Seven weeks out - and the topic of peace

We are now seven weeks out from Mike's saddle pulmonary embolism, and are only now really starting to contemplate and think about some of the possible outcomes and ramifications of that major health and life event. 

We are in a "new normal" of sorts.  Mike can get out and do work around the house and farm, but not to the degree that he used to be able to.  He has to stop and put his leg up for awhile every now and then.  And he has to wear an elastic stocking at all times (other than sleeping).  The next trip we take, we will have to stop at least every two hours and walk for ten minutes or so.  The doctors think that our trip to New England in June may have silently triggered this entire episode.

One of the things that really amazed us is that in the emergency room and coronary care unit that night, neither of us really had any fear.  And it wasn't because we didn't know what the possibilities were.  We both recognized that he could easily have gone on to heaven that night.  The doctor who admitted Mike said upfront, "I'm putting you in CICU because I know how quickly a saddle embolism can go south."  

Just today I was reading a recently discovered Elisabeth Elliot book (I thought I'd read everything she ever wrote, so finding this one was a treat) titled All That Was Ever Ours, published 1988, and on page 151 she writes the following:

"To make peace with a country or a person or God requires a transaction.  To have peace, as people sometimes say. . .must mean that a transaction has taken place.  One's will, along with everything else, has been offered up.  Peace is the divine answer to our Yes, Lord.

"Colossians 3:15 suggests that the peace of Christ is the 'arbiter' of our hearts, ruling out all faithless response to trouble, all distress, anxiety, fretfulness, frustration, and resentment.  It establishes order.  Those who accept the grace of this gift know tranquillity which can withstand all assaults, a stillness unbroken by the world's noise, and a repose in the midst of intense activity--repose which a nerve-racked world cannot possibly give.  For only Christ himself, who slept in the boat in the storm and then spoke calm to the wind and waves, can stand beside us when we are in a panic and say to us Peace.  It will not be explainable.  It transcends human understanding.  And there is nothing else like it in the whole wide world."

Elisabeth Elliot says it better than I ever could.  But that is why there was no panic in that ER room.  It was peace that passes understanding.  And I am thankful for that as much as for the fact that Mike is still standing upright today.