The Waves
and where we have been lingering
My mom is like a fish in the water. She jumps into the ocean at Irvine Cove in her classy one piece, gliding through the waves like a supermodel and calling back to me to catch up. I clumsily try to keep up, scenes of Jaws flashing through my mind despite all reason.
It’s only our family on the beach that day–my new husband and I, my mom and Dad, and my grandmother. I’m in the salty water with my mom, watching her bodysurf and attempting to do so myself. While she looks like a glamorous dolphin as she rides the waves, letting them carry her back a few feet each time, I imagine I am more like a puppy learning to swim. My head is above water and I’m not drowning, but it is not a pretty sight. Nothing about it looks natural or at ease.
I continue to fall back a few feet each time and scramble to my feet, barely making it upright before another wave comes and threatens to knock me down. I glance over at my mom–she takes each wave in stride, anticipating its arrival and duration. As each wave carries her back further to the beach, she stands up at the right time, rooting her feet in the sand, and walks back out to the deeper water.
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On Good Friday of this year, my husband was having a horrible headache. After a few hours of thinking it was a migraine, causing his vision to blur and having shimmery, rainbow effects in his periphery, he was starting to feel weak and faint as he stood up. Go to the ER, I told him over the phone, as I drove our boys to swim lessons. That’s what you’d tell your patients, if you responded to a call like this. He’s a paramedic firefighter, and knows the worst possible diagnosis any symptom could be masking. We try not to freak out over medical things in our house–me being a nurse and him a paramedic–but sometimes having seen the one-off scenario that resulted in a life-altering event for so many patients over the years does tend to make us worry.
He heads to the ER and waits. Waits in pain for a CT scan, which shows possible demyelinating lesions (think: MS) and is inconclusive. In the wee hours of the next morning, he has a brain MRI done that shows an ischemic event. A stroke. Small, but undeniable.
We meet with the neurologist in the hospital the next day, who is an absolute saving grace in this whole situation. She explains that he did, in fact, have a small stroke. He has no risk factors for stroke–he is young, extremely cardiovascularly healthy, and fit. However, he was on a medication that can sometimes cause RCVS–reversible cerebral vasospasm. It’s a common med and millions of people are on it. It doesn’t always happen, but this time it did.
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Waiting at home the night before, while he was at the ER, I just prayed for some answers. Please God, let us figure out what’s going on. Some relief came when he was admitted to talk to neurology the next day, even though we didn’t quite understand. Wave 1.
As I sat next to his hospital bed, holding his hand and furiously taking notes while the neurologist spoke, I felt another wave pass over us. Ok, he doesn’t have MS, but he had a stroke. What now?
He was to have more testing before discharge, and follow-up with her in the next couple weeks. We found out he has a PFO (patent foramen ovale) after an echocardiogram was performed–a hole that exists in the left and right atria of the heart. It exists in everyone in utero but most often closes after birth. This puts him at increased risk for more strokes. Follow-up with cardiology is ordered for a more thorough evaluation. Wave 3.
He’s home that night and we are trying to let him rest and discuss the next few days and weeks. Just take a few sets off work, we’ll figure it out. One day at a time.
We’ve since dealt with tests that haven’t been scheduled properly, an unnecessary cath lab procedure (for a PFO that wasn’t there) causing a pulmonary embolism, and now 3 months of modified duty work for him due to being on a blood thinner. We are waiting now on blood tests (that take weeks to result, apparently) that will potentially shed some light on why this could’ve happened, but whose results could also alter the course of his career.
2 months have passed, and I keep waiting for the water to settle. I want to look around at this situation and say, Alright, we made it through that, we’re done.
Instead, in the constant waiting, I find myself praying, How much more, Lord? When will these waves stop coming?
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I want to stand at the shore of my life with calm waters all around me. I long for peace and predictability, or at least the promise of a resolution.
What now, Lord? How do we keep withstanding these seemingly small hits without being discouraged?
Like the still small voice, I feel and hear the answer. It’s almost like I’ve heard this before, grown up hearing it, like it’s deep in my soul but I’m learning it for the first time.
“These words I speak to you are not incidental additions to your life, homeowner improvements to your standard of living. They are foundational words, words to build a life on. If you work these words into your life, you are like a smart carpenter who built his house on solid rock. Rain poured down, the river flooded, a tornado hit—but nothing moved that house. It was fixed to the rock.” (Matthew 7:24-27)
The builder doesn’t look at the weather to determine how to make his house. He faithfully, steadily, stacks brick upon brick of truth. He secures his foundation on the rock. He anticipates many storms but doesn’t live in fear of them.
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The last few years have held some sizable waves. Career changes, the loss of my Dad, multiple hospitalizations of our kiddos for sickness, emergency surgery, back injury for my husband, and more. We are not alone in this–so many others in our world suffer far greater on a daily level, and many we know have been through this and more in terms of trauma and hardship.
But this truth remains: it feels (at times) like we get standing again only to be knocked down in some way or another.
Perhaps the longing for peace and calm waters around us won’t ever fully arrive until Heaven. As Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart, I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)
My eyes need to shift. Shift from the small or large waves crashing around us to the foundation of our house.
Build, build, build. Pray, read, cry, remember, pray again, worship. Hold hands with my husband and look around, marvel at all that God has done and continues to do. Pray for what He is doing that we don’t understand. Ask for grace to walk through it all, one day at a time.
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My mom smiles back at me through the waves. She grew up doing this–it’s in her blood. Her muscles know how to move in the waves to give her confidence and keep her safe. And, she knows how to enjoy it. How to delight in each wave and let it carry her to the shore.
May I be a woman who has the spiritual muscle memory to ride the waves of life as they come, knowing my foundation is secure, knowing my God is with me, and also knowing I cannot anticipate the next one, nor its outcome. All I can do is build my foundation deeper each and every day, lingering in the love of Jesus while waiting on the realities of this world.
Photo by Chris Chan on Unsplash
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This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Linger."
