Office of Communications > Weekly Reflection >April 11 , 2008

I’ve known him since high school, the uncle of one of my best friends.  He and his brothers ran a business and I was impressed.  I wanted his success, but without the long hours and ratcheted stress he paid on the principle. 

Sixteen years ago, just into the gild of his golden years, he awoke in the night.  There was a tightness of chest and shortness of breath, but at first it was something he ate.  A few hours later, he was on the table, his chest split open, his heart and his life in the hands of strangers.

He awoke to a shattered world.  He was depressed, abandoned by his God and widowed by his soul.  His hope had stolen off in the night with his health.  His wife was there of course, but while she could touch him, she couldn’t reach him.  She hadn’t been where he had, down that dark tunnel of death without the warm lights at the end. 

Things slowly changed with discipline and care.  He never got back to his old self, but he liked the new one better.  His discipline was diet, meds and a 5:00 am regimen that he continues today. 

The care was his for others.  Too busy too long, he found a gift inside he couldn’t keep.  He remembered the terror and despair of those post op days.  No one should go there alone.  In his eighties, he makes his hospital rounds.  He visits with heart patients, knowing well the emptiness of their present but witnessing the fullness of their future.

He is not a healer – no loud prayers or laying of hands.  He only listens and shares his story, but in his mending ways, some of the lame walk and the blind see.  He leads them through the darkness of their night, assuring the dawn of their new day.

We float on the endless tide of resurrection.  At moments, we can hear the creaking and groaning of repair and rebirth within.  We just need to listen.  He did.