Something happened on Monday. It pierced my heart, opened my eyes, and gave me one more of those perspective adjustments. One of those moments when you realize you’re looking through one lens, and that you need to flip it around and look through the other end. Or maybe change lenses. And this something made me weep through a flood of conflicting emotions.

My heart catheter ablation isn’t scheduled until February, and while I continue to hope for an opening on the cancellation list so I can get in sooner, I’m forced to find ways to try to keep living and functioning in spite of a greatly reduced supply of oxygenated blood flowing from my heart to my body. If you’ve been following this journey, you know that I am very short of breath always, and sometimes it’s so bad that I feel like my chest is being crushed and I’m being suffocated. I’m so weak that, at times, I have to have help even walking to the bathroom, and walking any distance at all has become pretty much impossible.

I can’t keep borrowing my kids’ wheelchairs because they need them. So we decided it was time to rent one (fighting with insurance and hoping they will cover future months, but we paid for this first month while we pursue that battle). But first, I had an appointment with a doctor I see several times a year. I’ve known the receptionist there for years, and we regularly swap stories about our kids and grandkids. She is quite a bit younger than I am and only has two little grandbabies. I hadn’t seen her in awhile, but I didn’t really know why.

When I arrived for my appointment, I was struggling to walk and to breathe. Scott had to help me onto and off of the examination table. I was feeling a little sad and frustrated about all of it. This receptionist, concerned by this drastic change in my health, asked for more details. During that short conversation, I learned that her husband, who was only in his fifties, died suddenly just a few months ago from similar heart issues. Died. Gone. That’s why I hadn’t seen her recently.

Unlike me, he got no warning signs. No months of trying to breathe. No drastic loss of strength. No hours scheduling appointments with specialists and fighting for more testing to find the problem. No struggling to find new ways to keep functioning. No moments sitting with his children and grandchildren when he’d rather have been up playing with them. No talking and crying with his beloved about how hard the waiting can be. No more holding any of them in his arms.

I can’t even really describe the power behind the force that hit my body, mind, and soul as I heard and tried to process to this news. I was speechless and filled so deeply with so much grief and sadness. I hugged her and then Scott helped me to the van where I let the tears fall. I couldn’t stop crying. I was feeling so many things.

First and foremost was tremendous heartbreak for their family, followed quickly by gratitude for the crippling symptoms I’ve been living with all these months. This wasn’t the first time I’ve realized that I’m one of the “lucky” ones to have had symptoms to warn me, but I was able to see in a new and stark way what a blessing all of these symptoms are as they keep driving us to search for answers and treatment. They felt like a beautiful gift that’s been placed in my hands with so much love.

But even while I was feeling that gratitude, I was also asking, “Why!?”

Not why am I having to struggle, though. All I could think of was, “Why did I get this chance to keep looking for answers and living when he didn’t?” It seemed so unfair. It still seems so unfair. None of us deserves this chance more than others.

Life here in this world is so messed up and broken and has been since sin entered it and flipped everything upside down and inside out. This world is not our home. This is not all there is. Someday all the bad, all the sad will come undone, and beauty and joy will shine, shine, shine! No more tears. I long for that day.

But until then, this is where we live. I pray I learn more and more not to waste this time. That I learn to keep caring about other people, loving them better, trusting an all-loving and all-knowing Father with the parts I can’t figure out, and seeing beauty every minute. Right now. In the midst of the brokenness.

We left there and went to get my wheelchair, and then we went to choose this year’s pumpkin for designing and carving our Jack ‘o Lantern with the kids for Halloween — a family tradition for over forty years. I was still feeling so many emotions, but I wanted to focus on the gratitude at that moment. I was choosing a pumpkin for my kids. Holding it, smelling it’s kind of stinky smell, and I was out with my husband on a chilly, beautiful, fall day — in spite of a little rainy drizzle.

That evening, as we snuggled in our family room and read to our kids, I looked at the younger ones all bunched together in their pajamas, squished against each other and our dogs, focusing on the story. My heart was so full of joy at that moment. And Scott snapped a picture for me as I tried to read even while having to pause frequently to catch my breath, and whispered in my heart, “Thank you, God, that I’m still breathing, struggling, fighting, living, looking into my children’s faces.”

The next morning, a dear friend, knowing nothing about what was going on in my heart at the moment, sent me a message, reminding me of her love and prayers and sharing something she had read that morning. One portion really stood out to me:

“I love fall. Leaves transition from green, revealing all their brilliance — vibrant yellows, oranges, and reds. Their beauty is most apparent right before their death. Winter soon arrives, and they drift down to the ground. This year, they feel like a startling representation of my heart. I’m looking back on a year full of devastating sickness, loss, and grief — a year of desperate prayers, seemingly left unanswered. But somehow, God reveals his beauty in it all — in the falling leaves and in the unanswered prayers.

I could so relate to this. “Even in the unanswered prayers.”

He is holding us. He is writing our story. He is close beside me always. And he sends me reminders minute by minute so I don’t forget when it’s not so obvious.

Enjoy a couple of these reminders from this week. Kathryn and her service dog Mozley love to head out into the neighborhood daily with her special trike and collect fall leaves for me. This is the highlight of sweet Kathryn’s day. When she gets home, her sisters help her sprinkle them on the wheelchair ramp in front of our house. Just for me. Just because she loves me and knows I love fall.