Celebrating easter When You're Living Good Friday
January 1, 1999
It was Good Friday. My house looked more like a set for "Rescue 911" than a place of solemn preparation for the pinnacle of the church year. Barbara, my wife of 15 years, had just gotten home at 3 a.m. after a long shift as a registered nurse at a physical rehabilitation hospital. Her heart started to pound more than a hundred beats a minute. Her pulse raced so fast we couldn't measure it. We tried massage and relaxation exercises, but nothing helped. She said her heart felt as if it were going to explode. Desperate, I called 911. In the darkness, the emergency medical services unit arrived in our parsonage living room and worked on my normally healthy, 43-year-old wife. I followed the ambulance to the hospital, my thoughts as heavy as my foot was on the gas pedal. In the early morning hours when many churches would sing "Go to Dark Gethsemane" and reflect on Christ's agony on the cross, I was deep in my own darkness. Barbara had always been the trim half of our marriage. (I can't stay away from bratwurst, and I have the waistline to prove it.) She had been working long hours to help pay off both my seminary and her nursing school debts. Was it too much for her? I wept as I thought the unthinkable. At the emergency room, it took two hours to stabilize Barbara's heart. My wife lay in a hospital gown, hooked up to iv tubes, breathing with the aid of an oxygen mask. It looked wrong; it didn't fit this youthful, active woman. ... Around noon on Saturday, Barb finally slept. I too was exhausted. I felt ten years older. After calling family members, I realized she needed her rest more than she needed my presence. Intensive-care Easter
... I prayed, wept, and pleaded for God to give me the strength to be both a good husband and a good ...
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