Grateful to be Alive

I reveived a number of calls and emails and cards and FB comments as a result of a heart attack on Christmas Eve. Big surprise. The following was something I wrote in response to someone who knows Christ as his Savior and Friend, as I do. Perhaps the thoughts will cause you to pause and consider, as these events did for me.

Hi Brother,

I got your email just a few minutes ago. I can check my business email from anywhere, but I just have not felt like doing much. I am real tired because I am not sleeping well. Lots of reasons, but mostly a combination of new meds, altered cardio-pulmonary function, and a sense that things must change in my lifestyle (eating, exercise, physical priorities, etc.) Things with my recovery seem to be getting better incrementally every day.

It was a profound surprise to have to leave out of my bedroom at 9:45 pm Thursday Christmas Eve, after self-diagnosing a heart attack, and then walk back in on Monday evening, seeing what I had left behind. My last view may have been my last view. I suppose that many things that I (and all of us, for that matter) thought were real important now look a bit tawdry and silly when viewed in the light of eternity.

“I know whom I have believed and am fully-persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day”, so I was not frightened of dying, believe it or not; it was not so much on my mind as we went in a rush to the emergency room, but had a sense of peace that whatever happened I was in His hands.

It was sobering though, as I thought about it on the operating table, that I could leave behind a wife who would really, really miss me and need me, however inept a husband and friend I may have been to her. I was not praying for life, but I was just trusting Him to have His will.

I have been given a great gift - a second chance to remove from the many nooks and crannies of my life things that were not totally given over to Him. It is not that failing to remove these things would invalidate my salvation - not that at all - but that I would squander another series of opportunities to show Him how much I love Him; another opportunity to cast self to the wind and do as the sinner-woman did in the house of Simon the Pharisee, weeping and washing Jesus' feet with her tears, wiping them with the hairs of her head (humbling her glory for His glory); anointing his head with oil, and not saying a word or clamoring for anything. She was already forgiven. She came to give, not get.

She didn't need to be there, if one thinks that the only reason to come to Jesus is to get something from Him. She already had it. (Jesus makes that abundantly clear as He proceeds to explain the facts of life to Simon). Why was she there? Why was she weeping, then? The answer is obvious. She was forgiven much, therefore she loved Him much. She took possibly her only opportunity to personally express that love to Him and bewail her former sins and lifestyle that now grieved her. She had been "frankly" forgiven a debt she could never pay; and she loved the One who not only could but did forgive her.

I want to emulate that woman.

I know that I have not exerted myself enough to show Him how grateful I am for His forgiveness and grace to me. Perhaps there is no "enough" that we can ever attain in that regard, but I sincerely want this to be a new beginning in my expression of personal devotion to Him, and availability of my life to Him. Really, I think that is the whole point of what it means to be a child of God. Everything else is a side show.

Thanks for your prayers. I gratefully acknowledge and appreciate the prayers of many, many friends all over the country. God took them and used them to not just heal me but to change me. That is a wonderful miracle.