As people who are familiar with this site will
tell you, I really have never written it with any
intention other than to just be a vehicle to clear my own mind. Perhaps at the start, right before my stroke in 2008 and with the emergence of blogs, I may have had different intentions. It was at a tumultuous point in the life of Anglicanism, and as a conservative American priest, that point of almost 20 years, I felt like I might have something of value to say. Of course, value is relative. Bloggers and now “vloggers” are a “dime a dozen,” and that description indicates itself what era from which I come. But post stroke, and after a
hell of a lot of rehab I discovered that when I wrote, my thoughts began to become clearer.
Let’s not however, put the cart before the horse. My wife Amanda used to proofread for me, and she would be honest to confess that what I started writing was incomprehensible. It did progress, and often quite comically, into almost verbatim repeated paragraphs within the evidence of healing thoughts gravitating to more cohesive and organized themes. But it was a long and arduous process, and one I would be foolish to not remember.
Why? Well because the path to recovery is rarely linear. In fact it varies wildly. Some days I am super sharp, avoiding the phrase “as sharp as a tack,” as half of the current population has no idea of what a tack is. Other days, I feel as if I am alone and vulnerable in my own mind. I question if I am thinking right, and it creates a lot of confusion for me.
On Thursday the 19th, I turned 64. I was traveling for work, in Pennsylvania, and it was really no big deal. What was harder was heading to PA on the 18th (my paternal grandma’s birthday) and even as the weather was awful driving, at home all hell was breaking loose. Amanda was in Indianapolis at a work conference and Ben was on his way to a doctor’s appointment just north of Indy. As I was listening to Indianapolis radio, the Indiana skies went dark, severe storms moved in and many were tornadic, and I was nowhere that I could help.
It is often difficult to navigate the confusion and feelings in times like these. Amanda’s conference was evacuated to a safe area, but Ben was stopped in traffic and in the path of the worst part of the storm. He will be 18 in 9 days, and with all the faith I had I told him I trusted and believed in him, that he should get off the phone with me and listen to the station I was, and make the best decisions he could. And that is where we left it.
I am finally home tonight after leaving PA on Friday to head to Illinois for a funeral today and a pastoral visit in Peoria before heading home. Ben was able to get off the highway and into a hotel lobby to ride out the storm. I am proud of him. He is an amazing young man. Amanda was of course safe and came home after the all-clear.
Ironically, the brunt of our experience came at home. We live in a very small town called Edgewood. And on the 18th, our home was the worst in our town. We lost a 100 year old tree in our front yard next to the bridge on our driveway, and oddly enough, underneath all that mess is another large tree that was taken out by the loss of the tree by the bridge. All of it needs to come out, and I just saw it for the first time a couple of hours ago. It will be close to $3000 to clear it up, and that will happen next week.
From my office on the second floor of the house looking over the front yard, both of those old trees painted my view. It was always a Rembrandt. Now it is different. After the cleanup and removal of the rest of the trees, God knows what it will be.
My being here would have done nothing to change my current or soon to be new view. But I can look at it with a sense of thanksgiving. My life on the 18th was a total mess. I cannot remember a harder choice than to tell my 17-year-old son to get off the phone, listen to the reports as they were happening, that I loved him, and that I trusted him to make good decisions because I knew he could.
$3000 to cut up wood and remove terrible storm damage from our yard is great blessing considering the fears I was having on Wednesday afternoon. I will not pretend that they were anywhere near as intense as Ben or Amanda felt, in fact, I cannot imagine. But today I am thankful. My yard is a mess and that wonderful view of my yard will never be the same in my lifetime by any means.
But trees and my view are something I can deal with. When I talked to Ben and he was safe in a hotel lobby in Carmel, Indiana and was worried about his car in the middle of the storm, I was so blessed and thankful.
I am home, and as you can see, we need a bit of tree service. But we are all alive and safe. And God is good, even when I am scared out of my mind. Everyone is safe, and although we will be quite a bit poorer by the end of next week, one of the largest goals i had was accomplished ON my birthday which was the 19th. I was able to see my brother Archbishop Steve Wood who I went to seminary with some 4 million years ago.
Let me say without hesitation, the Church is in not just good but great hands. And I, as a priest for many (okay more than many years) am blessed by this.
Blessings to you all!
Tom+
be involved in it all. I will be heading home to Indiana very early in the morning to make it home to celebrate my youngest son’s, and child’s, 18th birthday tomorrow. I do have to get home before 3pm EST because I have patients scheduled at 3, 4, and 5. But Amanda told me Ben has requested to “sleep in” on his birthday. And considering he does not even normally wake up until 4pm (EST) I figure I do not have a lot to deal with.
