Back to the doctor’s office yesterday because my heart had been fluttering around for several days. EKG. Stethescopes. No emergency. Stress test next Wednesday. I think this will be the third.

Let this cup pass away from me…  Yet it apparently is not to be. Genetics. Stress. Who knows but it seems my heart is from now on going to be at the center of my life. I listen to it, feel it, pray about it, and every so often I head into the doctor’s office to get in checked out.  Never the less thy will be done…

The first time your heart starts whirring around your chest its terrifying. No one pays much attention to their heart. It’s just supposed to be there, silently ticking away, awake even when you sleep. Palpitations are a rude interuption to all of that. The bottom part of the heart is trying, in my case, to help out the top by pushing harder.  That push means you’re alive, that the back up systems have kicked in. That’s good but it feels like the whole thing is going to explode.

Over time you get more used to it. You can just tell when everything is in sinus rhythm and when things are fluttering. The fluttering is not fatal, its just annoying, and its a sign that one day your heart, like everyone else’s, will eventually malfunction without the capacity for repair.

Obviously I don’t like that. Who would? I have a little thing inside my chest that tells me one day my systems will fail. I would like to live for years and years just out of curiousity for whatever comes next but those little bumps remind me this is not to be, for me, or for anyone else for that matter.

Perhaps God is His good grace will see fit to divinely heal that which has been broken by sin. Yet if that is not the case I have no intention of cursing God and dying in response to this setback. My life was, is, and always will be in His hands and I know that He loves me. If the worst were to happen, and I’m a long way from the worst, I hope it would be quick because I tend to ponder things too much. Yet where can I go where God’s love is not? Ultimately I will trust that God knows me in all my strengths and my brokenness and loves me.

And that’s the gift in all of this. In easy times the heart and mind can wander, drifting away from all that the important and good and from the One who is goodness Himself. We labor under the illusion of our own strength. We forget the larger and eternal things. Everything gets out of focus.

There’s nothing like being attached to a heart monitor to dramatically make everything real again, especially God. There’s no way for me to fake it, no sweet smile to make it all go away. I can see my heart beating, each flicker of light one more second of this life. I need God, not just an accessory but because I am afraid, can’t often see beyond my shoes, and I’m trying to make sense of it all.  I need a place to rest that is beyond me, because”me” is the owner of a broken heart.

As the journey continues I will not give in to despair. There may be no answers to “Why me?” but I have a life wish, for this life and the next. I plan on grabbing hold of Jesus with a, pardon the pun, “death grip” and stay as close as I can until whatever breath is my last arrives. Whether I live to be old or discover that time is not on my side His life will be mine, not because I deserve it but because I have sense enough to take the Gift when it is offered.

Until that day when I am called Home I plan to live, and love, and enjoy, beacuse that, too,  is God’s gift to me.  After all, nothing can separate me from the love of God in Christ. Let the future present itself. I am in good hands.