On May 23, 2024, my husband, Jim Gallagher, entered the E.R. he worked in for 15 years, this time as a patient. Within days he was fighting for his life as an infection that began in his foot raged throughout his body, and on June 4th, his leg was amputated below the knee in order to save his life. This is an ongoing log of our journey.
God’s hands.
This week included a big step. After 25 days in the acute care hospital, Jim moved to an inpatient rehab facility in a small hospital close to our home.
Somehow it feels like he almost IS home! In this small town Jim is well-known and well-loved. This is another of the five hospitals Jim has worked in as a nurse, and he loves seeing old friends and making new ones. He is such an extrovert, and I love watching the sparks fly and the love flow. And of course I get to pop in and out easily on my way to or from work.
In a sweet, quiet moment yesterday, Jim held up hands wrinkled and worn from age and use, and gratefully no longer puffy from kidney failure. I love those hands and all the care they represent.
“These are God’s hands,” he said, his voice quiet, almost a whisper so as not to disturb the patient and nurse on the other side of the room.
“All this time I thought they were mine, thought I was helping people. And now I know that it was God working through my hands.”
We are grateful for all the stories of how Jim’s life has made a difference in yours.
The hard and the holy.
We see small steps of progress in Jim’s pain and he is gaining ground, but he is still unable to bear his weight on his good leg. However, he is now in a unit with the right resources to build strength. Pain continues to be the largest obstacle to forward progress in regaining strength in Jim’s muscles.
You may recall that Jim’s original foot infection exploded and migrated all over his body, settling into some discs, growing an abscess in his psoas, and inflaming and hemorrhaging muscles in his back. While the infection is no longer there, tightness and inflammation and stiffness continue to cause a tremendous amount of pain when he moves. And movement is the key to healing!
It's an uneasy truce with pain when you lie still. The only thing that feels good and gives you a moment of peace is also robbing you of your future, costing you mobility. Doing the hard and holy work of gaining range of motion will hurt like heck, but then you get range of motion. Without regaining strength and range of motion you will walk bent over if you walk at all.
The only way to heal is to walk right into the fire, through the pain, to the other side.
Our good friend J.R. says it this way: “Jimmy, you’re going to have to embrace the suck.”
It’s daunting. Humbling. Sometimes horrifying. It’s hard and holy work.
That’s a phrase that has been quietly worming it’s way into my thoughts, until I finally stopped to ask God what he wanted me to notice.
“Hard” I understand. I’m witnessing the hard firsthand, and I understand how costly hard can be. I also know how easy it is for me to reach for ease, to live in denial, to return to some comfort that numbs my pain and offers a costly, unhealthy “peace”—while all the time I’m avoiding the hard, painful work and losing strength. Maybe you have some numbing comforts you reach for, too.
We’ve just had the most ghastly illustration of that in the right foot that Jim lost. Neuropathy masked the pain, infection quietly grew beneath the surface, and finding an inroad, it spread and multiplied and nearly cost Jim his life.
Peace and absence of pain does not mean you’re healthy. It might mean you’re slowly numbing yourself, while something insidious and ugly is quietly killing you.
Maybe that’s not so different from the “holy” part of this hard and holy work. Holiness similarly requires that we are honest about what is slowly sucking the life from us, and stop giving it a place in our lives. But with holiness, we acknowledge that God is the one who has the right to define what is true and good and beautiful. We acknowledge our helpless state. And then we hand him the scalpel.
Thankfully, holiness does not come from our own efforts to make ourselves clean. We can’t make ourselves holy any more than any more than Jim could do his own surgery! But when we agree with God about our brokenness and surrender to him, he does the cleansing, healing work.
That is a truth that is sprinkled all through the pages of the Bible. Note where forgiveness, a clean heart, and peace with God comes from in these verses:
2 Chronicles 7:14. "If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land."
Psalm 51:10. "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me."
Jeremiah 31:34. “For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more."
1 John 1:9. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
Romans 5:1. "Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ."
Romans 5:8. “But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
We cry for help. He does the work.
. . . . . . . .
What is ahead for Jim is hard work. It’s also holy work. The holy part is God at work in us, and that is why we are so grateful for your prayers.
I have so much more to say about this and learn about this, but will save it for a different time and venue. Instead I’ll end with this beautiful verse that embodies the idea of the hard and the holy. This is my prayer for Jim and for me, and also for you:
Therefore strengthen your limp hands and weak knees. Make straight paths for your feet, so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed.
Hebrews 12:12
Amen!
One step at a time.
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