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!