A New Life

My, oh my, how the Lord works in mysterious ways. I don't really believe in coincidence so these seemingly behind the scenes happenings over the last two weeks that just collided today must have some purpose in them...

Valentine's Day - anyone who knows me knows I hate this day with a passionate fire that grows every year. Weather single or part of a couple it has never been a good day for me, until this year. During the course of a very normal workday I met a new patient at her home to deliver and educate her on a CPAP. There's hardly a day that goes by in the course of my working day that this doesn't happen. I do my best to remain professional, while also trying to let the person know I am interested in their well being and generate a degree of trust. I think I am generally successful at doing this. Every once in a while, though, I meet a patient that somehow forms a deeper connection. While I strive to give special attention and care to all of my patients, these few become more than a patient, they become a personal friend. On this particular day, just such a friendship was begun. We had a very nice visit, I did my job and went on about my day. Later that evening I got a call from my office saying that this patient was urgently trying to reach me. I called her immediately, concerned that something was wrong. Turns out that she wanted to thank me for the time I spent with her by giving me a pair of concert tickets. They were to see Paul Cardall that very night. She had mentioned the concert to me during our visit and asked me if I knew who he was. I said I did and that I even owned a couple of his CD's. She said she wasn't feeling well and that she wanted me to go in her place. Well, being single and therefore not really having any plans that night, I agreed. It had been a long time since I'd been to any kind of concert and live music felt like a wonderful way to soothe a lonely heart on Valentine's Day. I didn't really have anyone to take with me on about an hour's notice. I thought of my step-mom, but she had just had shoulder surgery and wasn't feeling up to it. She volunteered her grandson, my nephew, and with a little convincing he agreed to go with me.  We were late and the auditorium was packed, so we just stood in the back. The music was beautiful, soothing and uplifting - exactly what I was hoping for. As we listened, we learned that it wasn't just a concert, it was a benefit for the foundation Paul has organized to help children with congenital heart defects. I purchased his new CD, New Life, on our way out, not realizing that it had just been released that day.

Over the next few days I learned a great deal about Paul Cardall, his life, his struggles, his blog and his book, which I am now reading and immensely enjoying. The combination of an unexpected gift from a near stranger, the poignancy of Paul's music, his faith which was so clear in just the few articles I read about him, the open heart of a step-mother who said, "I would do anything for you if I just knew what you needed me to do", and the right timing of it all wrought a divine change in my heart. I visited the Draper Temple with my step-mother later that week. We just sat in the foyer and talked, and I remembered the peace that I had felt in the temple on so many previous occasions. I felt a great desire to get my life  in order so that I could once again be worthy to go into that sacred place. I started reading the scriptures again, I planned to pay tithing, and start attending my ward meetings.

Over the next week I felt invigorated and full of ambition to achieve my goals. But as frequently happens when I get fired up about something new, my passion waned some as the Adversary renewed his campaign against me. His ways are subtle but effective, and often go unnoticed as his little attacks - he says "you don't need to pray every day, you just say the same thing over and over anyway", or "there's no rush to pay tithing, you'll get to it on your next paycheck". The incessancy of his assaults should be warning to me how very important the things that he's trying to prevent me from doing actually are.

A few days later, the same patient who gave me the tickets in the first place calls me at my office. She wants to know for sure that I went to the concert. I had sent her a thank you note in the mail and asked if she had gotten it. She had, but she just wanted to make sure I really enjoyed it because she wanted to send me tickets for his next concert. I tried to refuse, but she wouldn't hear it. She wasn't sure of the date but it was a little way away so she would mail me the tickets and she would see me there. Well of course my interest was peaked to know the date of the concert, and since I have been reading Paul's Book, Before My Heart Stops, which is a collection of his blog entries while waiting to receive a heart transplant, I was planning on looking up his website anyway. As I typed his name into the google search bar, I had no idea of what I was about to discover. Paul's book is extremely personal, as is his music, and in this very short time I have come to feel that I know him, I care about and am inspired by him. When I clicked on his events link and the concert poster popped up, I didn't quite make the connection. It was another benefit, for a woman waiting to receive a double lung transplant. Her name and her situation sounded familiar but every name starts to sound familiar in my job. Then somehow I found myself on her blog page and her husband's name and picture were very familiar. A New Road: Julie and David Hendrickson. Dave is one of the outside vendor salesmen that I interact with at work. Dave had told me that his wife was on the transplant list a few weeks ago. Paul is Julie's cousin... I'm pretty sure someone had mentioned that to me recently as well. I don't know Julie at all, and I don't know Dave particularly well, I just know that he always returns my calls promptly, he's friendly, professional and hard-working... and that his wife has cystic fibrosis. As I read Julie's and Dave's feelings about her possible transplant, suddenly this all feels very intimate and personal. I relate to the feeling of worry and not knowing what is going to happen due to a loved one's health. I feel obligated to get involved in some way and promote what I've discovered and I have no idea how to do that. Is telling my co-workers about the benefit and encouraging them to attend unprofessional behavior on my part? Who else would I tell? Do I post it on facebook?

What does this all mean for me and my newly developing faith? Surely this is a message from my Heavenly Father - at minimum, a nudge, a prick if you will. Possibly more, that I am on the right path and that these are the meaningful things I should fill my life with to drown out the misery and overwhelm the focus of being so alone. Certainly can't be a bad thing. I just worry that these ideas won't be accepted and my feelings rejected again... and now I realize that I've been keeping my feelings all locked up inside of myself, trusting no one with them. They threaten to drown me. I must somehow find the courage to open my heart again. The way Paul stayed hopeful...