Playing Footsie

Do you guys read the Mundane Faithfulness Blog? I've mentioned it a time or two on the Saturday Six.

Kara, the blogger, is dying of cancer, and she's only a couple of years older than I am. She's a mom of four, and her writing is raw and inspiring. She doesn't sugar coat cancer. It can't be sugar coated. It hurts and it's hard and she's about to say goodbye to her husband and four kids. She hates it with everything in her.

But while she's busy hating what she's losing, she's not lost sight of what she's gaining. She knows she's about to meet Jesus in person, and she's ready.

This week she wrote this post about the arrival of her hospital bed. It was delivered to her home and placed in her bedroom next to the bed she's shared her entire marriage with her husband.

Source

She said this: "No more rubbing feet in the night, no more stealing pillows from my guy. I won’t be rolling into his warm spot as he gets out of bed to make the morning coffee."

Those words punched me.

For the first several years of my adult life, I slept in a twin bed. The same twin bed I had when I lived at home. And somehow it made me feel like a twelve year old playing house. So I upgraded to a king bed. {I don't do anything in small increments.} I loved feeling like a grownup in my big ole bed. But it was also a lonely big ole bed. I could roll multiple times from one side to another...and I was alone.

I got a body pillow and tried to find comfort in something tangible to hang onto every night when I went to sleep. But it was a sleeping pacifier. It wasn't the real thing and other than giving me something to run into if I rolled over in bed, it provided no comfort.

And then I married Ryan. And suddenly there was a person beside me. Someone to snuggle up to when I felt cold. Or scared. Or lonely. Feet under the covers. An arm to pull me close.

Last night, Ryan fell asleep before I did. {Not unusual.} And as he slept there beside me, and I felt warmth radiating from his arm, I thought about Kara. I thought about her in her hospital bed beside her bed. I thought about her feet stretching in the night and rather than finding Jason...finding bars and buttons. I thought about her reaching for a pillow and finding instead a pill bottle on a nightstand. I thought about her rolling over and instead of a warm spot...the edge of the thin mattress.

And there in our big old bed, with Braeya fighting for her spot, I stretched out my foot and touched Ryan's foot. He didn't move. He was already in the deepest sleep. But I reached out because I could. Because for 34 years, I waited for a foot instead of the zipper at the bottom of the body pillow. Because beside me was the answer to so many groan-laden prayers. Because beside me was my healthy husband, and I was his mostly-healthy wife.

Because I never want to forget or take for granted what a joy it is to have someone beside me in the bed. Because I never want to forget or take for granted the gift of health that allows us to be beside each other. Because if our Kara-day comes and we face what she's living now, I want to look back and know that when I could reach out and play footsie under the covers, I did.