A Jon Post
Some times it feels like a week flies by but took forever to do it. It’s a weird sensation actually. I’m looking back at this week and it felt long (temperatures at or above 100° with coastal humidity that simply cannot be escaped make time slow to a crawl), but when I think about the days and how many there were it seems like they rocketed by. We’ve been splitting our time between two hospitals instead of the normal one. The extra hospital has been some unplanned appointments where we will be having Anaya. There have been some small concerns about high and low heart rates but by the end of the week she settled down and Anaya’s heart rate was at a steady and healthy level.
We took our guitar to the hospital with us this week. We’ve decided to add music as a regular part of how we bring the love of Christ to people there. We sang some English worship songs that we attempted to translate and sing in Portuguese with our friends there. As we continue we hope to add some Portuguese and Shangaan (the tribal language of this area) worship songs to our list of songs we sing with the patients. When someone is close to death they are rarely capable of conversation and we hope that singing the love of Christ to/over them can bring peace and rest where there is only suffering and pain.
“Show me how you shuffle those cards” he asked with a smile. “I want to learn that”. I smiled back and remembered him teaching me a strange little card game yesterday (sort of a mix between War and Rummy). I had picked up the cards in the middle of the game and offhandedly shuffled them during the game. He had noticed.
His request came at a good time because I had been sitting next to his bed asking the Lord what I should talk to him about next. I had been running out of ideas and suddenly he wanted to learn to shuffle cards.
“Hold them like this…” I began, and spent the next hour laughing, shuffling, and hopefully… just for a bit… helping lighten the load of living in a room surrounded by men dying of the same sickness living in him.
Just by teaching him to shuffle cards.
So Valentine’s Day is tomorrow. I really do like Valentine’s Day. I kind of look at like a challenge.
There are two days per year that I have stark memories of since I’ve married Layne: Valentine’s Day and our Wedding Anniversary.
I hope… I really really hope that I keep making specific, stark memories with her for those two days every year for the rest of my life.
The challenge is finding that thing that I can do with her that I will remember. I also try to give her a gift, not diamond earrings, not flowers, but something specific to her and to the memory that we can keep and look back on.
Tomorrow is a good day. I get to make memories with my wife. Nothing could be sweeter.