Yesterday felt very much like a day of trouble for me and my family. Our sweet 13-and-a-half-year-old golden retriever, Diva, the remaining litter mate of our dynamic duo, reduced to one earlier this year with the loss of Archie, was in a health crisis. Diva had a huge blood-filled mass on her back that burst on Sunday. The very first day of Advent, for those of us who are counting.
And the bleeding simply would not cease and desist.
Days two and three of Advent were spent, in large part, cleaning blood off of everything in Diva's path.
Thursday, day four of Advent (still counting), Diva had surgery to remove the mass and another that seemed headed for the same messy fate if left untended. We angsted over the surgery. Having lost a 6 -year-old golden in 2002 to brain surgery, we were worried about the prospects for our significantly older 13-year-old, to say the very least. How much good life does Diva have left? Best case scenario, will she recover fully enough to make this ordeal worth her pain? But our options were few, and Diva's spirit was mighty, and so we agreed to offer our sweet girl the best chance she had of a couple more years of this good dog's life.
The surgery went well. Diva tolerated the anesthesia with amazing grace. Her complete healing, said our gifted surgeon when I went to retrieve my retriever yesterday, would likely take a mere 14 days, give or take…..whatever. After the incisions heal, she will be good to go. And almost as if on cue, Diva trotted into the exam room, looking like a little bald man with her entire back shaved from stem to stern, she had two long bandages down the middle, but she was lively and delighted to see me, nonetheless. Hallelujah!
I thanked our wonderful surgeon profusely, paid Diva's bail, hoisted her into the back of the car, and we were home in 20 minutes. Ben was eagerly awaiting her return on the other side of the glass French door which had been closed for Diva's protection. I lifted Diva into the living room. And immediately she walked over to the French door where Ben's nose was pudged against one of the panes. And Diva laid down along the threshold…as close to Ben as she could get. And on his side of the protective divide, the very same heartwarming gesture. A sweeter sight there never was!
And I savored that moment of sheer bliss, not realizing that within minutes it would turn to….sheer panic. Because in very short order Diva was up and running to the back door as if she needed to go out. And for the next 20 minutes or so she tried to throw up all over the house. Tried, because nothing would come out. And, she seemed to be choking herself. I called the vet hospital in mild hysterics to see if this was a normal reaction to the anesthesia, or….not.
And the response was an almost equally mildly hysterical NOT. Get her back here! Now!
Easier said than done with a 70 pound wretching dog who has two massive fresh incisions on her back and a monstrous will to remain…..at home. Nevertheless, although it seemed like a lifetime, we were shortly pulling back into the parking lot at VESCONE in Waltham (a fabulous emergency and specialty care facility for animals and their humans, alike!). And just as the surgeon had suspected on the phone, Diva was suffering from bloat, a very serious, life-threatening filling of the stomach with air until it flips over on itself and cuts off all…..life. Emergency surgery was needed, and there was not a moment to spare. No time for thinking or weighing of options or praying for wisdom and strength. Time only for action.
If we were reticent about the first surgery, a relatively benign lopping off of a couple of surface masses on Diva's back, this new mountain was…substantially steeper. But our options were fewer than before. And so we gave the okay to our wonderful, talented, compassionate surgeon, with the caveat that if anything looked even remotely compromised, anything that would in any way make Diva's last leg on earth a difficult one, even if she survived the surgery, then we wanted her to be released to God, in peace.
And so we spent yesterday afternoon into the evening in the emergency room, again, waiting for Diva to come out of surgery, again. A waiting that yielded gifts of the spirit that I could not have anticipated in my own angst filled state. Because as we paced and waited for our own news, a more than mildly hysterical woman ran into the emergency area with her 11 year old Beagle in her arms, her best support and friend in what looked to be her very hard life. Sam had suffered a sort of paralysis. She had not been able to afford a vet when his symptoms began weeks before, but now he was critical. And so there she stood, sobbing, terrified, and alone. And after a few tests and some very difficult consultation with the ER vet, it was clear that Sam was not long for this world. Metastatic cancer.
The woman asked if I might accompany her into the day room where she would say her good-byes to her beloved friend as he was escorted off this mortal coil. And so I went from the waiting room into the…..no-more-waiting room, with a total stranger who was clearly suffering from the certainty of the same sort of loss that was not yet imminent in my own waiting. And so the two of us knelt before the couch where Sam lay in the day-room as an amazingly gentle, merciful, compassionate emergency room vet sent Sam back to God. Peacefully. It was a breath-taking and-giving experience, at least for me…. as I myself waited for the news that would determine my own…..relief or grief.
And so in this season of waiting for the holy companionship that comes when our God takes our flesh, I was graced with a version of both holy companionship and margin making that would never have come to be without the confluence of our shared suffering in the randomness of that emergency room….which is the mother of all margin makers. For when we find ourselves in the emergency room with a beloved being, we seem to be able to find the time and space to put everything else….down.
Shortly thereafter, I returned to the waiting room just in time to hear our surgeon tell us that, once again, Diva came through her surgery like a champ. And as soon as she was settled in the ICU, we went in to say goodnight to her, to kiss her sweet head, and to thank her for the many gifts that she has, over the years, laid so grace-fully and selflessly at our aspiring feet. And then we hauled our weary selves home to both breathe a sigh of relief, and too, to begin to worry about how we would cope with Diva's next homecoming. Oh yes, and the thank God also for the blessing of Ben who was awaiting our return with joyous expectancy!
Day six of Advent.
If everything goes as well as can be expected, says the surgeon, Diva will come home on day eight, return for the removal of her many, many, many stitches on day 19, and she will resume her spirit-filled day to day dog's life just in time for the birth of the baby Jesus. The whole of Advent, brought to us this year, by the indomitable spirit of our Diva…..fingers crossed.
And this is my own lesson learned this first week in Advent, and it was learned in living color; margin is not a luxury. It is not something that we can live, at least live fully and faithfully, without. Margin is the space that allows us to answer with our whole selves when the living God calls us to be present for…whatever we are called to go to encounter when the living God calls. We cannot plan such an encounter. It just happens. And if we are so overloaded with what we have already planned, with the things to which we have already committed, and the busyness that already filled our days and senses, we will not have the facility, the dexterity, the capacity, the resources, the time or the energy to respond with free and fearless hearts to God's call. And God always calls.
Will we be ready to answer? Will we be ready and willing to put everything else on hold, on the back burner, on the side to answer the call of the One, Holy and Living God. The call that will likely come in the form of an invitation that we have not yet even imagined.
So today, I invite us to make room for God's call; to review our standards of margin. And as the psalm says, to set up our lives, the comings and goings of our lives, in the name of God. To ask the following question of every single commitment that we make, and every single activity that we undertake, today, and every day going forward:
Is this commitment, are these activities, done in the name of God…or not? Is this moment, this hour, this day spent in God's name, or in the name of some human convention or expectation that serves only to feed our comfort zone?
I think that this Advent is the time for just such questioning.
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