A couple weeks ago, I was called to meet my mom and sister in the emergency room where my dad was being brought in by ambulance. All I knew as I drove toward the hospital was that there had apparently been some kind of cardiac event. My mom's text ended with "5 people are working on him."
In moments like these, time stands eerily still, and the sounds of the earth are muted. You wonder if this will be the new defining moment of your life—the moment that serves as the mark on the timeline that separates "everything that came BEFORE" and "everything that will, by grace, come AFTER."
As I crossed from Wake County into Durham County, I noticed my hands on the steering wheel and realized just how much they looked like my dad's. Even in the soberness of the moment, I found myself smiling, knowing that part of my dad was in me—and nothing would ever take that away.
At one point during my drive, my nervous system did exactly what all hot-running nervous systems like mine tend to do. It had a momentary melt-down. It needed reassurance—something to remind it that all is well. Thankfully, Life showed up perfectly. First, as my aunt, who did what she does best by reminding me that everything always works out. Always. Everything's gonna be all right.
She says these things with such knowing—such conviction—that there is no room for doubt. Everything’s gonna be all right.
I breathed. I was breathed. I was held. My nervous system settled, and I ended that call with a deep sense of peace.
Just as I was entering the campus for the hospital, Life showed up again—this time as a Ryan Ellis song on the radio. The lyrics to the chorus pulled me in, held me close, and whispered...
Everything’s gonna be all right
Everything’s gonna be all right
You hold me your arms
Until my storm is calm.
Everything’s gonna be all right
Everything’s gonna be all right
Walking into the emergency room that day, I had no idea what I would discover, but I knew that everything would be all right—because that's the only way it can be.
All right in the pain. All right in the sorrow. All right in the not-knowing. All right in the grief. All right in the wishing-it-was-all-different. All right in the it-shouldn't-be-this-way.
About eight hours after entering the hospital, I got to go back and sit with my dad for a while. His doctor was remarkably young, but also wonderfully kind and reassuring. He looked at my dad's chart and softly reported, "Your dad has a really sensitive system."
My entire being instinctively relaxed, beaming brightly. "I know. I have the same system."
Everything was all right. I felt the truth of that in every cell of my body. No matter what, everything was all right.
A few days later, after my dad was back at home and I was fully back into my normal routine, I sat down to send my parents an email. It was a paragraph from Thich Nhat Hanh's book "No Death, No Fear." And the most unexpected thing happened. As my fingers began typing the first few keystrokes of my dad's email address, I was overcome with an inexplicable sense of love, and I began to cry. The tears flowed freely and abundantly until I was both depleted and overflowing. Something in the simple act of typing his name reminded me that we cannot ever be disconnected. It's not possible. Love does not die. Love triumphs, always.
And we are Love.
Everything's gonna be all right.
Everything's gonna be all right.
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