Let's end this series by talking about what we learned. Life is a big learning opportunity and our experiences can be a classroom, if we listen to the instructor and learn. There are certainly exams in life and I want to pass the exams instead of fail them.
Here's what I learned:
1. God is God and I am not. He is in control and He is So Good and Faithful. He helps us to walk through difficult times and is there to carry us when we can't muster the strength to walk. I realize that it is easy to say this now, but even if this had not turned out like it did, God would have seen us through this and would have given us what we need to survive.
2. Family and Friends are more important than silver or gold. During this ordeal our family and our friends mobilized on our behalf, sending cards, money, flowers, texts, emails, feeding our animals, making meals for us, coming to visit us in the ICU waiting room even when we couldn't see them. They cried with us, they shared our burden, they were there for us during the storm. When the storm passed, they praised God with us.
3. There is Power in Prayer. This dovetails with #2. Our family and friends are prayer warriors. When Tricia needed it the most, people prayed. These precious saints called other people to pray. People across the nation and (thanks to the Internet) across the world prayed.
4. Miracles still occur. I am a big skeptic. Things like this always happen to 'other people.' This time it happened to me. Right before my eyes. The doctors still don't know what caused this. They sent her home on no medicine. I think they realize that perhaps all the medicine they threw at her didn't heal her. God is still in the miracle business.
5. I love my wife even more than I thought I did. We have been married for 26 years, 8 months, and 28 days, or looked at another way, for 9,768 days. The thought of losing her shook me, scared me, and made me realize that I love her much more than I even thought I did and I already knew I loved this woman.
6. Cherish life - take nothing for granted - say what needs to be said. Things happen fast. It seemed that things went from bad to worse and before I knew it, Tricia was on a ventilator, sedated and unresponsive, unable to communicate. I realized that I didn't have time to communicate things that I wanted to say in the time that I needed to say them. Don't let that ever catch you by surprise.
7. Plan - and communicate your plans. We are planning people. Every Sunday after lunch, we have a family tradition we've been doing for years in which we put coffee on, get out some good chocolate and our whole family sits in the "parlor" with a calendar and goes over everything that is going on in the upcoming week. I realized that we haven't exactly planned appropriately. Although this is morbid talk, I didn't know where Tricia wants to be buried, what songs she wants sung at her funeral, where the passwords are to all the accounts and websites.
8. It is So important to be a member of a loving church. We sing a song at church that says, "I'm so glad, I'm a part of the Family of God..." Our little country church is small in number, but big on love and giving and praying.
9. Pass On the Love. 2 Corinthians 1:4 says, "who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God." We aspire to be to others as those people were to us during our time of need.
I was going to end this list with 10, but I began thinking about #9 more and I think I ought to stop there. Besides, in Scripture, the number 9 is the number of finality. I think that is a good way to end this three part series - with finality. We'll be back tomorrow with a new topic.
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