Aw, Ma-a-an!

If you have followed my writings on the blogosphere for the past year, you know that I had a nasty accident last fall that resulted in surgery on my clavicle (collar bone). Fixing that thin little bone actually required a bone graft off of my hip. I can summarize that whole experience in one short word: Ow.

I got around in a wheelchair for a while, then walked with a cane, then finally worked my way to walking upright. (I'm not speaking metaphorically here.) I slept in a sling for six weeks. (I wanted to burn that thing when we were finished.) I couldn't drive for six weeks, so my students and friends and family members carted me all over creation. But eventually I started swimming and regained most of the use of my arm. And my church provided meals for onetwothreefourfivesix weeks.

Now, the story does not end there. Last month I went to see my ortho trauma surgeon for what I thought was going to be a final x-ray. ("Buh-bye!") Yet to my utter surprise the film showed that the plate holding me together had shifted. Ba-a-ad news. Stunning news.

We decided to take a "wait and see" approach.

Well, today was the day of reckoning. When the doc walked into the room after viewing my new films, he shook my hand and said, "When?" As in "When's a good time for you to have surgery?" Only this time, he said, we get to take bone off the pelvis. He and his nurse told me they like me and the patients they like, well, they find ways to keep seeing us. Very funny.

I told him I'm speaking in Munich next month and that I canceled on the group last year and would really like to actually make it this time before scalpel-and-saw time. He said okay.

Afterward, when we were alone, the nurse asked what I was teaching, and I told her it was a women's retreat. She thought that was cool and asked the subject. I told her I was talking about Esther and some other women and that all this meant I was actually going to have to live what I teach. Life has a way of requiring that, doesn't it? (The message of Esther is that God is in control.)

So there I am, standing at the desk paying, thinking about how I really do believe in God's sovereignty, when I glance up and see a post-it-note on the receptionist's wall. What I read nearly made me cry. Nothing fancy. Just six simple but profound words: Jesus loves you; Jesus te amo.