2018 – ANNEE DE COEUR - YEAR OF THE HEART
“So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” Psalm 90.12
JACK’S HEART Friday, January 5, 2018. One month after our galumphing Labradoodle Jack’s 13th birthday, we were in the exam room at the vet’s.
We’d been there a hundred plus times. It began when Dr. Libby gave 6-week old Jack his new pup physical. He went for check-ups and generally minor maladies over the years, though increasingly serious over the last year. Jack mainly saw Dr. Josh, though sometimes Dr. Lydia. All three: great doggy docs. Dr. Josh often chuckled how Jack had one setting: wide open.
That Friday was different. The time had come to say earthly goodbye to Jack. Dianne kept active vigil at home ‘rearranging things’; our son Bailey drove Jack and me there. The lights dimmed, candles; a crimson coverlet was on the table. My hand over Jack’s heart, I felt its last beat.
I am thankful for all the years Jack spent with Dianne and me. There will always be a little Jack shaped hole in our hearts. Grief is the God given healthy healing process by which we can take our untakable losses. Whether person or pet, it is not a matter of getting over something but going on.
BILL’S HEART Early July, thanks to my keen personal physician Dr. Renee and competent cardiologist Dr. Jim, I was on the business end of a heart catheterization. I saw my heart on the screen after the catheter snaked its way into my cardio-sanctum (my term) to check out some suspicious artery issues. Bottom line: a couple prescriptions, no stents, needed. Dr. Jim actually nodded at the screen: ‘you’ve got a good heart.’
Besides those pharmacological means of grace, Dr. Jim recommended the so-called Mediterranean diet – ‘rich in olive oil, fruits, vegetables, fish, modest portions of lean meats, whole grains and nuts.’ Enter Chef Dianne, always a tasty, healthy fare cook, with a new, supercharged menu. Not so much an unfun, got-to diet, it’s really a delicious get-to way of eating differently.
From gustation to perspiration, I have picked up the pace of my daily jaunts and exercise. With the help of my cheerful, slightly sadistic 27-year-old trainer ‘Coach’ Tyler – weights, crunches, stretches, pushups, mat work, ‘blankity-blank planks’, and such – there is less weight and waist to me; more energy and endurance.
Book providence – the right book showing up at the right time – I read Cardiologist Sandeep Jauhar’s extremely readable HEART A HISTORY. No way to do even minimal justice to the book: it combines memoir, history of understandings of the heart, accounts of development of medical care of hearts, and surveys aspects of the whole-life care and maintenance of our hearts.
Along the way, the heart has been considered the center of our capacity for faith, love, and bravery. Actually, it is a pump and an electrical system. Yet full circle – and here I am grossly summarizing and simplifying – Dr. Jauhar relates how as hugely important as diet, exercise, and genes, nothing is more important to continued healthy heart ticking than emotional, relational, and spiritual health. AKA: faith, love, bravery. Good segue to the next heart…
DIANNE’S HEART In August, Dianne and I celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary. I’ve told before how though quite young, we had to get married. It wasn’t a baby thing – Bailey showed up two years later. We just had to get married. Though our families’ gave us good reasons to wait, they gave us their blessing and support (emotional though financial, too, a few times ).
As you may have noticed, I am a talker. And as those of you who know Dianne, she is a doer. Not saying she is a One on the Enneagram, but this does sound a lot like her:
“Ones don’t gush I love you every five minutes, but that doesn’t mean they don’t. Ones say I love you by being responsible and doing what is expected of them to make the world a better, more secure place for you (and I add all those they love!). They will make sure you always get your annual physical (and I add daily make sure you are compliant), and every meal they cook for you will be the right portion size, and contain the right combination of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates.” (P. 103: THE ROAD BACK TO YOU – AN ENNEAGRAM JOURNEY TO SELF-DISCOVERY, Cron & Stabile)
Don’t get me started on my Enneagram number jumble; whether Dianne is a One, she is the one in my life that’s held ‘it and me’ together over the years. The Biblical marital motto says the two become one flesh. That includes hearts because from my view I don’t exactly know where hers and mine begin or end.
THE HEART OF COURAGE For reasons I do and don’t understand ‘courage’ has become the central word for my faith and sense of a life worth living and dying for. Like ‘integrity’ was for several years, it is a lens for how the God we know in Jesus transfuses grace, joy, love, and hope into and through us.
Thanks to friend Kip, pastor of Asbury, I had the opportunity to do a four part Holy Week series on courage. I gleaned a couple dozen of courage related sermons from 20+ years of my sermons in the big black binders. There was some Facebook musing, too. So now, there's a Courage binder to boot.
Our English ‘courage’ comes from ‘coeur’ French for heart, and both track back into Latin and Greek cardiac-heart words. Having heart, courage makes all the difference in a world where it is often so easy to lose heart.
I have shared a scene several times from the movie THE DARKEST HOUR. Stuttery King George and blustery Winston Churchill have a prickly relationship that grows into mutual respect and resolve to resist the terror of Hitler. King: “Aren’t you afraid?” Winston: “Most terribly!”
Courage is not fear-free. It is a mysterious strength greater than quite real fear. One stab at a working definition: “Courage is God’s gift of heart and hands to respond in love instead of react in fear.” Not fear free but love empowered.
Brenne Brown: “The foundation of courage is vulnerability – the ability to navigate uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. It takes courage to open ourselves to joy.” (P. 144, BRAVING THE WILDERNESS: THE QUEST FOR TRUE BELONGING & THE COURAGE TO STAND ALONE.)
Here we are on the brink of a new year. Most of us have personal life fears about ones we love and ourselves. It takes something of an act of courage to face the news each day. But in the oddness of Godness, maybe just maybe 2019 can be a year of courage greater than the fear and complications.
We can Google a nifty way to calculate how many times our hearts have beat to this point. There is no way to calculate how many beats are ahead for us. Don’t waste a beat. Courage… And maybe some joy and gratitude. Hmmm. Maybe those can be contenders for 2019.