Day 87 - Writing is a Discipline

This is Wednesday’s blog. It’s 12:16 Thursday morning and I just got home from work about 10 minutes ago. I have to admit that I really don’t want to write tonight. I have had a full day. I got up around 8 and did some stuff around the house. I did get a run in, and then did some running around until I had to be at work at 6PM tonight. So I probably have a pretty good excuse to just go to bed and not write. But that’s not the real reason that I don’t want to write tonight. The real reason is that I can’t stop thinking about where I was three months ago tonight. So, I will write tonight. Not because I want to, but because I have to. It is a discipline that I must go after. I need to write, to prove to myself that I can, and to conquer these feelings that I am having.
All night in the simulator I was hard at work. Yet I found myself looking at my watch saying to myself that I was doing this or doing that. I really haven’t written about Julia’s sickness or what led up to her death. I’m still not sure that I can, but tonight at least, I am going to try. I don’t know about tomorrow night, I will be working late again so it might be another late post. We spent the week of Christmas traveling, first to Ft. Lauderdale to see Jennifer and all the family, and then to Mobile to see Lisa and all her family. We had a great time at both places and as we left Mobile on the 28th, I knew that I had to work the next three days. New Years eve, Julia and I stayed home, resting and getting ready to go to Webb Al for the Bill Johnson conference. We knew that Lisa’s baby was coming soon after that, so she was planning to go back to Mobile on the 11th of January. The conference was Jan 3 – 5, and we had a hotel reservation in Dothan AL for those days. We were both feeling good and ready for the conference. There was no indication of any sickness at all. We were both very healthy.
At the conference Sunday night, Julia began to get a little cold, but nothing to worry about. It wasn’t bad at all. But Monday it continued to get worse, and her cough got worse and it seemed to go into her chest. By Monday night she was coughing pretty bad. After the session we went back to the room and I suggested that we go home after the morning session so that she could rest at home. Tuesday morning she wasn’t worse, so we went to the morning session and then drove home. But Tuesday night she was still coughing. We both thought that she ought to see a Doctor on Wednesday, so she got an appointment and went that morning for an early afternoon appointment. I had to work, but she felt ok, and drove herself. Wednesday night she felt better, and we both thought that she was turning the corner. I was off Thursday so I just stayed around the house. We did something we never did during the day. We watched a movie together. It was one of our favorites, Braveheart. She was coughing, but not much worse than before.
I had made a big pot of homemade Vegetable soup. We were looking at a prediction of snow that afternoon and night with an accumulation of 2-3 inches. So we were prepared to ride it out by the fire. I was probably to busy to notice, but she was getting worse. She was laying down in the bedroom while I was doing all the running around. At around 6PM I could tell she was worse, but it still didn’t seem bad. I figured she had the flu. We sat and I prayed for her a number of times. She was coughing up a lot of stuff, but it looked pretty normal for a cold. I asked her if she thought we should call someone for some medicine. Finally at around 9PM she said she thought we ought to call. So I called a couple of friends who are doctors trying to see what they thought they could do. I finally got one at around 9:40. The drugstore closed at 10. I went to the drugstore and got some medicine just before it closed. I cam back and gave it to Julia. I remember we sat on the floor in the bedroom and I just held her. We must have been there for an hour but she was still coughing. She said that she probably needed to go to the emergency room. My first thought was that it had been snowing for hours and I wasn’t sure we could make it. So I asked her if she was sure. She said yes, and I said OK, I’ll try to get you there. To be honest, at this time I wasn’t as concerned about how she was feeling as I was about getting her there safely. But it was obvious she was getting worse. She said just to call an ambulance instead of driving in the snow. But I knew that an ambulance would have taken her to Paulding, and it’s not as good as Kennestone. So we got ready, and I began the long drive down in the snow. I really felt that everything was going to be OK. I had no idea how sick she really was. It wasn’t long after we got to the hospital that I realized she was much worse than either of us realized. This time three months ago the ER doctor told me that they needed to put her on a ventilator to help her breathing. He said it would be temporary until they got her stabilized. I should have known better. I was praying, and in a room by myself, but I still didn’t comprehend the severity of the situation.
So I guess that I why I couldn’t concentrate at work tonight. Tonight, the “what ifs” were getting to me. I know better than to go there. I have fought them off many times before. One of the first things I told the girls after Julia died was “Don’t allow yourself to be sucked in by all the what if’s. Tit’s a playground of the enemy. He loves to get us lost in all those thoughts. They lead to despair and depression. It’s looking at the past without the blood of Jesus. It’s illegal for a believer to do.
So tonight writing is a discipline. I don’t know when I will finish the story of that next day. I do know that writing it tonight has freed me from the “what if’s” and I’m not going back. I’m going to bed focusing on how good God is, and how He loves me so much. Julia is fine. She is in a good place, and now so am I.