Good Things about Being Home #1

(originally published March 24, 2010)

The pets were glad to see me. Olivia, the maddest cat in southwest Ohio, has not let me leave her sight since I got home from The Jewish Hospital on Tuesday night. Eloise, the monster dog, dashed around the yard in a paroxysm of joy, pausing to drop her big head in my lap for pets every few circuits. Frannie, our blind cocker spaniel — if God created anything cuter than cocker spaniels, he kept it for himself; tracked me by sound and scent wherever I laboriously moved around the house, her collar tags jangling, her funny little snuffle announcing her arrival. Of course Thor, the Fat Bastard in feline form, just gave me his half-lidded "Oh, were you gone?" look and went about his business.

At night, I would be lulled back to sleep listening to Frannie snuffle and wheeze in her bed next to mine. After four nights in the noisy hospital without my canine white noise machine, it was reassuring to hear her again. I had been in the hospital for five days being tested, diagnosed, and treated for what the neurologists thought was Guillain-Barré Syndrome, an autoimmune illness that leaves its victims paralyzed — sometimes to the point where they can no longer breathe unaided.

Since the summer of 2009, I had been praying for God to make me a better man, to show me how to help others instead of serving myself. God had always given me what I had prayed for; the problem was I prayed for petty and selfish things like a black leather jacket, a fancy European car, or to meet a pretty girl who would get me high. Despite receiving all those dubious gifts, I was still, at heart, miserable. Maybe I was looking at the problem from the wrong end of the telescope. One morning, as I prayed in the parking lot of the JCC, I decided to ask  God, as I understood God at that time, which was not very well, to free me from the bondage of self so I could better do God’s will. I had no idea what was coming.