JIM HAS OPEN HEART SURGERY

Strange feelings in my chest and arms during workouts for about a month.
But it comes and goes, so not to worry.
Then one day on the elliptical machine I think, “I better stop.”
That’s not me, but it was wisdom speaking.
Probably saved my life.
Checked myself into the emergency room to avoid endless referrals.
First, it is low potassium.
Great! Two pills and I am out of here.
Then, a stress test isn’t quite right.
Angiogram shows too many partial blocks to stint.
Need open heart surgery.
Meet Doc Walker – a 70 year old vet who knows what he is doing.
Everyone says he is the best.
Says he won’t retire, because he loves what he is doing.
So he continues what he loves to save others to do what they love.
They wheel me in for surgery and…
Bamb!
Doc Walker drives his truck over me. I am crushed under all eighteen wheels. I become road kill with meat seeking buzzards and crows circling overhead. Then he saws me in two, stops my heart for hours, takes veins out of my leg, and gives me six bypasses.
When I come to, he asks me how I am feeling!
Are you kidding, Doc?
I feel like I have been crushed under an eighteen wheeler.
I asked Doc Walker when he gets a break in an eight-hour surgery. He joked, “Oh, we just turn up the morphine and go out for cocktails.” So I am taking him a letter of thanks,and a small bottle of Jack Daniels, you know, like you get on the airplane, so he won’t drink too much and be smashed.

Recovery starts. Sleepless nights watching the second hand tick, boring TV, too drugged up to read, so God puts me on a fast–track.
One ICU nurse says I am recovering faster than anyone she has seen.
Out of the hospital in four days.
Everything hurts. It hurts to swallow where that tube was, where they took the veins out of my leg, where they cut me in two, but I am getting a little better each day.
Eleven days out now and on my way with a black and blue right leg and a zipper down my chest wearing those ugly knee socks.
They shaved the whole front of my body. I look like the great white whale!
It hurts to look at the mirror. Ugh!
But it looks like the old man will be around a few years longer to write for you and point you to His unconditional grace.
Here’s the really good part.
While I am getting physically healthy, something mystical happened in my spirit.
I feel closer to everyone around me.
Reenie has been a magnificent nurse and we are closer than we have ever been.
Michelle came from Phoenix to organize diet and drugs.
Our girls call constantly.
Friendships are more valuable than ever.
Even strangers climb into my heart.
God softened and deepened my heart spiritually while I wasn’t looking or even trying.
Just like Him.
When we try real hard to make it happen, it doesn’t.
When we least expect it, He makes it happen.
It’s all by grace.
During rehab I read Brennan Manning’s, “All is grace, A Ragamuffin Memoir,” and close with his words:
“God has put up a “Gone Fishing” sign on the religion shop. He has done the whole job in Jesus once and for all and simply invited us to believe it—to trust the bizarre, unprovable proposition that in him, every last person on earth is already home free without a single religious exertion: no fasting till your knees fold, no prayers you have to get right or else, no standing on your head with your right thumb in your left ear and reciting the correct creed—no nothing.… The entire show has been set to rights in the Mystery of Christ—even though nobody can see a single improvement. Yes, it’s crazy. And yes, it’s wild, and outrageous, and vulgar. And any God who would do such a thing is a God who has no taste. And worst of all, it doesn’t sell worth beans. But it is Good News—the only permanently good news there is—and therefore I find it absolutely captivating.”