I play a game each night before I fall asleep, a horrible game.  Rather than end my day in prayer and supplication, I burrow under heavy blankets and imagine that I have cancer, that I have been in a terrible accident, any number of other horrific scenarios have befallen me.  I skip over the actual bad part, the suffering, the hurt, the true pain such an event would cause.  I don’t linger over details.  The rich part of my nightly imagining is when my daughter realizes how precious life is, how much she really loves her mother and she comes back.  I see her at my bedside, holding my hand, saying she loves me.  I see the miraculous recovery, how I squeeze her hand, we have reconnected, joined once again.

I don’t want to get sick, to get hurt.  I actually hurt enough already.  The problem is she can’t see my destroyed heart.  There are no doctors and nurses rushing me anywhere to fix it. Tubes aren’t sticking out of me, I don’t have beeping machines registering where my life stands.  Yet every night I lay just as still, just as lifeless, waiting for her.   I already know that life can be crippled when you carry regrets, words left unspoken.  I watched the destruction in my brother’s life when my father had a heart attack and never left the hospital after a fight they had.  My brother carried that weight for his too short life.  The reassurances we gave that my father loved him, knew my brother loved him back could never erase the regret of a foolish fight left unresolved.  Standing on righteous anger only led to kneeling in a puddle of despair.

I wake each morning and pray this is the day that she too has recovered from a night of fear that our breach could be a forever one and she feels compelled to act.  It has been too long time wandering in this wilderness, too many nights dreaming up a way to reach her.  I wonder what she thinks about as she lays her head on the pillow, her alone time with just her and her true thoughts.  I trust God is working on her heart as well.  Please let her listen before my imaginings become true.