Joy in the Morning

If you have ever made homemade lemonade you know that you have to have lemons.  And to make the lemonade you have to put the lemons through some intense pressure to get their juice, or what's on the inside.  Whether you heat the lemons, roll them on the counter, or just keep them in the refrigerator, you end up putting the lemons in various situations all for one purpose...to make great lemonade.  But just having the lemons does not get you the lemonade, You then have to squeeze them in order for them to produce the juice that is necessary for you to get your end goal, lemonade.  I've been thinking about this illustration for most of the week.  I visualized this process and even down to the final squeezing.  And it came to me, when we have a sack of lemons to squeeze, we usually don't have to second guess, that upon squeezing we'll get lemon juice.  Imagine, how disappointed would we be if we got a lemon and squeezed it and all that came out were seeds, or dried up bitter pulp, with very little juice?

Well, I used this because through the intense pressure of this week, and even the intensity of this evening, I felt a lot like the lemon.  And just as the Bible quotes in Matthew, out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.  So what's inside of me?  Hopefully a sweet juice that has been filled with God's Word and Christ's attitude.  Truly an opportunity to say "I have hidden Your Word in my heart" (Psalm 119:11).

Tonight indeed was a pressure moment.  It had to deal with the heart.  Princess' heart.  While we were successful in coming off the second and last sedative, we were thrown a curve ball as Princess' heart rate became pretty elevated and would not calm down.  She hovered around 135 beats per minute and was also battling an intense fever.  Shortly after giving her pain medicine to possibly address the heart rate (thought to be from the pain of the ventilator that she might be feeling), Princess' heart rate began to become very erratic and quickly shot up to 175 bpm, then back down to 129, then up again, then down again.  This went on for a good while and then rapidly shooting towards 250 bpm, 275 bpm, and even topping out I think at 308 bpm.  By this time the nurses on the floor were attending to Princess and trying to quickly get her medicine to stop the erratic nature and irregular nature of her heart.

By this time, many of you had been praying and were seeking the Lord on our behalf.  Medication wasn't working and so then it was more medication, and then more medication.  So we have been now at this for nearly 6 hours and at this current posting, we are somewhat stable bouncing between 162 and 178 bpm.  Princess is in A-fib right now and they have her on a medicine to try to correct this.  The good news is that her blood pressure is staying slightly regular.

Truly, this was a time where we weren't quite sure what was to be our outcome.  So, thank you for praying that as for now her heart rate is still extremely fast, and it is appearing to come down.  Pray for our night as I will be standing by keeping watch over her.

So tonight as I keep watch, I am reminded of Psalm 30:5, "...Weeping may last for the night, but a shout of joy comes in the morning."