Previous Challenge Entry (Level 2 – Intermediate)
Topic: Space (01/23/06)
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TITLE: Spaces of the Heart | Previous Challenge Entry
By Cassie Memmer
01/26/06 -
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daughter off to work each day. I did the regular shopping, cooking, laundry, holiday
baking.
The space got smaller still. The unknown left me without a care as I attended church
services, meetings, and chorus rehearsals.
The space secretly narrowed. But there was work to do at the post office, sorting cards
and letters, selling stamps, weighing packages, dispatching mail.
And the hidden space became dangerously tiny. Nevertheless, it was a busy time of
chorus performaces, singing for holiday parties, nursing homes, and wrapping
mountains of Christmas presents.
Then the space closed.
The pain started and didn’t stop. For three days I continued my life’s routine before I
surrendered and drove myself thirty miles to see a doctor, hardly able to get there,
needing to pull over when the pain became unbearable.
After lying in the hospital with severe pain for twenty-four hours, the doctor entered my
room and gave me the diagnosis that had been missed the day before by the
emergency room doctors. I was having a heart attack! A heart attack? I thought, “It’s
three weeks past my forty-sixth birthday. How is this possible?” Aloud I asked, “Does
this mean I’m not going home today?” I laughed. (Might as well.) The doctor didn’t.
The cardiologist came in and announced, “You need an emergency heart cath. You
could have another heart attack, a stroke, or die, but you need to have it. Take a few
minutes to decide and let me know.”
I was rushed from my private room to the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit. IV nitro was
started. My husband, Ed, stood beside me, nervous, with eyes stunned and wet. Our
daughter held on to my hand, crying without reservation.
“Katie, don’t worry,” I told her. “If something happens, it’ll be all right. I don’t want to
leave you and your dad now, but if that happens, I’ll go be with the Lord. And I will see
you later. However, I don’t believe God is done with me yet, and I believe I’ll be fine.”
The decision made, I was rushed to the cardiac catherization lab and they found the
clogged artery. Very little life-giving blood was flowing through the occluded vessel. An
immediate angioplasty was done, but to guarantee the space would stay open they
inserted a stent. Once in place, the blood flowed freely through the wide opened artery,
and the pain ended at last.
An open vessel allows blood to flow throughout the body bringing life to all its parts. It’s
amazing how closing off that tiny space can bring life to a halt.
Many factors contribute to clogging the space inside those arteries. Eating wrong,
smoking, stress, family history, and certain diseases such as diabetes.
But there’s another space within our hearts that does need to be filled. That’s the hole,
the void, that God put there. Our Creator purposely left that space in us knowing that
He is the only one that can fill it. And unless it is filled with His Holy Spirit, a person will
search endlessly for things to fill the vacuum. Some conditions needed to maintain its
fullness are bible study, prayer, humility, obedience, and faith.
Spaces. Some need to remain open and others need to be filled. Thankfully, the
implanted stent has guarded the space in my heart artery and helped it to remain open
for eight years. I’m even more thankful the void in my heart, that God space, is not an
empty chasm seeking for something to dwell in it, but is filled completely with His Holy
Presence!
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Thanks for writing it.
Joe