Everything would be easier without that irascible background noise of arrogance. Or so I tell myself. Maybe that’s the arrogance talking. I guess it’s not really for me to say. Others can, and if the past is any indication, the will let me know. But let me tease this out anyway and see what comes of it.

When I was 5 years old the doctors sawed open my rib cage and busily set to work patching a hole in my heart. I was born with that hole. On account of this hole, when I was born they told my 27 year old mother that, if I turned blue, to please bring me back to the hospital. Years later I learned that she stood by my bedside until she couldn’t hold back the sleep any longer, and finally went to bed, entreating God that if I turned blue in the night while she slept that God would wake her.

I never turned blue. God was merciful to at least this new mother. But when I grew, I couldn’t really run. Air always came in gasps.  The heart doesn’t do well with holes in it, hence the medically supervised rib cage sawing that took place in my 5th year. I remember a good bit of it. The foam donut-shaped pillow that my head was placed on as I was wheeled down the hallway so that my chest could be cut open. I definitely thought that pillow ridiculous.

They asked me to count to ten as they placed the gas mask over my nose and mouth. My five year old will, ironclad and implacable was determined to make it all the way to ten. I think I made it to 4. I woke up with feeding tubes sticking out of my stomach and a row of weird looking tape going from my sternum to a few inches above my belly button. The tape was itchy, but they told me they usually used staples, so I felt pretty thankful overall. When the time came for the feeding tubes to be removed, the doctor gave the clear instructions to “give me a yell” to which I vigorously compiled each time one of the tubes was yanked from my young stomach.

I was quite certain that my determination to be brave and strong played a big role in my recovery. The fact that I could run without gasping and doubling over anymore after I got home made me more certain of that fact. I was quite sure that now, with my heart all stitched up and repaired, I could do whatever I might desire if I were to continue to apply my determined five year old will, ironclad and implacable.

My teenage years served as a good time of reinforcing this supposition. The cardiologist told me when I was 12 that due to my heart murmur my body might not be as efficient at vigorous physical exercise. My dad sat by my bed that night and told me that maybe my calling wasn’t to physical prowess but something more spiritual or intellectual. As soon as he closed the door I determined, in the dark of my preteen bedroom that such cautions would be no match for my self-determination. Within a few years I’d earn that adolescent black belt in karate, master the splits, and break blood vessels in my eyes from doing too many handstand pushups.

As I went through college and became some sort of adult, I carried this insistence on my own strength and ability and will into everything. I learned a great deal about sacrifice, about dying to self, about self-giving, and self surrender as I went along. It was growth. But under it all that strong, able self that I imagined as myself hung on at the foundations.

I have gone through life clinging to this primal  illusion of control and competence. I was one who always had the ability to handle life. I had certainly learned that it wasn’t so good to be excessively cruel or abrasive, and that love and self-denial is a more truthful and compelling way for me to live my competent and controlled life. But one thing was for sure: I was no terrified five year old being wheeled into a surgery I couldn’t possibly understand or control.

From age 17 to 34 I never went to see a doctor. Well, except for a couple times when I got paranoid that my heart was about to stop pumping and went to the emergency room only to be told that I was fine and to go home. Little outbursts of fragility that only twice broke into my competent certitude that I had control of my body, my life, my self.

That pretty much brings us up to date. That is the arrogance that has formed the background noise of my life. And how clearly a fiction it is now. So false it suddenly appears as I find myself unable to walk up hills without stopping every 15 minutes to gasp for air like some pathetic 5 year old with a hole in his heart. Determination, discipline, self-control, workout and diet plans are all showed up as impotent when confronted with an MRI telling me that my brain can’t work quite right anymore, regardless of how much I will it.

Someday soon I may find my head resting on a donut shaped foam pillow again. But this time, as I am wheeled down under fluorescent lighting, whether for biopsies or brain surgeries, I hope that I will not feel that enduring misguided need to be brave and determined. Perhaps I can just fear the unknown like any five year old. And hope for a tomorrow that will be greater than all these yesterdays like any five year old. Maybe I’ll be able to run again after it’s all said and done again this round at the hospital. And maybe not. But either way, from here on out I’ll take it all as gift. If this is what it takes to disabuse my of the illusions that cling so closely, the fantasies of control, self-determination, and competence that have dogged me this whole time, then blessed be the Name beyond all names. Whether I get to run again, get skinny and strong again, or whatever at least now I know that I’ll go out singing. And that is more than enough.