I laughed because if we wait until all is well with us we will never laugh at all. I laugh because if we wait until the bills are paid, or until no one we love is sick, or until there is no war, or until poverty is abolished or until the evil one ceases to rage, or until we have all the money we need, we will never laugh. We must laugh. We must laugh in the very presence of all the ugliness and sadness around us. We must laugh not because we do not care about all these things but because we know that in spite of them, "all will be well, all manner of things shall be perfectly well" (as Julian of Norwich once put it).

I laughed at the antics of the crazy centipedes and the bewildered dogs imagined and drawn by the twisted genius of Gary Larson. I laughed because Larson, made as he is in God's image and likeness, reflects in his work the dazzling kind of alchemy that God works upon situations like ours. God takes a situation full of suffering and fear and makes it into a conduit of grace and a womb of charity. God gives laughter in the midst of tragedy and humor in the center of despair. How can I not laugh?

As a Pentecostal, I was taken aback a few years ago when I read Thomas Aquinas's take on healing. He asserts that though God often heals through the laying on of hands and through other mysterious displays of his supernatural grace, God prefers to heal gradually, through the agency of human medicine. Aquinas taught that when a sick person is helpless he or she must submit to doctors, nurses, pharmacists and the like. A community quickly forms in order to bring healing to the sick person. The sick person who submits to this community learns humility. Doctors get to apply their learning and discover compassion. Pharmacists explore God's creation for the proper plants, roots and herbs needed for healing. The sick person's family mobilize to serve their loved one and thus learn more about love. While all of this is happening, God's people pray. The healing community that forms around helping a person get well thus creates a dwelling place for God and goodness. Aquinas said that while we focus upon getting the sick person's body well, God focuses upon bringing healing to many souls and spirits. So when we work together to care for one who is ill, the compassion, prayer and service that gets directed toward that person creates an atmosphere in which God can do a deep work upon many people. I think Aquinas was right. I think I have been watching what Aquinas described unfold before my eyes.

So as I prepare to for bed tonight, I find myself agreeing with Julian of Norwich. Despite all that is difficult and scary, "all will be well; all manner of things shall be perfectly well."

Trish #14

People keep asking me if Trish has "woken up yet." I can only reply that she is awakening -- slowly and steadily.

This morning a nurse asked her if she knew me.

She shook her head "yes."

Then "who is he?" the nurse asked.

Trish looked puzzled for a moment. Then she pointed her finger at her heart.

Her heart knew more than her mind. (That is often the case. We should trust our hearts to speak for us more often!)

Details still escape Trish. Complicated questions seem to bewilder her . She is still not fully conscious for very long at a time.

I compare the process of her recovery to the times when the telephone has awaken me out of a deep sleep. Something in me hears the phone ring. My instinctual self walks (or runs) in a panic to the phone. Some part of me picks it up. That same part of me stammers out something like, "YES! HELLO!" If the person on the other end of the line asks me my name or some other simple thing, that diminished part of me takes a few seconds, trying to figure out what is being asked. Some kind of conversation takes place in a fog but it is not very informative or connected. In fact, there have been a few times like that I did not even remember later.

A similar process is at work in Trish's recovery. In her case, it will taking weeks or perhaps even months for her to become fully conscious. Thank God she did not suffer serious neurological damage, not enough anyway to keep her the way she is permanently. For the moment, however, she is stunned and "sleepy" from her close encounter with death. Her brain was traumatized and is taking its time to heal and to wake up.

I find myself experiencing a diminished sense of conscious awareness since Trish's aneurysm. During these days I have at times felt like as though I were looking at the rest of the world through water. I try to read and can't. I try to think of the church and its needs but I can't focus. I tell myself that it is foolish to stay at the hospital when Trish is asleep most of the time but I can't leave. Every morning I say that I will not stay down there all day but every day I break that promise. I am helpless to do anything constructive for her but I can't seem to do anything else anyway. So I just sit at her side or in the waiting room. Then, the next day, I do it again.

Today though, when I learned that the doctors were going to do another angiogram and knew it would be three hours before I could find out anything about it, my anxiety level got too high to just sit and wait. I called up some friends and we went to see the Stepford Wives. I liked it. The movie is about a group of husbands who arrange to have their wives operated on so the women will be totally submissive and pliant.The women always smile, say cute things, look sexy and don't cause any trouble. The men and women in Stepford think they are living the good life. Actually, they are just sleepwalking; never thinking, never reading, never questioning, never really engaging with life. They are just numbed by their wealth, good looks comfort and a total absence of conflict.

This state of being half-awake is what most of us experience spiritually most of the time. That's why the Bible speaks of the need for us to learn how to be "sober minded" watchful, and "mindful." The bible writers tell us that we were once "dead in trespasses and sin." They admonish us that it is high time that we "awake from our sleep." When I think about the spiritual numbness that seems to be our natural inclination, I wonder if I will spend my whole life sleepwalking. Have I really been wakening up, learning to live, learning to love, learning to be aware? I know that I have always wanted to do big things, important things. Today I just want to be alive. I want to enjoy life with Trish, my family and my friends. I want to serve God and his people wherever I can be of service, whether in a big and important setting or in obscurity. I want to be awake, even if waking up requires pain and conflict.

After all, what good is life if we live it asleep? Or marriage, for that matter.

For years Trish and I had no conflict. We never argued. We never fussed. We thought our relationship was that way because it was an example of a fine Christian marriage. But really our marriage was asleep. It was in a coma. When our marriage first began to wake up, we were afraid. The awareness first made its appearance as conflict and disagreement. Since we were not used to disagreement, were used to being numb, the life and awareness felt scary. But after a while, our conflict turned into discussion and partnership. We threw out the "Stepford marriage model" and opted for a real human partnership.

That's why today I could not hold back the tears when Trish made that little gesture with her finger. As she pointed to her heart to answer the question, "who is this man?" I translated her gesture to mean, "he's the man I have allowed in here, in the deep part of my heart."

What love letter, what romantic gesture, could speak in such a moving way as this?

Does God feel this way when we first begin to wake up? When we begin to stumble our way toward prayer and devotion does he give us such focused attention as I did to Trish today? Is He as moved as I was today when we, sleepy in our spiritual twighlight began to gesture and stagger our way toward Him? If marriage is anything like the relationship between Christ and His church (as we say that it is in the marriage ceremony,) then today I experienced something like what God must experience when we remember him, when we struggle to stay awake, when we watch and pray, when our sleepy soul begins to turn Godward.

Yesterday's MRI did not reveal any damage in Trish's brain stem and today's angiogram revealed nothing worthy of major concern. There is every reason to believe that her ability to swallow should soon return Also, she has been using her left side more and more. So the doctors decided to wait until tomorrow to remove her ventilator. They are hopeful that she will be ready to live without it and without the need to do a tracheotomy. Everyday the doctors and nurses seem to be unplugging a different apparatus from her body. It appears that Trish is being prepared to leave ICU in a couple or three days, if all goes well.

Meanwhile, Trish keeps waking up -- like the rest of us who struggle against our own stupor of anxiety, fear, lust, self centeredness, inordinate love of money and power -- all the effects that have happened to us as a result of the great trauma endured by our souls. Like Trish's brain trauma, we shake ourselves to get free of the things that isolate, confuse and numb our present existence and which keep us from waking up. We want to know and to be known by our beloved; just as I long to know and be fully known by mine.

Trish #13

We are now well into the third week of our adventure. Today, the doctors did an MRI that they hope will determine why Trish still cannot swallow. Her inability to swallow is what prohibits them from removing the ventilator, so this is a crucial piece of information. Tomorrow they will use this information to either remove the ventilator altogether or do a tracheotomy. I appreciate your prayers for us tomorrow that God's perfect will be done for her in this matter.

Trish spends a lot of time sleeping. That is to be expected for any sort of neurological illness. However, when Trish briefly wakes, she is usually very aware, thank God. Yesterday, during one of these times, my daughter asked her if she would like to write. She nodded "yes." So Tiffany gave her a marker and the little whiteboard we had purchased for that very purpose. She tried but she could only make a small squiggly line. This evening however, as she was trying to communicate with her sister, Lisa, she suddenly made a writing motion in the air. I got her the little whiteboard. This time she took the marker and in a messy but understandable script, wrote on the whiteboard, "cup of tea!!!!"

You can bet when that tube comes out tomorrow -- I will have good cup of tea ready for her, if the doctors permit.

When I have the presence of mind, I am trying to learn all I can about Subarachnoid Hemorrhage. That is the technical name for what happened to Trish. I have discovered that a very high percentage of people who suffer from this catastrophic illness, die immediately or in the days following the initial rupture of the aneurysm. However, I have also discovered that the chances for survival rise dramatically once the first two weeks have passed. After that, the medical staff focus upon recovery. That is where we are now in Trish's illness.

Doctors assign grades to an aneurysm such as the one Trish experienced (1-4). The grade indicates the level of danger that the aneurysm poses to the life of a pateint and the quality of their health should they recover. The doctors gave Trish's aneurysm a #3, a very serious hemmhorage. When the aneurysm fully ruptured, Trish stopped breathing entirely. Had she not been at the hospital when this happned, she would most certainly not be alive today. When Trish stopped breathing, the hospital personnel moved quickly into action. They gave her oxygen and did other emergency interventions that kept her brain from being much less traumatized that it would have been otherwise. Those emergency procedures have made our hope for a full recovery reasonable. Trish and I are both trained therapists.

We have spent considerable time and energy studying the human brain and nervous system. We have studied the various disorders and the treatments available for them. Lately, I had begun to believe that perhaps I had allowed myself to get diverted from my pastoral calling becasue of my intrest in this field. A few weeks ago, I said to Trish, "Why should I be so interested in issues like stroke rehab and the like, I 'll never work in that field!"

It appears that God, knowing what I did not, has been preparing us for this very moment of our journey.

I read a wonderful book a few years ago called A Prayer For Owen Meany. It was a weird book, in a way. After I read it it haunted me for months. (It was a good haunting though!) Basically, the novel was about how God prepares people their entire lives for important moments to come. It explores why people develop interests, take courses, read books and have conversations that move them toward preparation for things they must face at some point but which they might have never imagined on their own. (This is a real biblical notion, of course. Just think of Joseph in the Old Testament!)

Anyway, I was telling my friend, Mark Buckley the other day that I am one of the few pastors I know who is obsessed about mental health. For years I have been reading literature about brain and psychological studies -- even in my spare time. For a long time now, Trish and I have turned to that subject nearly every day. Now we will experience first hand how God heals brains and what we can do to facilitate that healing.

Well, I conclude with some prayers. One, a prayer of thanksgiving for the beautiful moment today in which Trish wrote a complete thought -- with her characteristic humor and intensity. Another prayer is for tomorrow that Trish be spared the need for a tracheotomy; that she will be able to function fully without the ventilator. And finally, another prayer, this one of gratitude for the powerful support of so many caring people all over this nation.

And a request: please keep praying, this battle is not yet won.