from an article originally posted March 4, 2015...

We have recently had a new nurse in our hospice care. Our regular nurse needed a break, and she took some needed time off to refresh and restore her heart. I’m thankful for both of these nurses.

Our new nurse figured out the puzzle of my pain in my leg beautifully. We have changed medication and my pain is much less. I’m tickled. But what has surfaced is an extreme exhaustion and a haziness that wasn’t there before. 

Today the nurse spoke to us about the stages of dying. This is part of that. Jason and I sat as she explained what is coming and we quietly wept. We didn’t/ did want to know. She was gentle in telling us what is coming, but it was a very hard pill to swallow. We don’t want this new hazy to be death’s closing in, we want a new pill to combat the new symptoms. We want to live in our happy land of denial. 

Afterward, Mickey and Carl came to my bedside and we all cried together. We all faced this little bit of reality as best as we could. We want to avoid my fading and rejoice in the proper pain medication being found.

And after all that was over, I asked for my favorite snack- life cereal. I asked for a bowl of cereal and I cried into my favorite snack. I cried and knew what was said was true. I cried and knew I have turned yet another corner and around that corner I will be met with new grace, new abiding, new joy, and new surrender. I will have a more tender love to share, a more sincere story to tell, a more immediate desire for those I love to know the true love of my heart. The loves that are many, but especially the loves- the big Jesus love that makes all this peace possible. 

There will be more tears in my cereal, and that’s okay. Those tears are captured and known. All this brokenness is known. I’m broken into a million tiny shards- and each piece is known…