Triple bypass surgery in progress...

The heart is an amazing organ!!!  Did you know it beats thousands of times each day, every day, for your entire life?  In the process, it pumps about 5 million gallons of blood, life blood, through your body! We have been warned over and over what happens if we don't take care of our bodies; specifically our heart.  "When one of the heart's arteries gets blocked and a person has a heart attack, one common procedure is to perform heart surgery and sew in a new piece of blood vessel to bridge over (bypass) the blockage. In many cases, the surgeon will fix not only the immediate problem, but also other arteries on the heart that are starting to look blocked. If the surgeon repairs three of the arteries, it is called a triple bypass."

If this is the procedure for a physical heart to be repaired, I can't help but wonder what the procedure is to repair our "internal" or "spiritual" heart?  Sometimes word pictures come to my mind or even my heart, if you will.  In the past couple of days, my thoughts have wandered to some chasms in my life that have been left by key people. 

Indeed, my coronary arteries have been blocked through the years.  Just like with a physical heart, these blockages did not happen overnight.  They have been caused by a lifetime of not taking care of my internal life.  I could easily join the choir of  "victims" and assert that these blocked arteries are solely the fault of others.  Yet, if there is one thing I have learned in life, I can choose to be a victim or I can choose to be a survivor.  I choose the latter!  Choosing to be a survivor is not an easy choice. I have learned I have to take responsibility for my thoughts and my actions in spite of what others have said or done to me.

Even with this choice made many years ago, I continue to sit here and am plagued with the "what ifs?," "whys?," and "why nots?"  I realize that there are three key people I need to be reconciled.  This journey will be particularly difficult, introspective, and completely reliant on my physician because two of these people have died and one is permanently removed from my life.

As the pictures continue to flood my mind's eye, I can see a triple bypass surgery in progress.  Many questions swim in my mind.  What will be used to create the "bypasses?"  How long will this surgery take?  I do not question chances of survival because I know my physician will heal me either this side or that of eternity.  But the question that does haunt me is how long is the recovery period?  It has taken nearly 38 years for these blockages to calcify and then to discover their existence...

I seek courage to face this surgery.  I must identify not only the immediate blockages but the surrounding problems that I've allowed to fester for so many years.  I must discover what will create the bridges or "bypasses" to my heart while honoring, forgiving, and loving deeper those I've identified as "offenders." Lastly, I need to learn to be a patient patient...
Through this impending surgery, I am confident that my life blood will flow freely, again!