A Miracle

Its four o’clock in the morning and Wes has had another very restless night.  It started last night when he took another fall, fortunately he did not hurt himself but it’s always the reminder of how much weaker he is becoming.  For his safety they have attached the alarm to his gown again so that if he sits up and even attempts to stand the alarm will go off and the nurses come running.  It’s a nice invention to protect the safety of the patient, the only problem is that with Wes being so very restless he has set it off numerous times throughout the night.  I’m pretty sure our nurses don’t need a gym membership.

So, I’m sitting here with him and just thinking…about miracles.  What does a miracle really look like?  And what defines a miracle?  Does it need to literally be something miraculous or can it be found in the everyday?  I believe it can be both.

In the grand scheme of things we had a miracle that lasted 9 years.  When Wes was diagnosed back in 2008 our world fell apart, but the church immediately surrounded and they prayed and they continued to pray.  The community prayed.  It didn’t seem to matter who I met on the street and some people I didn’t even know all that well, assured me they were praying.

And Wes made it through his brain surgery, then radiation and chemo and he survived.  And we lived well.  We travelled, we built relationships, we worked, we got a daughter-in-law, we were blessed with grandbabies, we laughed, we cried, we spent quality time as a family, we worshiped, we had a lot of conversations.

We really lived.

A 9 year miracle – thank you God!

Last week our pastor, Dan Doerksen came to see Wes.  The first time he came Wes was sleeping so Dan and I talked quietly beside him and at the end of our conversation Dan asked if there was something specific that I would like him to pray for and I said, “I would like to have just one more real conversation with Wes!”

And Dan prayed for a miracle.

Dan said he wanted to come back one day when Wes was awake and so I promised to text him to let him know so he could speak with him.  That Friday we connected again and I text him the time that I thought Wes would be awake.  Dan arrived later that afternoon and Wes was awake and alert for his visit.  Dan sat beside Wes and spoke words of affirmation to him, thanking him for being the man that he was and then he expressed the ways in which he knew Wes to be a kind and generous man.  Wes lay there and listened and then Dan prayed with us.  We all held hands and Dan spoke a beautiful prayer.  Our hands released at the end of the prayer but when Dan pulled away Wes’ hand kept reaching for him.  I tapped Dan on the arm and said, “He wants you to take his hand” and he did.  Wes no longer had any words to share, but, his hands and his hugs and his eyes would often express what his mouth no longer could.

A couple of days after Dan had prayed for the miracle of a conversation Wes and I were alone and for a short while he was quite wide awake.  He kept looking at me and once in a while he would open and close his mouth and I knew he wanted to say something.  So, I waited patiently.  If there’s one thing I FINALLY learned after 33 years of marriage it is to be patient and let Wes gather his thoughts.  That’s taken a long time! Over the years I would often run over him with my own words when I thought he wasn’t expressing himself fast enough and more often than not I thought I knew what he wanted to say and he would get frustrated and tell me, “No!  That’s not what I was going to say!” 

So, over the past few weeks I have learned to wait.

Wes tried to speak, over and over but the words just could not come.  I finally took his hand and said, “I really wish we could talk.”  He nodded and tried again. Nothing but a sigh.  Finally I asked, “Do you want to talk about the boys?” He shook his head no, “Do you want to talk about the business?”  Again a quick shake of his head. “Do you want to talk about us?” A fast nod, yes.

So again I waited.

Then he put his hand on my shoulder and rubbed circles almost as if he was comforting me and finally he said, “Wish ha hands” and I looked at him.  Wish ha hands?  As I was trying to decipher what he meant his hand tightened on my shoulder and I looked up at him.  Again those eyes of his contained such a powerful message if only I could unlock the code to extract it!  And then the miracle came.  The clearest he had spoken in the past number of days came in that moment.

“I love you!”

And it wasn’t said in an off the cuff sort of way that we sometimes did.  Every word came out crystal clear and it was the tone, the inflection in how he spoke the words that made it so special.  He smiled as the tears rolled  for both of us and I climbed into bed beside him and he wrapped his arms around me and we held each other as tight as we could.  That is the last time I heard him speak those words that clearly.

And I had received my miracle.

God knew that a long conversation was not what we really needed, even though it’s what I thought I wanted.  And it wasn’t just the words themselves but how he spoke them.  Anyone who knows Wes knows that boy is no drama queen and he’s not going to say anything to you he doesn’t mean and he’s not going to go all Clark Gable on you and make it dramatic.  But the way he spoke those words, I think, would have made any woman swoon.  Not sure if women actually swoon anymore, but, if they did this would have been the moment they did it.

And so in the stillness of this restless night I decided to contemplate miracles.  Not do they exist, not what constitutes a miracle and not the definition of a miracle, but I’m sitting here with a very thankful heart knowing God’s still performing them.

Oh, and the “wish ha hands” part?  I thought of it a few hours later, I wondered if he meant, “wish I had words”

He did.