Please Pray For My Husband... Rich.

I have a special thing to tell you about today. My day today started this morning at 2:00a.m. I knew my husband wasn't feeling well last night. I told him to wake me if his pain in his abdomen got worse and I would take him to the hospital. At 2 am... his hand gently grabbed my arm and pulled... "You better get up and start getting dressed."... he said.

So... I groggily pull myself out of the storm that I was in. I was dreaming that we lived right on the beach with the ocean at our front door practically... and we had a two story great room in our home that was completely covered with windows in the front. A violent storm was brewing out over the ocean and we could see it coming from afar. The skies were grey and the waves were getting bigger and more powerful by the second. Before we knew it... the waves would cover our front windows up to about 3/4 of the way up the front... and we could see all of the oceanlife as if our house was the fish tank. Rich and Hannah were saying... "Oh cool! Look at that fish!" "Wow! That was a big wave... here comes another one!" And all I could think of was... "Oh God! Please don't let those waves crash through!" At the last moment of the dream... I was climbing up a very steep set of stairs that had once been painted white... but were now all peeling and cracked... and when I placed my hands on the rail to pull myself up... a million tiny thistle thorns were embedded deep into my hands.

So... as I dressed to take my husband to the hospital... I had visions of huge waves crashing through my mind.

To make a long story short... Rich is in the hospital... again... in Spokane...at Sacred Heart Medical Center. He has somehow torn loose the repairs to his last herniated bowel surgery. The mesh that they put in place has another hole in it... and his bowel is getting stuck in it. It causes him a very distinct extreme pain... far worse than any gas or normal cramping that may occur.

We spent from about 2:20am to about 11:30am in two emergency rooms... ((after of course... I transported my own husband... to the bigger better facility 70 miles away)). He is now waiting his third abdominal repair surgery.

I have been through alot of surgeries with him. The first... was to implant a small defibrillator in his chest. The second... was to implant a mechanical heart pump in his abdomen. The third was to take the mechanical heart pump out of the abdomen... and the fourth... was to remove his old heart and give him his donor heart. The fifth was to remove the small defibrillator. The sixth was to repair his abdomen... the seventh was to repair his left hand that he sliced open accidentally with a boning knife while prying frozen chicken pieces apart... the 8th was to repair his abdomen...and... it looks like the next one will be tomorrow around 4pm... to once again repair his abdomen.

I have never.... NEVER... cried before or during ANY of his surgeries........ Until today. Rich has never asked me to do what he has asked me to do before. Today... while higher than a kite on pain meds... he took my hand and asked me to say a prayer for him... and he closed his eyes in anticipation.

I took his hand and looked at him while I prayed. He was really listening...

"Dear God, Be with Rich right now as he waits for the doctors to decide what they are going to do to repair his abdomen this time. Guide the doctors hands that do the surgery. Please, Lord, don't ask me to give him up yet because I am not ready for him to die. We love him and he has alot more life to live yet. We want him to be better and not be sick anymore. In Jesus name... Amen."

It sounds so simple and almost childlike as I try to remember exactly what I said. Rich caught me off guard I guess. It made me cry. I am not ready to lose my husband! He is my best friend in the entire world. He always tells me that Hannah and I are his world....but I do believe... he is ours!

I guess that what love really is.

What also threw me off guard was when the doctor told us that the doc that did his other two surgeries did not want to do this one... so he sent him over... (his assistant)... and Rich asked him... "Do you believe?"... and the doctor said... "Believe what?"... and Rich said more to the fact... "DO YOU BELIEVE?"... and the doctor raised his hands and said... "Believe what?" And... with a tear in my eye... I said... "In GOD"... the doctor said... "Yes"... and Rich then said as he closed his eyes... "Then you can do the surgery."

Come to find out later this evening... a good friend of mine put Rich on the prayer chain... and asked God something to the effect of wanting Rich to WANT God more... ((her words say it better))...

Here I was sad... thinking that all this talk about God by Rich was going to be the end... and my friend was ecstatic because that was exactly what she prayed for! God really does bring us hope in our most uncertain moments....

Doesn't He.