Hatchspace

5 de Julio 2008

What does it mean to ride on the 4th of July?

So Josh sent out the note - offering a early morning ride on the fourth of July. He challenged

We are changing things up this week and doing an all-American ride on
Friday morning (instead of a non-American ride on Saturday morning). So,
I submit to you a contest: Come up with the most American route for a
new ride. The winner will lead us on it.

I responded:

To be All American I think the route needs to take in cannons and biscuits - violence and overconsumption, victory and bounty, the agony of defeat and the thrill of a grits and gravy, the haunting memory of gunshot and the prospect of heavenly praising.

In other words - lets do the battlefield loop and finish by praising the lord.

We started before the sun. Five of us off shortly after 6.

Rode through the country - this land that we love to explore and expose...
.

Then to the Park. The battlefield where so many lost their lives defending different ways of understanding what this country means. Where it is hard to imagine the grit of war when the pastoral is so lush and the riding so cool and refreshing..

.

Then on into the city. A different sort of riding.

Our anticipated southern overconsumption was dashed by someone else's concept of a holiday. What? How can freedom mean that? Its just not American... We couldn't praise the lord and thank him for this country. Oh well.

We felt we could park next door despite the sign.
Jeff had us covered with the super hair.
.

So that was it. 45 miles of American glory. Happy fourth of July. Thanks for the riding.

On a personal note, this weekend represents a different form of celebration for me. After the first four months of the year each having some heart episode. Today I celebrated 3 months with no heart episodes. I haven't gone to the emergency room, I haven't had to struggle with the anxiety of wondering every day. The reality of my heart condition is still very present, but today is a wonderful milestone of freedom. And I'm grateful. I'm grateful that I can hug my kids, climb my stairs, kiss my wife, pray to my God and ride my bike. Life is rich. Life is good. Free.

| By rob | 11:00 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

6 de Marzo 2008

Memoir - Chapter 10: Three incidents in February

Lots has happened in the last 4 weeks. Lots of items that I haven’t really thought through or confronted emotionally. This will be an accounting of the facts and a more general introduction to emotional themes. I really need to come back to some of these themes and reflect on them more deeply.

1. February 6: A Wednesday morning. I got up at 5:45 a.m. and rode to work. It was really cold, but a great ride. I jumped back on my bike that evening and started hammering home. I had been on the bike 5 minutes and was riding down McCallie avenue when I felt the buzzing faintness, blurred vision and dizziness that was all too familiar. I got off the street as soon as I could. And there on the sidewalk the defibrillator shocked me 3 times. I called Marialice and she came to get me. We ate dinner and then went to the ER. By the time she arrived in the car I was feeling fine.

I met with Dr Salerno that week and he suggested that the incidents I have had are connected with the beginning of exercise. The heart works very hard at the beginning of exercise, before the blood system gets warmed up and is ready to send more volume to the muscles. It seems that this initial period is where I have problems. So the plan is to warm up more carefully, and to take some more intensive adrenaline blockers ½ hour before exercise to control heart rate in that risk period.

As a result of Dr Salerno’s recommendation and my understanding of the emotional impact on Marialice, I decided after that to stop riding to work on McCallie avenue. I have not yet worked through the emotional impact of this decision, but it’s the end of something that has defined me for the last 5 years.

2. February 15: I read about a Friday lunch ride up Suck Creek Mountain. This seemed like a great first ride back. It was with good friends who knew my condition, and it would be a chance to test the “warm up plan”. Well I didn’t get a chance to follow the plan. The deck seemed stacked against me. I left the more aggressive medication in the truck and so couldn’t take it ½ hour before my planned exercise. I got several last minute phone calls and so wasn’t able to leave the office with enough time to get changed, and warmed up at the Y before we rode out. And then I rushed out of the office building and up the stairs into the parking garage. As I walked back to my truck, I could tell I was breathing hard (to soon to fast) and by the time I got to my truck the dizzy, sweaty feeling returned. I had driven 15 feet when the defibrillator shocked me. I pulled into the nearest parking spot, called Marialice and walked slowly back into the office.

I felt stupid for not being able to follow the plan, for not doing the things I knew would be required to avoid the heart problem. I knew the plan, but couldn’t follow it.

I also felt really angry at the limitations this reality seem to impose. Can’t I fly up 2 flights of stairs on a whim? Will I be able to chase down my kids if I need to? Can I not be the fairly strong, active person I have always been? I started taking the elevator at work more consistently, changing yet another item of fairly significant personal identity. Even though I worked on the 5th floor, I always took the stairs. Now, even two flights of stairs seems too much – I take the elevator.

I haven’t gotten back on the bike since that day. 3 weeks. That is a long time for me…

3. February 19: On my way to work in my truck I was overcome with a sense of dizzy congestion, sweaty palms, short breath, warmth around the defibrillator. I started to panic, expecting to get shocked. I didn’t and it passed. I wondered whether I should just go to the ER, but made it to work and walked slowly into the office. But once I had been at my desk for 15 minutes it returned. I asked Melanie Roberts to walk with my to the medical facility. They could find nothing wrong with me, but recognized the reaction I was having. I was pale, shaking, sweaty. We called the ambulance, as no-one could face the risk of going by myself. I had to call Marialice again. She cried.

At the ER the waves of dizziness increased, and became worse. They grew into a buzzing feeling in my chest and abdomen, a difficulty speaking and finally, a visual aura that I normally associate with a migraine. Marialice tells me that during this time I was as intense as she has ever seen me, trying to communicate every symptom and feeling, almost as if no one believed what was going on.

The doctors could not find any source of problem. My heart was running fine, except for its normal funky thumping (Premature ventricular contraction). The defibrillator had not done anything (even the pacing function that I can’t detect). They gave me an anti-nausea / migraine shot and that seemed to solve all the problems. But we still don’t know what happened.

Marialice told me later that day that she wondered whether it was a panic attack. That was hard to hear because it made me doubt my own sanity. I haven’t tried to worry too much about the implications. But it is again evidence of weakness, of a lack of physical control over my own situation. Just as I have known I am powerless to know and control my emotions, I am now feeling powerless to know and control my body. Lord help me.

The experience has given me a new sense of self awareness, knowledge of when to simply take a deep breath and move on, and when to be more concerned. Its been pretty regular since then to feel a sudden change, and jump thinking its my heart – jump right into a panic, almost right into the sense that I am being shocked. I’m starting to be able to recognize those moments and breathe through them, rather than let them overwhelm me. Again though – it feels like I can’t trust my body, or maybe my mind.

Again we went to the doctors, and again they discussed more radical treatment – expanded medication, riskier surgery, other diseases that may be causing this. More uncertainty, more questions of control.

A theme throughout this is losing control. I feel like I'm losing the sense we all want of being able to control my own fate. I am not able to be and do what I want. I fight that new reality with anger and insolence. But it is a reality.

| By rob | 10:33 PM | TrackBack (0)

Memoir - Chapter 9: A theme from scripture

Note: This is part of a larger series. Start here to read the whole thing.

Several weeks ago on Sunday I was struck with amazing force by the scriptures. with messages that hit me hard.

In the gospel of Mark the story is told of Jesus and his disciples on an ocean crossing:

On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, "Let us go across to the other side." And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with him. And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they woke him and said to him, "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, "Peace! Be still!" And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. He said to them, "Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?" And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, "Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?"

I heard this in a Sunday School class, and it struck me how completely I identified with the disciples. Christ has called me to a path, and along that path has brought this great storm into my life. I am in the midst of a storm and I really need Jesus to show up. I need to see the clarity of the quiet sky on the horizon behind the storm, but Jesus is asleep on a pillow in the stern. Silent, Absent, Un-voicing. And so I cry out against him, accusing, recriminating: “Don’t you care about me?” or maybe truer “I don’t feel you care for me, you almost kill me and then you don’t do anything..” That is where I am.

After calming the storm, Jesus turns to his disciples and asks why they fear, whether they still have faith. These are pretty amazing and difficult questions. In the face of death, rocked by a storm... fear.... faith? It seems so very normal to be consumed by fear and have not faith. But I think what Jesus is getting at in that comment is that in a storm our call needs to be “help me in this moment of need!”

What keeps me in anger rather than breaking down in need. Is it maybe because there is not enough fear? Am I rightfully aware of the fear in my heart toward what might lie ahead, or is my fear aroused when I face the truth of my savior? When everything in my heart wants to cower in fear, or shutter itself in isolation I am being asked about my faith, about my willingness to step out in trust, asking for help. I fear that! What if nothing happens. I fear that.

So I continue identified in my storm, identified in my angry recriminations, conscious of my faithless fear, asking God to help me believe, asking for an end to my unbelief.

| By rob | 10:26 PM | TrackBack (0)

18 de Febrero 2008

Memoir - Chapter 8: Emotional Differences

Note: This is part of a larger series. Start here to read the whole thing.

One of the hardest things about my recovery has been the widely different emotional reactions that Marialice and I have had facing this time.

The experience itself was very different for each of us. I did not have to be ushered out of a room, where my beloved spouse was in trauma while emergency doctors prepared to perform emergency measures. I didn’t have to face the chance I’d never see my spouse alive again. I did not have to give that spouse up again 3 times, watching him wheeled down the hall to the uncertain destination of surgery. Nor did I have the joy of return, of being reunited with that person I gave up for lost (or feared might be lost). I didn’t face the same terrors and I didn’t rejoice with the same gratitude.

When I came home from the hospital, while I was grappling with weakness and illness, angry at new limitations, Marialice had the joy of seeing again one she thought lost. She was experiencing Christ’s love in my salvation. I wanted her to share my grief and she wanted me to experience the rejoicing. I wanted her to feel my pain and she wanted me to feel the love of Christ.

We weren’t on the same page.

And the differences have continued in the last few months. I think Marialice has given me up every time I leave the house on the bike. She asked me not to ride alone, or to ride on the main streets to work. And yet I have persisted, returning to old habits that had really become part of who I am. So every time I leave, Marialice has faced a little bit of the fear I might not return, and grieved my loss for that moment.

I on the other hand, have ridden off in joy, in exuberance and gratitude at the return of an activity that I love so much, something that is really part of me. I have been the one feeling the rush of riding and the possibility of strength.

We haven’t been on the same page.

In our marriage it has been hard to see through each others eyes. In the presence of these differences it is so easy to silence ourselves in our own worlds rather than face each other. It has always been hard to communicate our emotions strongly and honestly in the midst of difference’s discomfort. It has been far too easy merely to capitulate or disagree “Oh you are right…let’s not face this difference” “Oh, that’s not what you feel, it must be this way.” Neither have been helpful.

We’ve been prone to back away, to leave each other alone in the midst of our own emotions. We’ll touch briefly the differences we face in a quiet moment, or late at night when we are going to bed, but our normal behavior is to stay in front of the computer or dive deep into a book and not face each other. That has made our work difficult.

The story continues toward greater connection and communication, but that is another chapter.

| By rob | 10:00 AM | TrackBack (0)

14 de Febrero 2008

Memoir - Chapter 7: Where is God in all of this?

Note: This is part of a larger series. Start here to read the whole thing.

In July of last year I wrote:

Lord I need you today. I want to feel your presence in my life. I want to know your love. I want to hear your voice showing me where to go and what to do. I feel the despair of Psalm 42 today. I long for my God. I say why have you forgotten me? Then comes rushing in the answers. Some voices say “You don’t deserve to hear my voice because you haven’t been disciplined enough” other voices say “don’t you see the way you’ve been lead and cared for and protected all these years? Is that not voice enough?” But the truth of Romans 8 speaks into the lies of the first answer. I will never be good enough for your love. Will your promise of no condemnation be kept for me today? The second statement is true enough, but Lord, I want more! I am grateful for all the ways you guide and protect. But I feel myself to be merely floating, never really passionate for you and for your work. I feel myself to be existing, not loved, cynical not engaged, distant and not dearly loved. You know this has been my life long feeling and so this is not some “Dry spell” but is this the normal experience? Lord I ask and I do not hear your voice answering.

There grew in me after that moment an anger – a challenge to God. Why are you silent? Why is there so little demonstrable change in my life? I’ve long wanted God to show up in a dramatic way that would expose my need for him in significant way, producing some transformative catharsis. My following has always been marked by the frustrating lack of God’s presence. I’ve always wanted God to break down the walls of my heart, and give me a powerful demonstration of his love.

I did not expect him to take my request so literally in October.

What I really wanted was the powerful experience of God’s love expressed to me in such a way as to clear my life of what might be inconsequential and motivate toward true discipleship, that would fill me with the boldness of true love, that would enable me toward risky love of the radical sort, that would help me to focus on what was really important and urgent in this life.

Or maybe I’ll put the whole issue more naturalistically, in the words of Steve Jobs:

I’ve looked in the mirror every morning, and asked myself; if today were the last day of my life would I want to do what I’m about to do today. Whenever the answer has been no for to many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything, all external expectation, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure; these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I’ve found to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked, there is no reason not to follow your heart.

So I experienced the physical trauma – the sort you might expect to shake things up – the sort you might expect to produce the sort of cathartic experience I have long desired. I experienced a near death experience – the kind you read about and hear that changed peoples lives.

But facing death has not given me the clarity of vision or purpose, it has not shown me the dead weight, or the true calling. Being saved from near death has not given me a deep and renewed experience of God’s love and transforming power. I feel very much the same crusty and lukewarm man. It has not produced in me the cathartic experience I yearned for. And so I’ve remained angry at the absence of God in all this. I think you’ve heard that in my words.

| By rob | 9:30 PM | TrackBack (0)

29 de Enero 2008

Memoir - Chapter 6: Getting Kicked in the Chest

Note: This is part of a larger series. Start here to read the whole thing.

For Thanksgiving this year we drove to Peoria Il, to Marialice’s family. I took the mountain bike. Peoria has some great trails in the hills that climb out of the Illinois river valley. There was an organized ride on Saturday that I wanted to join. But I wanted to escape the cramped house on Black Friday and I didn’t want to shop. So I put my bike on the back of the van and drove to the forest preserve.

I got dressed, put the bike together and rode up the double track dirt road. It followed a creek up a tight valley, past fields and through trees. In about 10 minutes the road went through the creek 3 times. I was enjoying a cool sunny day in the woods. My pace was leisurely, I wasn’t out to be rushed or work hard. I was looking for side trails I might explore, thinking I’d get to a group of trails I’d seen the last time I rode in the preserve. I wanted to circle them all the way back to the bottom of the valley.

Right after the third creek crossing I stood up to push myself out of the ford bottom. Suddenly I noticed a strange dizziness, a light-headed absence. I felt no pain, no darkness, no lack of balance, I just knew something wasn’t right. I barely had time to identify the strangeness when my chest exploded. The shock hit me hard, it pushed the air out of my chest, I saw stars and felt warm. I didn’t fall off my bike. As I pedaled slowly trying to figure out what was going on - it hit me again. I took off my glove to try to get a pulse. With my fingers on my throat I felt the pulse slow and steady, but then it wasn’t there… BAM! It fired again. I got shocked 5 times.

I stopped and stood up over the bike and took a deep breath. A million questions running in my head. I realized that no one was around me. I heard other riders in the woods, but how long would it be before someone found me? I didn’t know if I had the cell phone in my back pocket. But did I even have coverage? Was this a malfunction of the defibrillator or was something going on in my heart? Was I an idiot or just unlucky?

I turned around and slowly, very slowly pedaled back down the valley. Through the three creeks and back up to the van. As I was putting the bike back on the van another woman was putting her bike together. Instead of asking her for help I made petty small talk about it being a beautiful day to ride. What would she do if she knew? I started to steel myself - no one should know about this. I started convincing myself I was ok. I wonder what I looked like. Was I white as a ghost?

I drove to the nearest town, slowly, but surely. I called the family when I got to the grocery store. I got the grocery list before talking to Marialice. “Hon, I need you to know something. It went off. I just needed to tell you.” I explained the incident and shared her grief. We hung on the phone for a long time while I wandered through the aisles. We talked about how hard this felt, to have been given the green light, and then have it snatched away. A darker side of this reality began to emerge. What could I really do? Was the bike riding really being taken away?

We found later that my heart had been in arrhythmia. It had jumped up to 230 beats per minute five times in a row, and every time the defibrillator had jammed it back down to 120. Again, I was grateful that the machine worked. But a whole new set of fears emerged.

I think I still assumed that the whole problem was caused by my stupidity on a long hot ride. I assumed that if I was smart and careful I’d never get in trouble again. I assumed the defibrillator was insurance, but wouldn’t ever be needed. I was wrong. We started thinking of how lucky I was even in this incident. I was on a soft dirt road and wasn’t riding the narrow lanes of McCallie avenue surrounded by rush hour traffic. But should I go there? Things get darker.

| By rob | 10:20 AM | TrackBack (0)