Today is a big day. Today I visit with the surgeon who performed my gastric bypass, to get the definitive word on healing and directions for the way forward. But yesterday was the day I received my "post-operative pep talk", from a rather unexpected source.
Yesterday I visited with the cardiologist to make sure that no adjustments were needed to keep me in sinus rhythm and out of Atrial Fibrillation. It was fun to hear this doctor marvel at my initial weight loss and my low blood pressure. I appreciated his comment "The only way I could lose 35 pounds would be to rip out a lung or something". As the doctor headed out the door, he delivered the pep talk that went beyond post-op and into new life.
"Remember", he said, "This is not just about the weight. It is not just about lowered blood pressure, ease of movement, looking good, because it is not just about the weight. You have to pay attention to the rest of life, to all of life, for all your life."
A wise man, that doctor. Recently I've found myself falling into the blues as the most rapid weight loss slows down a bit, and as I contemplate all there is to do at work which certainly has not stopped while I've been off for two weeks. The pep talk reminds me that health is a many-faceted thing. It involves more than my body. It requires more than my work. It needs more. It needs desire.
Poet David Whyte writes about our needed desire in this way:
"I thought of the old Latin root of the word desire, meaning de sider, of the stars. To have a desire in life
literally means to keep your star in sight, to follow a glimmer, a beacon, a disappearing will-o'-the-wisp over the
horizon into someplace you cannot yet fully imagine."
For today, I will keep my star in sight. And i will trust that place beyond the horizon where God's imagination is calling mine into re-birth.
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