Honesty and Shower Drains and Slowing Down

It's Sunday. 

The beginning of a new week.

This time it's the beginning of a new month.

The beginning of a new season.

After the week I just had, I like the thought of looking ahead to new things.

Laying in a hospital bed hooked up to an IV is not how I planned on spending my week.

It was so shocking, so unexpected. 

(See this blog post about my last hospitalization. I could write the same thing all over again.)

For the first half of my hospital stay, I lived in denial, numbing myself to truly feeling what was happening.

By Thursday, when I was getting worse again, I was losing my mind.

Lies upon lies about myself, about life, about God were swirling around in my head nonstop. 

I was terrified to stop and feel what was happening because I knew it would involve a lot of tears.

Being honest with God went hand in hand with being honest with myself. And because of the lies and anger I was facing, that was also on the list of "I don't want to do this".

But Thursday late afternoon, I got in the shower so the nurses and doctors and chaplains and surgeons and PA's and gift shop people and lab people and just everyone would leave me alone.

And I gave in to the tears.

There was swearing and praying and punching the shower wall and crumbling onto the shower floor.

Did I mention the tears?

But most importantly, there was honesty.

Honesty about way more than was going on in the hospital and in my body.

Honesty about things I didn't even know I needed to be honest about.

So much more than leg hairs and soap suds got washed down that shower drain in hospital room 4623.

Life gets so crazy and busy and insane and the important things like honesty and being still and prayer get shoved off the platter.

And that is so. not. right.

It's not healthy on so many levels.

Sometimes I'm so stupid that it takes being knocked flat on my back in a hospital bed in order to wake me up out of the funk of over-busyness.

And I am not proud of that.

I firmly believing in giving everything I have, serving with all my heart, working hard and to the best of my ability, playing really hard, and being completely sold out for Christ.

But I'm learning that I can't do that unless I take care of myself and take time to be still. It is just not possible.

Here is to taking time to make a menu, go grocery shopping, cook, and eat healthy (not just takeout and protein bars).

Here is to going running and taking time for circuit training and weights.

Here is to getting eight hours of sleep.

Here is to having a few weeknights and weekends with nothing on the calendar.

Here is to taking time to be quiet and still.

Here is to sitting down and reading or writing.

Here is to actually digging into the Bible and praying my way through it.

Here is to candles and bubble baths and a bit of wine.

This is not going to be easy. I don't suddenly have less to do. Heck, every weekend in September already has something on the calendar (all-weekend things, mind you).

But here is to making it happen anyway. 

Here is what I have seen: It is a good and fitting for one to eat and drink, and to enjoy the good of all his labor in which he toils under the sun all the days of his life which God gives him; for it is his heritage. 

(Ecclesiastes 5:18)