Anniversaries Are Among the Very Best of Celebrations

Anniversaries are fun, aren’t they? At least most of them. We can have a slew of them, depending on how celebratory we’re inclined to be. Birthdays are anniversaries of our birth. Couples celebrate their wedding anniversaries – for many, also their patience, understanding, and perseverance. If we like our job, we can commemorate the anniversary of our hiring. Entrepreneurs can mark the founding of their businesses.

 

Several members of our family celebrate adoption anniversaries, and I know many people who make it a point to annually celebrate the anniversary of their spiritual rebirth.

 

For me, Dec. 20 is an anniversary that signifies I’m still here to celebrate it. That day in 2006 was when I underwent open-heart surgery – four coronary artery bypasses and an ARR, which stands for Aortic Root Replacement. In other words, my entire ascending aorta was replaced after a serious aneurysm had been detected during a routine angiogram.

Open-heart surgery isn’t a phrase that’s in most people’s standard vocabulary, and it wasn’t in mine either until two weeks prior to undergoing the procedure. Having a stent or two put in to open clogged arteries is one thing; having your rib cage splayed open so a cardiothoracic surgeon can get to your heart directly is something quite different.

 

The aneurysm on my aorta was 6 centimeters, more than twice the normal, 2.5-centimeter size for the ascending aorta, so that wasn’t a good thing. Like a balloon inflated beyond its capacity, it could have dissected (burst) at any time. And meeting a surgeon who announces he will be performing the needed corrective surgery isn’t on anyone’s bucket list either. But that’s what I was facing 17 years ago. 

 

Lots of things began racing through my mind. Our youngest daughter was getting married the next spring. My first grandson was due to be born the following summer. And I wasn’t convinced I was finished doing what I’d hoped to accomplish over my lifetime. Like Woody Allen once said, “I’m not afraid of dying. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”

 

Since my condition wasn’t an emergency, the surgery was scheduled two weeks out. I had to undergo a couple of CT scans in the meantime so the medical team could get a literal picture of the situation. That gave me lots of time to think and pray and deal with a fair amount of anxiety.

 

As I had done during uncertain times in the past, I picked up my Bible and turned to the Psalms. I read several psalms and prayed a lot. I didn’t try bargaining, since I had faith God was in control, working out His plan for me and my family, whatever that happened to be. But I did admit to Him that I wouldn’t mind sticking around for those special events coming up in the next year.

 

On the second day after my diagnosis, I again opened the Psalms and started reading where I’d left off, Psalm 41. When I got to verse 3 the translation I was reading said, “I will raise him from his sickbed and heal him of his disease.” Wow! That verse might as well have been printed in neon lights. I hadn’t been seeking a specific “word from the Lord,” as some folks call it, but there it was, as if God were saying, “Don’t worry, my child. I’ve got this – it will be all right.”

 

Other translations express this verse in slightly different ways, but almost instantly I was experiencing “the peace of God, which transcends all understanding,” as Philippians 4:7 promises those who trust in the Lord. Years later I came across a similar verse from another psalm, also written by King David. It read, “For great is Your love toward me; You have delivered me from the depths of the grave” (Psalm 86:13).

 

Prayer is a funny thing. When things are going great, we might give prayer lip service – sometimes quite literally. But during difficult times prayer becomes indispensable, like a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean during a severe storm. In Philippians 4:6 we’re instructed, “in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” Then the aforementioned “peace of God…will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

 

I know prayers are not demands that God is obligated to fulfill. He’s not, as a friend of mine once said, a “short-order cook.” But 17 years ago, the Lord guided me to the right hospital and the right surgeon at the right time, bringing me through that surgery so I could experience the gift of life many times over. It’s an anniversary I’ll always treasure.

Enjoying This Heart-felt Time of Year – in More Ways Than One

Have you noticed the big role the heart plays in so many facets of our culture? We have sayings and idioms like, “You’ve got to have heart.” “Let’s get to the heart of the matter.” “We were stirred by your heartfelt message.” “We need to have a heart-to-heart talk.” “Officials are focusing on the heart of the city.” “The great response was heartening.” "Affairs of the heart."

 

Most of these aren’t referring directly to the incredible human machine that starts pumping life-giving blood throughout our bodies months before we’re born and continues until to the moment we die. But they still underscore a basic truth: We can’t do without our hearts.

 

I still have the heart pillow I received
post-surgery 15 years ago.

Fifteen years ago today, I experienced this in the most profound way possible. I underwent open-heart surgery, not only to repair some arterial blockages but even more important, to have my entire ascending aorta replaced. Without this corrective operation, I not only could have suffered a heart attack, but with an enlarged aorta I was in imminent danger of an aortic dissection. If not properly diagnosed immediately when a rupture like this occurs, it’s usually fatal, as it was in 2003 for comedian John Ritter.

During the six-hour operation, I was put on a heart-lung machine to keep blood coursing through my body while they stopped my heart to perform the replacement and repairs. My new parts consisted in part of homograft material (human tissue) and synthetic material (Dacron).

 

Thankfully, after Dr. Morrison and his team had completed their work, my heart started back up, resuming its continual task of beating 70 times per minute on average, 4,200 times per hour, and about 100,000 times over a 24-hour period. Amazingly, it does this day after day after day, more than 36 million times in a single year. That means over my lifetime, my heart has already pumped more than two billion times!

 

As wonderful as that is, I’m convinced there’s more to the human heart than the distribution of blood to various parts of the body. Somehow, I believe, there’s a spiritual component to the heart, even though scientists might disagree, arguing there’s no such empirical evidence.

 

Over the years following my surgery that I served as a cardiac volunteer at the same hospital, I visited with patients who had undergone similar surgeries to offer encouragement and recommendations for their recovery process. It was common to talk with strong, macho-looking men who would tear up, thinking about what had just happened with their hearts.

 

Reading the Scriptures, we might rightfully conclude that God also views the heart as more than an important organ in human physiology. The passage I embrace as my “life verse” admonishes, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight” (Proverbs 3:5-6). Note we’re exhorted to trust in God not only with our minds, but also with our hearts.

 

Proverbs 28:14 states it another way: “Blessed is the man who always fears the Lord, but he who hardens his heart falls into trouble.” Like King David, we're to cultivate a heart after God.

 

The heart, according to the Bible, also is the seat of our motivations. Proverbs 17:3 declares, “The crucible for silver and the furnace for gold, but the Lord tests the heart,” and Proverbs 21:2 adds, “All a man’s ways seem right to him, but the Lord weighs the heart.” 

 

Yet another verse from the same book, Proverbs 4:23, offers this warning: “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.” We might paraphrase this to say, “Be careful about where we place our deepest affections, because those will impact the entirety of our lives.”

 

We could cite many other biblical examples, but perhaps the most significant of all can be found in Romans 10:9-10, “That if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.”

 

As someone has said, genuine saving faith in Jesus Christ is a transaction that involves the heart (or emotions), the mind and the will. All three are necessary when we entrust our lives to Him as Savior and Lord. A decision made solely from the heart may waver when emotions of the moment have waned, so we must also align our minds with what our hearts are telling us. 

 

At that point, by an act of the will, our eternal, life-changing decision can be sealed. Then we can truly, from the heart, fulfill what Jesus Christ instructed when asked to identify the greatest commandment: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’” (Mark 12:30-31).

So, while I’m rejoicing over a repaired heart that has served me unfailingly over the past decade and a half, I’m thankful also to God who promised, “I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 11:19). 

Matter of the Heart, Part II

Since I write my blog posts about two weeks in advance, this one is a bit “anticipatory.” Last week I was scheduled to undergo a second heart procedure, and my prayer is that as you read this, I’m already well along in my recovery process.

If you’ve been reading my blog over the years, at least once a year I’ve reflected on my open-heart surgery in December 2006, when I underwent an ARR (aortic root replacement) – having my entire ascending aorta replaced, including the aortic valve, along with four arterial bypass grafts. (Don’t I sound medical?) Anyway, my surgeon was up front from the start, pointing out that perhaps 10-12 years down the road, I’d need to have the aortic valve replaced. Apparently, replacement valves don’t come with lifetime guarantees.

My "heart pillow," a fond
souvenir from 2006.

The procedure I was to have is called a TAVR (Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement). This was determined after I had a TEE (Transesophageal Echocardiogram) administered several weeks earlier. (Now your medical alphabet is as good as mine!) This test showed my 11½-year old valve wasn’t working properly and had to be replaced. Actually, a bovine valve (consisting of cow tissue) was to be inserted inside the old one. If I seem more mooooo-dy these days, or develop an insatiable craving for milkshakes, that’s probably the reason.

So I’m calling this post, “Matter of the Heart, Part II.” Interestingly, my hospital wasn’t even doing the TAVR procedure until 2011, five years after my original surgery. Praise the Lord for advances in medical science and cardiac care!

Going in, the cardiologists and surgeons told me that given my overall physical shape, and relatively young age (this procedure is most commonly performed on people in their late 70s and 80s), I had a very good chance of coming through it with the proverbial “flying colors.” That’s my hope, even if I still can’t leap tall buildings in a single bound. But whether you’re having heart surgery or getting your tonsils out, there’s always some risk factor.

Prior to my first surgery, while pondering my then-uncertain future and reading my Bible, God directed me to Psalm 41:3, which read, “I will raise him from his sickbed and heal him of his disease.” I remember at the time it seemed as if this verse were printed in neon lights. From that moment, I felt “the peace that passes all understanding” (Philippians 4:7), even though I knew the Lord had every right to choose to take me from this earthly life if He so willed.

This time I saw no message in neon, but over the course of my reading came across Psalm 27, which included the following passages that seemed encouraging: 

“The Lord is my light and my salvation – whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life – of whom shall I be afraid?.... Though an army besiege me, my heart will not fear; though war break out against me, even then I will be confident…. [God’s] heart says of you, ‘Seek my face!’ Your face, Lord, I will seek…. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.”

As I’ve mentioned before, the Scriptures say a lot about the heart, even though most of the time it’s in reference to emotions and motivations. But in my experience, and in the years I served as a volunteer visiting patients who had just undergone open-heart surgery, I can’t help but believe God built a spiritual component into the organ whose primary role is to keep blood consistently coursing through the body. It’s a daunting, humbling feeling to know you’ve approached death’s door during heart surgery, yet haven’t passed through it. 

Proverbs 3:5-6 tells us to “Trust in the Lord with all your heart,” and in Psalm 51:10, King David prayed, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” Repeatedly, the foremost challenge for all who follow Jesus Christ is to keep their heart right.

As I write this, trusting I’ve come through my surgery well, I have two “desires of the heart”: To do all I can to keep my physical heart strong to serve my God, family, friends and everyone I encounter, and to keep my heart (my thoughts and motives) right with the Lord that I might live faithfully for Him and speak His truth for anyone who wishes to know more about Him. And may I say, as we hear so often in the South, “Bless your heart!”

Message from the Heart

I’m writing an additional post this week to commemorate an anniversary of sorts. Ten years ago today I underwent open-heart surgery, receiving four coronary bypass grafts and for good measure, what medical people call an ARR – an aortic root replacement.

Until my diagnosis, a “bypass” to me was a highway that guided you around the outskirts of a city to avoid the downtown traffic. And an aorta? Well, I thought that was a Southern term, like, “Aorta clean up the kitchen, ah reckon.” But this was no laughing matter.

It all started weeks earlier when I felt unusual pressure in my chest and soreness in my left arm while power-walking. When it recurred the next day, I called my primary physician, who gave me a stress test, which led to an arteriogram, and ultimately, the determination I had several arterial blockages leading to my heart.

But the cardiologist who performed the heart catheterization also informed me that my ascending aorta was enlarged, about twice the normal size, and that wasn’t good. Picture a balloon being blown up – there comes a point when it can’t get any bigger, so it pops. You don’t want to try that with your aorta, I was told.

This "heart pillow" was more than a
souvenir - after surgery for a few weeks,
it became a close friend.

About an hour later I was meeting Dr. Richard Morrison, who would be my cardiothoracic surgeon. I didn’t know it then, but later learned he is one of the most highly regarded surgeons for this specialty in the country. We met briefly, and the following week he explained the procedure.

Dr. Morrison stated given my age and physical condition at the time, I had a 95 percent chance of coming through the surgery well. I’m generally an optimist, but I’m also a realist, so when I heard that, it seemed he also was giving about a five percent chance of a not-so-positive outcome.

Since my situation wasn’t critical, the surgery was scheduled for 15 days after I had been diagnosed. My surgeon just told me to stop my exercise regimen in the meantime, I had lots to time to think about it – and to pray. It wasn’t the prospect of death that troubled me. So far the mortality rate of humankind has been 100 percent, so I knew it was inevitable. And I’d settled the matter of life after death long before, trusting in what we’re told in the familiar John 3:16, “For God so loved the world (including me) that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.”

The issue was at the time we were looking ahead to our youngest daughter’s marriage the middle of the next year, and a grandson was also due to be born around that time. I prayed, cried out to God – at times very literally – and turned to the Bible for comfort and assurance.

I read some of the Psalms, then stopped, marking my place. The next day I reopened my Bible and began reading Psalm 41. Moments later, verse 3 jumped out at me, as if printed in neon. My translation read, “I will raise him from his sickbed, and heal him of his disease.” Wow! I didn’t hear an audible voice, but it was as if God were saying through His Spirit, “Bob, this one’s for you.”

Excited, I did the old fist-pump, shouted, “Yes!” and believed without a doubt the Lord was assuring me, “Don’t worry, My child. I’ve got this.”

From that moment, even though I understood the gravity of the surgery I was facing, I felt at peace. It was like experiencing the promise of Isaiah 26:3, which states, “The steadfast of mind You will keep in perfect peace, because He trusts in You.”

I’ll spare the details, but I came through the surgery without any problems or setbacks. I spent Christmas day in the hospital, still recovering, but that was okay. I was still living and breathing for Christmas! As I had resolved beforehand, I soon began a rehabilitation program – involving exercise, eating healthier, and taking prescribed medication. I’m maintaining my cardiac rehab exercise program to this day.

The experience taught me and my family many things, but one of the most profound is the realization that every day is a gift. We’re not guaranteed tomorrow, even if we feel in perfect health. That makes today all that more meaningful.

Now when I read Psalm 118:24, which declares, “This is the day the LORD has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it,” I agree, thinking, “Yes, I will rejoice and be glad in it. I guess God’s not done with me yet!”

Maybe you’re not facing major surgery or dealing with a dire disease. That doesn’t mean you can’t appreciate each day as it comes, realizing that for a lot of people, today never came. It’s good to take that to heart.