Am I living this moment?

Surgery loomed yet again – and big surgery at that! I didn’t yet realise how big it was going to get. Aortic incompetence from birth meant that throughout my lifetime my aorta would always be particularly vulnerable.

It was 2009, going into winter. I had a consistently growing aneurysm on my ascending aortic arch. This would be my third open heart surgery and would eventually include the aneurysm repair, a further valve replacement (my third), a graft, a mitral valve repair and insertion of a pacemaker. For now, my focus was on the aneurysm.

The internet is as much a curse as a blessing. Too much surfing the subject at hand threatens to dethrone God’s incomparable peace. When you are diagnosed with a growing aneurysm such as I had, you do not want to give too much air time to links on aortic dissection or what can happen when an aneurysm acts with a will of its own.

I had just been to spend an hour with a professional, to help me track my emotions around our new health crisis and was standing outside her gate waiting for my wife to collect me and return me to work, lost in my own thoughts.

A new song

Suddenly, I heard a new song – quite literally. It came from a bird, a personal, private outdoor concert just for me. It was like a shot out of heaven. I hung on to that bird song, listening intently. I thrilled to the sound.

Then, I heard another voice, God’s voice, beckoning me to live in the moment. More than this, to deeply live the moment, to give myself to it, not to the voice of nervous anxiety which as christians we’re loath to admit to, though in all of us we can hear its rumbling from time to time. The “what if” voice! It is interesting that the only time Jesus is recorded as saying “if” is in Gethsemane. He came to bring us fullness of life (John 10:10) – and the full life is living in the “now.”

God’s affection for me was there in that bird song, as was His loving word, “Fear not, for you are worth more than many sparrows.” The constancy of His love now will be the same constant steadfast love when wheeled into surgery or if He suddenly chose to call me home in one of 101 different ways (I had only a ruptured aneurysm on my radar).

I heard the same voice five years later – another aneurysm. This time my wife had suggested a walk and as we walked the path together, she said, “Look at this”. We both drew near the tree branch and placed the most beautiful variegated leaf in our hands. We took our time, not wanting to rush past this amazing slice of creation. As I fingered the leaf in my hand I heard again that unmistakable voice, “Wayne, I want you to live in this moment.”  “Got it, Lord.” Anything else – living in the past (guilt) or the future (anxiety) is physically and emotionally exhausting.

I’ve been caused to stretch my thoughts since these events. I can imagine our Lord on a hill early morning with His Father, or then again sharing a hearty laugh with His disciples for He was not only Man of sorrows but Man of joy. Yes, I dare even to believe He let Himself fully experience the Cross and all its agonies, to stay in the moment, in all He endured for me that dark Calvary day. And when our grief seasons come, as they come to all of us, He would still be saying to us,

let yourself feel the grief, enter into it fully or there is no way you will walk “through the valley of the shadow,” you will bog down, your wheels will come off, you will become stuck in a season of rage and despair.

I invite you sometime as I have, walk along the shoreline. Notice the crashing surf, the waves, the incoming tides, rhythm of water, rhythm of life. Much bigger than all that upsets or concerns us. We are in Big Hands.

Can we not all hear his voice afresh, to enter the moment before us and “live” it for all its joy or all its pain, and not escape into the emotional wasteland of the past (the “if onlys”) or the future (the “what ifs”). We serve the Great “I Am” and are secure in the forever Emmanuel promise, “Lo, I am with you always.” He made us for this moment. My Father God is infinitely creative in the now.

Every day is a gift from the King!

For now, “be still and know.” For now, I only have this moment until God turns the page, until He gives another moment. Praise God for each moment as it comes.