Wendi Lou Lee

It’s Sunday morning in the hospital and I wake feeling like I slept for an eternity, they did give me a sleeping aid last night before bed … Ambien. Anyway I woke up at like 3am totally energized and got out of bed and shook Bren … who was sleeping on the couch turned into a bed. My words were,  “I slept so long, I feel like I could run our half marathon!” Today was the day that we would have been running the Big Sur Half Marathon.  She was like that’s nice, I’m glad but how about you go back to sleep for a little bit? Now here comes the control-freak part, did I go back to sleep like I needed? No, I reached for my iPad and started writing on my blog. It felt noble sharing all these feelings and this grand adventure God was taking me through, and honestly I just couldn’t sleep. It was like the drugs were keep ping me so alert … So instead of the minutes ticking away this blog was keeping me company.

When morning came, I’m not as energized, after all I was up half the night writing. I’m feeling good though, I have the sense to start my day with the Lord. It’s Sunday and the last time I started my day this way was the morning of the surgery, how does that seem like so long ago. I read a Psalm every day, then read a chapter out of the 1000 Gifts Devo … This was a recommendation from my good friend and mentor De Morey, in fact the copy I have is hers, she loaned it to me. For some reason I think I have already mentioned this in a past post. What a life-changing book … Go get a copy, totally different than the book the Devo way better! Then I started reading a chapter of Isaiah, I told myself I was going to start after surgery and well this is the first chance I get. All I can say is that Scripture has just come to life, I love the book of Isaiah. I kinda read and pick the chapter apart, trying to make sense of it all and then write it down in my own words in the journaling lines on the sides of the page. You see I got this Bible for Raegan about 5 years ago … to write notes, prayers and encouragement. I’m planning on giving her the Bible when she starts high school, the exact time I started really following Jesus.

My last part of my quiet time is something I started with my Hub girls … that is my small group of high school girls that I lead for discussion during the last hour of youth group. Well about two months ago one of my girls, Alexa had an idea. Each week during Hubs we make a goal for the next week and then share it with the group. Now it can be anything … Reading Scripture, inviting someone to youth group, reaching out to someone who needs a friend … ect. Well one week I was really convicted that I live this Christian life and all but not actively hiding God’s word in my heart … Memorizing Scripture was my new weekly goal. So every week, those few weeks leading up to my MRI I was memorizing. Something I hadn’t done seriously for a long time and well .. I haven’t stopped. So I have this notebook and anytime I run across a verse that I just love and want to memorize it goes in the notebook. Every day I go through the notebook, from start to finish, quizzing myself on the ones I know and then reading over and working on the rest. My hope is that eventually all the verses in there will be committed to memory, but at the same time adding more all the time. Right now there are 24 verses in the notebook and I have 7 conquered … I have a ways to go. So that is my quiet time routine, my time with the Lord every day. Now keep in my mind, I am human and sometimes I fail.  I may miss a day or even a whole week because of poor time management or brain surgery! I tell my Hub girls all the time … Don’t read your Bible because you feel like you have to, that just creates guilt and shame. Read because you want to … And if you only have 2 minutes than that is a great start. It is all about your willing heart wanting to hear from our great God. When you don’t do it out of guilt, you will notice that slowly your desire will grow and the minutes will increase. The key word here is grace … God gives it to us, why don’t we give it to ourselves and each other?

Next I eat, bathe and get myself together because Joette, aka Nani and Kate, Josh’s sister are coming to visit on Kate’s way back home from spending the weekend with my kiddos. It’s so good to see them, we visit for about an hour before Kate has to hit the road to make it home to her sweet family. I’m so thankful that she took the time to be with Tobey and Raegan, what a treat for them! Nani stays and it’s perfect because Josh and Brenda can actually both have some time to themselves. So she gets to experience the crazy, somewhat manic Wendi. I seem to be doing so well because I’m so expressive but this is the Decadron giving me these feelings of elation, everything seems so wonderful in my mind.

After we get home, Nani jokes that every meal is the best meal of my life. I must say, it seems that way … And I’m so hungry, a side-effect of the Decadron, that I’m loving all the fabulous meals everyone is bringing us. I’m eating like every hour, which is crazy and not the best considering that the Norco has the tendency to completely paralyze the  bowels. So I’m seriously battling constipation … now my husband is wincing right now because there is no need to involve any kind of potty talk in any conversation, let alone on a blog, or so he believes … But I beg to differ in this case because this is the real deal, no covering up or skipping what really happened … The real story. It’s so bad that I’m in real pain, not head pain but stomach pain! I won’t go into the details but after some consultation from a friend I get back on track.

That night, Nani and Brenda are with me for the evening and Josh is off for a little alone time. He took off for a run from Cottage Hospital down towards the beach … It’s just around 2.5 miles, the perfect distance to blow off some steam and clear his head. After his run, he hits State Street for food and some time to chill. If you haven’t sensed this yet I am totally exhausting. I’m all amped up and talking loud and won’t stop trying to control everything. They are worried about me, I’m not resting and typing my brains off on this blog in the middle of the night.

Our hopes for a walk outside come true, we get a wheelchair and head outside. We laugh at the fact that they let us just go straight outside the front doors … We want to find the courtyard but don’t know how to get there from inside. So we take to the sidewalk, the bump at each line in the cement jolting me. This is my first time out of hospital and it is just past dusk, a little chilly but the air is so fresh. I’m breathing it in like I haven’t breathed in such a long time. We get to the gate of the courtyard and of course it is locked, so we know there must be another way.  Inside again, we find it and head outside … We take pictures and as we are going to head back inside a doctor tells us that we may not want to go back the way we came … There was an “angry skunk” by the back door. We are not thinking this would be a good thing to be sprayed by a skunk, so we brave it back out on the sidewalk, over the deep lines of the cement, into the front entrance of Cottage Hospital … By the way we told the front desk about the skunk!