Chandra's Journal
January 16, 2006
I sent another email to Jordan’s mom and received a note back a couple of days ago. It was very short. Basically, she just said she would write later and that she’d had a really bad week; that it felt worse now than when the accident happened. When I read it, I was immediately in “fix-it” mode. I grabbed my Bible and searched through familiar verses for the perfect one that would make everything better for her. Drew walked in and asked what I was doing. When I explained, he read the email and nodded. “I remember that,” he said “When the numbness goes away.” It really did feel like we were in shock for a while. We didn’t react to things quite right. You’ve seen the face of a football player being helped off the field after he just had the stuffing popped out of him? His eyes can’t focus and his legs are not solid underneath him. That’s how it felt to us. The world spins around you and you feel like you’re breathing in slow motion. The shock seemed to last a solid few weeks before reality started creeping in. Thank God for shock. Because when you can finally start seeing the world clearly, it is so much uglier and more painful than you ever realized; and all I wanted to do for a while was get out of it. I begged God to take me to be with her. Because I did not see how I could function in a world where things like that happen.
I just recently wrote the mother of one of my oldest friends who lost her husband to leukemia about two years ago. I was remembering with her a line from Sleepless in Seattle. When the telephone therapist asks him “What are you going to do?” And he replies, “I’m going to get out of bed in morning. I’m going to breathe in and out. And maybe one day I won’t have to remind myself to get out of bed in the morning and breathe in and out.”
I’ve reminded God several times since then that I’m ready to go… whenever. I love my family and have come to thrive on their company every day. But the fact is, we are strangers here in the world, and sometimes I just want to go home. He could’ve taken me the first time I asked, or any of the other times. But he hasn’t. And I have to figure there’s a reason. I don’t know of another concentrated prayer effort quite like what we experienced with Canon’s transplant. What unity that brought to the kingdom! Maybe that was the reason I’m still here. To bring words to what God was doing in our family.
If so, what’s next? What purpose can I serve now? I hoped that I’ve learned to keep my eyes open for one.
Chandra Perkins