This morning I feel like a cartoon character, sort of like Wile E. Coyote in free fall, still going down but not having landed yet! (And somewhere, in the distance, I’m positive the Road Runner is standing there at the edge of the cliff, laughing at me. Beep, beep!) I’ve been up and down these last couple of days (Friday and Saturday), and I’m not sure yet which side is winning. Mentally, I’m solid, but physically I’m wavering back and forth, with glimpses of both the good and the bad. Yesterday morning I got up feeling good; though it was broken in the middle, I had gotten two good three hour chunks of sleep, nearly six hours. Testing the limits, I found I could even walk a little without the walker. I took a shower and then kept going, with the inevitable downturn coming not long after. It just felt so darned good to be moving upright under my own steam that I didn’t want to stop.
Of course I did stop later, but not until we’d gone to see Dr. Freeman to check on my progress (excellent!), and then visited Walgreen’s for a few things we needed. I managed to shop (with the walker) for probably half an hour, which was my first time in a store in over two months. (It’s the little things that count in life, isn’t it?) From there we came home, had a small lunch, and lazed around for a little while before my second massage at 4:00 PM. The day had grown really hot and it began to drag me down, as heat usually does. After another wonderful massage, Paul and I decided to go to the hotel where the Clinic member’s food was being kept (we’d paid for a two times a day food plan that’s made for sore-mouthed clients!)
Once there, we visited with several other members of the Clinic (including Dr. Huggins) who stopped in over the course of the evening for supper. Tonight’s meal, besides the obligatory deviled eggs, was Pumpkin Pie soup. Well, that wasn’t what it was called, but that’s what it tasted like: Thanksgiving in a bowl! I was told there was turkey in it too, but all I could taste was the pumpkin and it’s holiday spices! If I could have whipped up some cream for the top, it would have been perfect! There was roast beef and spinach soup too, which I had a few spoonfuls of, but it didn’t hold a candle to the pumpkin. But you would have thought we were all nuts, putting butter and cream in or on everything. Since eggs, butter, cream, and salt are essential to our recoveries (something I really can’t go into here and now) we put it on nearly everything. I don’t think we’re nuts though, because the evening muscle twitches I’ve been dealing with since even longer than last September have almost completely stopped, and that’s something good too.
So today I’m feeling like it’s Thanksgiving, and I know whom I thankful to, even in free fall. If there’s an echo of ‘beep, beep’ in my ears, that doesn’t matter either. God is able, and He never pushes you off a cliff unless He’s already prepared a safe landing below. Either that or my father, like an eagle, has finally decided to teach one of His babies how to fly.
Like an eagle that rouses her chicks,
and hovers over its young,
so He spread His wings to take them in,
And carried them aloft on His pinions,
The LORD alone guided them. . . Deuteronomy 32:11–12 (NLT)
I once read a commentary about that verse, and it’s stuck with me. A mother eagle actually pushes her chick out of the nest when it’s ready, but then she flies beneath it to make sure she’s right below if help is needed.
For me now, looking at things from that angle, I’d have to say that free fall is beginning to look pretty good.