How Can I Keep from Singing

Cousins playing together at Charter Hall in a dog cage.  There were times when they were so wild I think the parents would have been happy to keep them there.


I am starting this blog on Monday morning having spent a part of Sunday evening in St. Joseph's Hospital. The events leading up to this are, I believe, a testimony to God's mercy to us on our vacation, even in the face of some very frightening circumstances.  But these events unfolded at the end of the week and I will start at the beginning.

We are continuing to enjoy our 4 very short weeks at home in the US.  We have been here for 3 weeks now, and spent the second week in New York and this past week back in Maryland.  We got back to Baltimore on Monday but went to Charter Hall, a retreat center deep in the back water estuaries of the Chesapeake Bay in Cecil County.  It is secluded and quite beautiful.  Rebecca's parents have a share in the retreat center and we went with them as well as our parents, Rebecca's brother's family and my nephew Fletcher (5 year old son of my brother Jonathan.)  All said we had in tow 8 adults, five children under 7 and one standard poodle (a decent ratio).  

We stayed in a dockhouse right next to the bay and spent 4 days there.  (Tues. through Friday)  It was a lot of fun as we were able to take the kids canoeing and kayaking daily.  We also went swimming in the lake and small pool on the property, and did numerous indoor activities including games, puzzles, and building forts with the mattresses and pillows on all the various bunk beds on the second floor.  The kids had a great time and even enjoyed some of the adult activities like bird watching and nature hiking.

We cleaned up and left on Friday afternoon to return to Baltimore.  The next 3 days were to be dedicated time to a family reunion for my family.  When we got back to my parent's house my brother Mark and his family was already there (wife Christine and 2 daughters Abigail and Grace) from North Carolina.  Later that evening my brother Jonathan and his wife Emma arrived from Nashville.  (Their son Fletcher was already here.)  They all stayed at a nearby hotel while my family stayed at the house.  We had a great time getting reaquainted Friday evening and during the day Saturday.  

Saturday evening was a really special time though.  We played at the hotel pool in the afternoon then   we had a family dinner all together followed by about an hour gathered around the table playing riddle mystery games.  (I actually heard one I had not heard before.) 

After clearing the table we gathered in the living room for a family devotional time.  We have been doing this less and less as the family had gotten larger and younger but we attempted it Saturday.  Dad shared a devotional on Hope and read a passage in the Bible from Titus 3.  We shared a bit about what it meant to be together again and then he prayed for us.  

We ended the evening with ice cream and went to bed, many of the kids staying at the house.

About 1 am I heard a phone ring then my brother Mark came in the room I was sleeping in next to Oren and whispered for me to come out.  I went down to the kitchen where he was sitting and he blurted out suddenly:

"Dad is having a heart attack."

The words seemed to etch themselves into my brain stem and ring endlessly in my eardrums.  I know that many of you have had that experience of suddenly hearing frightening news and feeling that kind of existential vertigo.  I could not even make sense of what he said.  Wasn't dad upstairs sleeping in his bed?  Was there an ambulance here?  Where was he?  How could this be happening?

He explained that Dad had woken up with chest pains about midnight and had mom take him to the hospital.  Apparently when they got there he was given an EKG and they told mom he was having an MI (myocardial infarction).  He was in great pain at this time and they gave him nitroglycerin which relieved it a lot.  They then sent him to get a catheter inserted and stint at a cardiac unit at another hospital.  

My mom called my brother Jonathan first (he is a physician) who met her at the hospital.  When I called them, they were enroute to get the catheter put it.  I decided that I would go meet them there while Mark stayed at the house with the other unaware slumberers at the house.  

I got to the hospital about 2 and dad had already had the catheter and stint put in.  The cardiologist came out to talk to us and told us he was resting comfortably and that the catheterization had revealed a nearly complete blockage of the artery that feeds the left front ventricle.  (Extremely serious) but that the intervention with a stint seemed to have been a success.  (my brother Jonathan later told me they call an occlusion of that vessel a 'widow maker'.)

We were able to see dad in the ICU and he did look calm and comfortable.  We talked through the experience with him and how he felt.  He was in good spirits and was not 'drugged' and groggy.  He was very happy to see us there with him.  

We stayed with him until about 5:30 am and then let him sleep and we went home.

Sunday morning at 7am I was up again with the family.  Rebecca was preaching that morning and we had to get ready for that.  We faced a mountain of technical nightmares as she was using a computer and projector we would have to set up, as well as printing out her sermon on my Dad's computer.  It seemed like nothing worked at first but by the grace of God we got it all to work before church started.

She did an excellent sermon and I am posting a link to an audio file of it.  It is called "I will rejoice over Bujumbura".  I took care of the kids but had help from Rebecca's family as well.  I have to admit I was fried and my head ached from all the trauma of the night before.  We got home about 12:30.  (We are still used to hearing and preaching Burundian length sermons.)

News from the hospital continued to be good and my brother Mark spent the day there.  I decided to honor a promise I had made to Abigail and Grace, his daughters (12 and 9) to take them to a movie:  Step Up 3D.  It was a hip-hop/ breakdance movie.  I really love those kind of movies but I was terribly disappointed that the theater we went to did not have 3d.  I was really looking forward to my first 3d movie!  Despite the thin plot and no 3d, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

We got home in the evening and I went over to the hospital after dinner and stayed there with my mom until 10pm.

By that time all the good news had come in.  Thanks to quick and successful intervention he had sustained no real measurable damage to the cardiac muscle.  He is expected to make a full recovery.  We marvelled together at the many miracles that had come out of this.

1) My dad was in the country.  He teaches extensively internationally, mostly in 3rd world countries, and could have been in Benin, Ethiopia, Uganda, or elsewhere when this occurred.  In any of these places there would have been no rapid intervention and he probably would have died or had severe cardiac damage.

2) Rebecca and I were in the country.  This would have been very hard if we were out of the country to decide what to do as well.

3) That the intervention was quick and successful.

4) We had had such a meaningful evening all together right before this happened.

I am also very glad that my dad has taken care of himself over the years, not a drinker or smoker, or diabetic, so his heart was in decent shape to begin with.

We did pray together and thank God for his goodness to us even in this difficult circumstance.  We look forward to dad coming back home for continued recovery tomorrow.  We do see all of this as perhaps a Divine corrective.  It has made him and all of us remember what is important in life.  He is resolved to slow down a bit and take more time at home with mom and the rest of the family in the years he has ahead of him.  

Postscript:  Seeing dad lying in bed in a weakened state could not prevent thoughts of my own probable future time of diminished capacity.  What will it be like when I am lying in an ICU bed with Oren, David and Rebecca looking down at me? Maybe for the last time?  

I imagined that scenario versus other scenarios of death suddenly, unexpectedly, like the MCC service worker who was gunned down by the Taliban this past week as he was part of the medical team working in Northern Afghanistan to help provide eye care to the poor in that region.  link here

I am wondering if I would have peace in all of these circumstances.  I hope I could smile up at my children and wife and cherish whatever short time we might have remaining together to appreciate the love we share and the hope we have in a life everlasting.  But I would also hope that I would have the courage to face death in other circumstances He might put me in.  

On Sunday we sung a hymn that captures the way I would like to live in the face of the fragility of this mortal coil (particularly verse 3):

 1. My life flows on in endless song, above earth's lamentation.  

I hear the clear, though faroff hymn that hails a new creation.  


Refrain: No storm can shake my inmost calm while to that Rock I'm clinging.  
Since love is Lord of heaven and earth, how can I keep from singing?  


2. Through all the tumult and the strife, I hear that music ringing.  
It finds an echo in my soul. How can I keep from singing?  
(Refrain)  


3. What though my joys and comforts die? I know my Savior liveth.  
What though the darkness gather round? Songs in the night he giveth.  
(Refrain)  


4. The peace of Christ makes fresh my heart, a fountain ever springing!  
All things are mine since I am his! How can I keep from singing?  
(Refrain)

Every day of this vacation continues to be a blessing and even this past week has served to make the time with family even more dear.