Forty-Five Minutes

forty-five minutes
by tim pezzelle (another promise kept)
2011-01
 
i'm so tempted to dive into the math of it all...  forty-five minutes.  that's three quarters of an hour....  there are 24 of those in a day... there are 7 of those 24's in a week....  you get the idea.  it's a blink of an eye.  in the last twelve months, you've lived 11,648 of those little 45 minute spans.... so have i.  but for me, there's one forty-five minute stretch that stands out.  there's one that i promised to talk about and haven't yet.  the time has come.
 
it was right around this time of year, last year, that we were together on the couch in our family room.  i had set sherry's computer up so that she could distract herself from the pain.  magic inlay, scrabble.... for hours at a time.  she would play and we would talk - maybe the tv was on in the background sometimes.  we would go thru the comical process of getting the pillows arranged just right; getting her comfortable - if that's what you'd call it.
 
here, i'd like to pause and ask you to remember those times in your life when you had to watch someone you love suffer through something.  do you remember those words - maybe you said them out loud - "i wish i could trade places with you".  every mother has thought those words.  it's that hard, isn't it, standing helplessly by?   "i wish i could trade places with you".
 
on this particular night, with pain killers not doing their job, those words kept rolling around in my head.  before long, they turned into a prayer.  over and over, in various permutations. 
 
and then...
 
the stabbing pain under my left rib cage.  steadily growing until i let out a little groan.  isn't it funny how we so easily miss God's most immediate answers to our prayers.  this answer was unmistakable.  i asked sherry how she was feeling.  "i'm fine.... but you don't seem so well... wait.... i'm fine... the pain is gone....". 
 
for forty-five minutes, God let me into her world.  for forty-five minutes, God let sherry out of hers.  i described the symptoms for her as we both teared up.  sherry held me and did for me the very things i had been doing for her, and more.
 
and now the hard part.  gradually, that almost unbearable pain began to retreat.  the symptoms eased for me and set in again for sherry.  those of you who know me well know that i'm not yet mature enough to not yell at God sometimes.  against my pleas "NO, NO.....", sherry tried to reassure me "it's okay... it's okay...".    forty-five minutes.  God heard my heart and gave us forty-five minutes.  i suppose it's at this point that those much smarter than i would be able to derive wonderfully deep spiritual meaning.... 
 
i can only say this - God is merciful.  he gave us a gift that enabled us to walk together the path he had set.  sherry could look at me in the days and weeks that followed, knowing that nothing would take me from her side on this journey. she would know what that look on my face meant.   i could look at sherry and understand just a bit better what she was going through.  together, we could pray knowing that God hears us.
 
as time unfolds, i'm sure that God will reveal to me more clearly what those forty-five minutes were all about.  but it does occur to me....isn't this exactly what Jesus said, seeing our suffering.... "i want to trade places with them".   maybe, just maybe, when we love someone enough to say "i wish i could trade places with you", we touch the hem of love's garment.  God loves us that much.  God loves you that much.  He climbed onto a cross made of wood cut from trees He created... so that we wouldn't have to.
 
sherry would have you know this.... He wants to trade places with you.  regardless of how bad you think it is, He isn't afraid.  He welcomes the opportunity.