Heavy

Some ... complications have come up with the closing on the new house. We have had to put it off until Tuesday.

And yet I am most definitely not stressing out. This is where I get to put my money where my metaphysical mouth is and affirm that every transaction takes place at the right time, in perfect harmony and for the good of all involved. Divine abundance is in place and there is supply for every demand.

I never did tell y'all what was going on with my uncle, did I? My mother's brother was a favorite of mine when I was a child, but we grew apart after my mother remarried. At one point, he let my mother down, in my view, and as an adult I found him to be rather distant and, well, republican. But last November, just before my birthday, we got a call that he was going to have open-heart surgery the next day. He had a pulmonary embolism and had a history of heart problems. "Today's a lousy day," he told my mother over the phone, "but tomorrow will be better."

The next day we got a call from my aunt. The surgery had not had the outcome they'd hoped for. The doctors had put my uncle in a medically induced coma because after the surgery, the pressure in the right side of his heart was too elevated. They were using a machine to function for that side of his heart and needed him to stay unconscious to buy time, a few days during which they hoped his heart would heal. They would have to take him off the machine before they could close him up; if they took him off and his heart still wasn't working properly, they could do nothing else. Everyone was grim. They wanted my mother to come out to Atlanta.

She was the only one who refused to believe that he was going to die. And he didn't die. He was in a coma for a week, but he made it. Not only that, he's now home, nearly done with therapy, and suffers only some vision problems related to the ordeal. The hospital in Atlanta, I've been told, calls him Lazarus. Since then, he's called me twice. He seems to be a different man. When he talks with me, there is a warmth I don't recall having heard for years. I guess a miraculous recovery will do that for you.

I know how fortunate he was, how fortunate our family was and is, and how things can turn around no matter the odds. So I'm certainly not going to get in a sweat over four walls and a roof. I don't mean that to sound simplistic or glib. Life is full of fear and uncertainty, I just see no reason to pile on more.