There is a tangible restlessness inside.  A flitter-flutter of wanna be activity.  My eyes rest on a stack of magazines I’m too tired to read.  The flowers need new water.  Thank You notes sit folded in a box.  But the smallest of movements and I am reminded.  The little strips of tape pulling at the skin around my neck.  The ache inside my throat…it feels like I’m choking.

I can’t sleep.  Not well anyway.  I so badly want to lay on my side.  I’m having actual visions of what it would look like to lie flat again.  My bed has become an almost mirage…minus the stack of pillows it takes to keep me upright.

It’s been five days since the surgery.  Five seems like fifty and I no longer care what time it is.  The need for hurry has vanished, along with the necessity of getting dressed.

I look back on the past few days and feel as if I’m peering through a glass of milk.  What I remember holds hands with what I’ve dreamed, and everything feels like a blur.

I’m surprised at how easily the tears come. Sometimes they’re quiet, sneaking their way down my cheeks.  Other times give way to noise.  But all throughout the day and night they seem poised, ready to fall.  And since I have nowhere to be, I allow it.

I don’t know what I was expecting…easier, perhaps?  It’s funny how we form preconceived ideas, plotting the way something will turn out.  We do it even when we don’t mean to.  And then we get to other side of whatever it is, and we’re stumped.  Confounded by either the ease of it all, or the difficulty.

Honestly, I’m a little dumbfounded by the difficulty.  Every single thing about this entire process has been harder than I thought.  But I suppose it’s a perfect metaphor for life in general, and definitely indicative of the healing process as a whole.  Nothing about healing is easy, am I right?

In the middle of the uneasy though, the Lord has been generous with His grace.

Family and friends have opened the front door and loved me with their presence and His, filling my fridge (and my belly) with Jello, ice cream and soup.  Cards have found a home in my mailbox while flowers set up residence on my dining room table.

And earlier today, I heard the sounds that always make me smile.  My favorite sounds….the ones that took me by surprise the first time I heard them in this house.  The ringing of church bells…always my reminder of God’s love and attention to detail.

I heard them ring today, the minute I stepped outside.

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