For just as we have many members in one body and all the members do not have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. – Romans 12:4-5

So we’re home (pause for a polite round of applause… thank you, thank you very much…). Finally, after a series of evaluations, Rebekah has been released from the lockup and granted parole.

Not that this was easy. Not at all. When they keep you in the hospital longer than expected it’s for a reason. So, having documented the reason, by definition the burden of proof becomes more, shall we say, burdensome.

Long story short, it appears the amount of trauma sustained during major surgery was more extensive than planned. In consequence, we’re in for a longer healing timeline than we had expected going in.

Regardless, Rebekah got through Saturday’s very difficult morning demonstrating enough progress to warrant discharge. So we were wheeled to the hospital’s front door, I helped Rebekah into the Toyota Rav-4, and we drove back home to Wake Forest.

The problem with home turns out to be that our two story colonial doesn’t have a hospital bed, doesn’t feature round the clock nursing care, and doesn’t come with an IV for the delivery of necessary medications. But, we are part of a passionately loving faith community, so our friends sprang into action, and – before she even arrived home – Rebekah was hooked up with an amazing and epically solid recliner she can operate electronically.

Not only that, but our friends sat with Rebekah while I ran to the pharmacy for medications. Home is good; home plus good friends is even better.

Our job, over the next few days and hopefully not too many weeks, is to gain strength, to swallow solid food, and to learn to live with Rebekah’s unreasonably restrictive neck brace.

Yes, I learned something!

For me, the spiritual lesson here is clear. We can’t do life alone, not properly. We can’t deal with challenges, recover from difficulty, be nursed back to health, face a crisis, negotiate a rocky pathway… or a hundred other day-to-day realities, without the good community of loving, generous, kind, skilled, equipped, patient, Jesus-following people who make up the Body of Christ.

We simply were not created that way. But it’s a good thing. Because we would also fail to enjoy the blessing of community, and the humility of shared burdens if we flat out didn’t need one another. This is how we were created. This was – this is – the intention of God’s fundamental design.

Designed this way in order that we might enjoy the blessed community. This evening I am so tired, I am so completely spent; but because of that I am also so grateful, I am so blessed, I am so full.

– DEREK