Note: This is part of a larger series. Start here to read the whole thing.
On Saturday April 5th, I was working in my yard. It was a warm humid day that invited one to stay outside. I was trimming grass around the driveway when I felt the familiar disassociation. The buzzing dizziness. Light-headedness. I stood up and took a deep breath, but the shock came. It rocked me down onto my knees and I felt my heart thumping wildly. For a minute it settled some, but I did not feel peaceful, things were not ok. I stood up again and the shock returned, two more times. This time it sat me all the way down onto the driveway. I sat bewildered, humiliated, angry. I saw an earthworm, squirming on the wet pavement. I yelled, "Damn it, I'm not an earthworm, God why are you treating me this way. I just want a new heart." All I could think was to swear.
Eventually, I made it inside. Friends came to take the kids and take me to the hospital. Marialice hadn't been home, but was called and came to find me. Our pastor came. They ran all the normal tests at the hospital. The nurse said, "you're much to young to have a defibrillator". Things were stabilized.
When the techs in the ER read out the information on the device, they said the words V Fib. These are words I didn't remember hearing before. Ventricular Fibrillation is much scarier than Tachycardia - which is what I faced in October. Fibrillation can't sustain life very long. We assume that a VFib episode is what killed my Dad. This felt new and different, worse and worrying.
Marialice and I were much more raw as we faced this episode. I think we were able to express our emotions much more directly. She was able to express fear and anger to me because my initial thought had been to drive myself (and the kids) to the hospital, even when we have dozens of folks who are willing to help us out. The next day, I found I had to leave the church in the middle of worship. I couldn't sing "If it had not been for the Lord on my side, where would I be" and really mean it. I was really mad at God. Later that night we faced each other in prayer and cried as we called out to God for my life. The emotions were close to the surface, they weren't very easily managed away, they disrupted life in a powerful, hard way.
But when we talked to the nurse on Monday and she looked at the records found in my defibrillator, she told me that the episode was similar to the other 2 episodes I've had when the device has shocked me more than once. The V-Fib was not a new episode. That was good news. She also showed me that there have only been one or two episodes where my device has paced, and not actually gone into the full shock mode. Almost every day I have wondered "did something happen? What did I just feel? Should I sit down?" But the records show that very rarely, I mean very rarely, has something actually been happening. That really helps manage the fairly regular struggle with anxiety - which I struggle against every day.
This is all a comfort. It helps me to understand more about what is happening in my heart. I think I really can feel the pacing function when it happens. I know that the defibrillator is really working, and I know my heart isn't doing anything new, or more dangerous. This is all a comfort.
But this is all a really rotten situation. I live every day with fear, that my heart will go into a rhythm that can not be rectified. Every day I feel some tightness or pain in my chest and have to talk myself out of panic. My heart is sick, and though so much of myself is healthy, I am limited. This makes me mad.
But this has also been a rich time. I've prayed for years that I'd be more emotionally connected and genuine in my expression of what was going on inside. God is answering my prayers. I wasn't thinking of all this when I asked him to break my heart, but he is. I still feel like the disciples in the boat, in the middle of the sea of Galilee, very afraid in the middle of the storm. "Oh you of little faith" is still a very relevant challenge. But in the midst of my fear and my faithlessness I am crying out in new and deeper ways. I seen it with Marialice and I've seen it with my God. There is richness in this suffering.
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