Be Still and Know

Thanks for all the notes and prayers, y’all. God continues to be good… as if we should be surprised.

To my surprise and delight, I’ve had virtually no physical pain from the surgery yesterday — less, in fact, than from some of the exploits that caused the injury in the first place, like rock-climbing, skiing with minimal skill and maximum ambition, and running 100 miles. (The pictures of the holes they had to drill in the end of my femur are magnificently disgusting.) I’m now tied to a “continuous passive motion” (CPM) machine (see generic picture below), flat on my back for 6-8 hours a day, for at least ten days and perhaps as long as three weeks. That would have driven a younger version of me utterly bonkers. Instead, I’m almost enjoying it.

The contemplative time is allowing me to catch up on my reading (far easier than typing on a laptop in this position; thus the short post) and also causing me to read in a different, less frenetic, lost-art kind of way. Having two hours to read (and pray, and just think) is very different from having two hours with no practical possibility of doing anything but those things. The sense is captured neatly by a chapter-heading quote to a new book I’m devouring and hope to review soon: “The Road Trip That Changed the World,” by Mark Sayers:

“All of man’s misfortune comes from one thing, which is not knowing how to sit quietly in a room.” (Blaise Pascal, in ‘Pensees’)

Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth! (Psalm 46:10)

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