The Message

My eyes came open. Something had wakened me in the quiet hospital room.

I hadn’t planned on being there. The last three weeks, I had steadily recovered at home from a total hip replacement and had reached the point that I was confident in my movements and pain was minimal.

But, the previous evening, I was rising from my recliner when I heard a pop and felt excruciating pain. I screamed. My husband, Bill, called the doctor and ordered an ambulance.

“What’s your level of pain on a scale of one to 10?” the Paramedic asked, kneeling on the living room floor beside my recliner where I lay in agony.

“On a scale of 10?  Seven resting, 14 when I move,” I grimaced.

The pain soared above 14 when they moved me from the recliner to the stretcher, and I screamed again.

Fortunately, it let up when I was still, but I was haunted by the tortured looks on the faces around me. My heart ached for Bill and our compassionate emergency workers who carried the heavy burden of seeing me suffer.

The transfer from ambulance stretcher to emergency room bed brought stratospheric pain again, but, thankfully, Bill was spared from hearing me scream this time. At my request, they had waited to move me until he left the building to move his car.

X-rays confirmed what I already suspected. I had dislocated my new hip. The emergency room doctor would sedate me and manually manipulate it back into place, a procedure known as a closed reduction.

When I came to after the procedure, I was still hurting. It had not been successful. They would admit me to the hospital until they could attempt another closed reduction the following day in an operating room with stronger anesthesia.

At 3:00 a.m., settled in the hospital room, Bill and I fell into exhausted sleep which was unbroken by nurses and technicians who quietly entered periodically to check my vitals and administer pain medication.

It was now 6:30 in the morning. What had awakened me?

I turned to an amazing sight in the window where the blinds were drawn. The rising sun filled the sky with blood orange light which filtered through dark slats into the room. It was a view worth waking to see, but that wasn’t what had awakened me.

Beneath the window, Bill lay on the pulled-out couch, finally getting the rest he desperately needed. Over our 28-year marriage, we’ve faced situations that brought both joy and sorrow. Good or bad, easy or hard, each experience has brought us closer to each other.  My eyes filled with tears, thinking of the pain in his face as he calmly, patiently handled this current storm. I said a prayer of thanks for this wonderful man, but that wasn’t what had wakened me either.

Searching for the reason I was awake, my gaze moved to the opposite side of my bed. On the wall, I found it.

A crucifix hung, spotlighted by the blood orange sunrise. It seemed to radiate pure love.

“Jesus, you know I’m offering my pain as prayer. Is that what this is about?” I wondered.

“Yes,” came the reply, “but there’s something more.”

Praying before the crucifix, I received a message, loud and clear: Jesus knows my pain. In his crucifixion, he, too, experienced dislocated joints, and more. He wants me to know he would do it all over again, just for me. He loves me that much.

Bill moved in his sleep. I glanced across the room to my dear husband settled peacefully on the sofa bed. When I turned back to the crucifix, the message continued.

Jesus knows the heartbreak of seeing a loved one suffer. From the cross, his eyes took in his mother and friends on the ground far below. Their faces filled with anguish at each indignity Jesus suffered, each moan that escaped his lips. His heart broke for them, as mine did for my husband and caregivers who felt my pain.

And, these words completed the message:  "Our bodies will forget the sharpness of physical pain, but love is forever. Love always remains. I love you.”