This broken moment. How did I end up here, like this?

Where are YOU right now? What are the conversations and feelings and actions and reactions that brought you to where you are right now?

There are tear stains on my face and I am tired. Usually I bounce through life, even when it’s hard. I rarely cry. But. Today I can’t help it. Today allowing myself to cry – as I worship – is right.

I’m in the twelfth hour of the third full day of arrhythmia in five days. My knee popped on the weekend, so it’s bound in a tensor bandaid and I’m walking like the cartoon of a very old woman. I can hardly do stairs. Other joints are starting to hurt because I’m sitting weird and walking weird to compensate for the knee. I still can’t eat normally because everything – and I mean EVERYTHING – gives me digestive issues.

As I lay on the bed in the office where I work from home – just finished a very taxing five hour shift, I think about the days that brought me to this one. The mix of good and bad baffles me.

I drove my daughter back to school two days ago. My heart was okay when we left. Her company is a treat and I enjoyed a very easy highway drive with little traffic and good weather, early on a Sunday morning. Some things had happened to cause me stress early on, but my body took us all the way downtown Toronto without any glimmer of heart trouble. Then we arrived. I went up for a few minutes to rest. And my heart went off kilter, and stayed off the rest of the day.

So I slept over in dorm. That sweet girl gave me her bed and slept on two jackets on a cold floor. I felt so thankful for the time I spent with her there. We talked and we were quiet. I worked on my laptop and she worked on hers. She came and went. I heard students in the halls and sometimes it was silent. A girl had a meltdown and I had to resist mama urges to go take care of her. How often is there a mother in dorm?

We put shoes on each time we used the dorm washrooms. You do not want to know what they were like. This meant night time bathroom trips were not drowsy. Too much dressing and unlocking of doors and checking of toilet seats.

Some kind of fire or other emergency gripped the campus at 3 AM. The other dorm was having issues and we woke to the rhythmic bleeping of a siren and a loudspeaker blaring unintelligible words in a female voice.

In spite of all this, I was better by morning, and able to drive home. Our clean, warm yellow walls have never seemed so beautiful to me.

I wrapped up my knee, which popped when I swung it up on the bed, as I’ve done a hundred times before. The pop was loud. And painful. I’ve torn a ligament before. I know what a bad ACL tear feels like. This was not that. But it was something. I just don’t know what.

Monday I drove home before the sun rose, sometimes in the rain. The drive was easy and relatively quiet. I started work at 8 AM and my shift was no trouble. My heart beat steadily all day. I did no cooking, to give myself a break. Tuesday I woke up and my body would not allow me to sit up and keep a steady heart beat. That’s today.

So here I am – thirteen hours later. Curled in a heap on a bed in my office. Crying. Weary. So thankful for a beautiful, clean home. For family. For time I wouldn’t give up for anything, spent with my daughter in her world. I’m grateful for a good job. Supportive co-workers.

But I’m weary, and wondering if every part of my body will break. If, eventually, I’ll lie in a heap and no part of me will still be solid and working right.

No one knows the future.

This is the moment I’m in.

How are you? Where are you at today? What brought you to your moment?

This is a medley I heard for the first time a half hour ago. Listen with me; maybe it will touch you like it touched me.

And one more, because it is beautiful and true. Look at each person who is singing. Tall and short. Plain and pretty. Old and young. Sitting and standing. They are like you and me. They are in need.