Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

• 1 Corinthians 15:57

But thanks be to God, who always leads us as captives in Christ’s triumphal procession and uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of him everywhere.

• 2 Corinthians 2:14

The Lord your God is with you,
    the Mighty Warrior who saves.
He will take great delight in you;
    in his love he will no longer rebuke you,
    but will rejoice over you with singing.”

• Zephaniah 3:17

The Lord has done great things for us,
    and we are filled with joy.

• Psalm 126:3

You make known to me the path of life;
    you will fill me with joy in your presence,
    with eternal pleasures at your right hand.

• Psalm 16:11

The Boilerplate

My wife started to write her thoughts down at one point in her life.  Some hints point to 2018 and 2019, after she had her open-heart surgery.  In spite of her trials and the atrial fibrillation (A-Fib) that required her to take blood thinners, this was before her major health decline.

Sometimes, she wrote a thought.  Other times, she wrote a Bible verse, and maybe her idea on that day.  Other times, it is a prayer, but I am going to take one entry at a time and try to write about it

Her comment

“God is victorious.  He looks after you with great joy.”

• My wife’s first comment in this notebook

The Discussion

Is this a Bible verse?  I do not think so.  It seems to be a combination of the Bible verses that I quoted above, but she may have read other verses that pointed in the same general direction.  If I have the timing right, she felt victorious.

When she had open-heart surgery, they had placed an endotracheal tube in her throat.  She could only answer yes-no questions.  Each time she awoke from anesthesia, she would see double.  The nurses got flustered and asked questions that were not yes-no.  And she would get frustrated and simply close her eyes and drift back off to sleep.  When she had “been under far too long”, they pulled the tube and woke her up.  She asked, “Would it have hurt you to ask a yes-no question?  Now, you need to do something about my double vision.”

But by this time, after waiting about sixteen hours, all by myself, except when the pastor came by to pray with me, the nurses told me to go home.

The next morning, I arrived, and they took me to her room.  She said, “I prayed and just like Hezekiah, I’m going to be around for another fifteen years.”  As it turned out, it was not quite five years, but I accepted my role as caregiver for that short time.  I even felt God tapping me on the shoulder that if I were still working, she would not have me to drive her to appointments, which were at times quite often.

But here, you can see that she feels the victory within her.  She would have been an early release after the surgery if it were not for the development of A-Fib, on the third day after the surgery.  But she stayed at the rehab center much less time than was expected.

It was during that time that I bought a large bowl full of Hershey Kisses, at her request.  I put them in front of her vanity.  As each nurse or therapist came in to check on her, my wife would ask, “Have you had your kiss today?”  The nurse would look shocked.  Her eyes would dart from me to her and back again.  Then my wife would say, “My husband …”  By this time, the nurse would make excuses that she was not that kind of nurse until I pointed to the bowl of chocolate kisses.  The laughter then erupted.  No one ever refused.  A few asked if they could take some to their workmates that worked on different hallways.  They did what they had come there to do and left laughing.  And it seemed none of them told the others what my wife’s cringe worthy question would be.  Everyone who came in was shocked, unless they were making a second trip, sometimes just for a chocolate.

But that was her.  Her hope was in God.  She wanted fifteen years of good life, but only about two years later did her health start going downhill.  But she did everything with joy.  She felt it her duty to put smiles on other people’s faces.  The smile was always on hers.

Helping someone to smile was her victory, a little cheer in a maddening world.

And all to the glory of God.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory