Release: Part II

   Home.
   After five more unexpected days in the hospital, Connie was allowed to bring me back home last evening so that we can try living life together again.  Meds and diet plans and other things are a part of our new arrangement, but my girlfriend and I are home together again.   While listening to the news late yesterday afternoon, we learned a storm was brewing up over Lake Michigan and so since we were just the two of us (which rarely happens) we decided to go storm chasing.  We cruised our way out to Grand Haven and just watched as God took a humid 90-degree day and turned it all inside out with a thunderstorm that simply erased the uncomfortable atmospheric vestiges of the day.  It was a testimony to the power of our God, but also an obvious metaphor to how he is able to make all things new again.
   Today is the first day since May 17 that I have no scheduled appointments with anyone in the health care field.  On May 17 I spent the day with my students at Lake Michigan.  Within hours of getting out of the hospital I find myself at Lake Michigan.  Home.
   I have no energy to be profound today.  I have now gone for 24 hours without being medicated by a nurse or monitored by a tech.  I have eaten more since I have been home than in the three weeks leading up to today.  I have no energy.  Walking is still a chore.  I also have to wear gloves and hat and mask when I go anywhere outside of our house.  Physically I have a long way to go.  But I am blessed by friends and family and texts and messages and memories and a new driveway and a spruced-up garden and smiles and children and road trips with my girlfriend to Lake Michigan.   I really love being home.