Embedded in Rock

I was in the locker room at work late the other day when I heard someone at the scrub machine. I was concluding an exhausted cry so I took a quick peek out the door to see who was there before stepping out to return my scrubs. 

(I promise I’m going to write a blog soon that doesn’t involve crying.)

It was the nurse who had educated me on the aerodynamics of helicopters. 

“Why did I decide to work for surgeons?” I asked as I slid my badge through the reader to return my uniform, my eyes red. 

“Temporary insanity,” he said instantly.

I laughed and felt better. The truth is, the events surrounding my induction into the dynamic and brutal world of heart surgery had been surrounded by a number of unexplainable happenings that convinced me without a doubt that they had been orchestrated by the hand of God in answer to my prayers for direction. That realization, however distant, has preserved my confidence in God’s presence, even on the bloodiest days. But it doesn’t mean I always understand why things happen. Some days are so rocky they drain life and energy. 

That’s why I can’t forget my co-worker Mary’s words. Another day this week, after the surgeons were settled into their days, I walked over to the cardiology floor where my grandma was seeing Dr. Weirick about her defective heart valve. My grandma has insisted that she doesn’t want a second heart surgery at her age. However, with the advent of the TAVR procedure, people can get aortic valves replaced through a catheter, and the recovery time is much shorter. 

Dr. Weirick explained that the aortic valve can become as hard as rock with age, to the point that it no longer opens and closes appropriately to let blood out of the heart. Although he needed to see more test results, he concluded that this was happening to my grandma’s heart, taken her from managing a small garden in 2015, to no longer being able to wash the dishes. 

After Dr. Weirick talked with my grandparents, his coordinating nurse, Mary, explained the procedure to them further with the help of pictures and diagrams. She explained how the wire mesh valve is sewn under microscope by women in California. 

“I have to say they were mostly women,” she said with a smile. 

Each valve is so detailed that it takes six weeks for one woman to sew one valve. 

“How long?” Asked my grandma, who probably knows more stitches than a heart surgeon and has made countless quilts and embroidered pillow tops for each of her 67 grandchildren, including mine below. 

Mary showed how the valve collapses onto a tiny wire, which is then snaked up the artery to the heart. The new valve is positioned inside the old, failing valve, and then the new valve is expanded. It expands to full size, and is embedded–in just a few seconds–into the calcified, rocky remnants of the old valve. 

“I think it’s so neat,” Mary said, “that the old valve, which is causing so many problems, becomes part of the solution. The calcified leaflets on the old valve act as cement to anchor the new valve.” 

What a reflection of God’s genius with the broken world! I thought on the spot.

This is God’s specialty, taking something which has grown problematic and hurtful and making something useful out of it– often in the blink of an eye.  

This is the greatest story in literature, that the self-loving, self-destructive human race was rescued in a moment by the Son of God becoming part of that race.  Using a manger, an escape out of the country by night, days of fasting, a bloody Roman beating, mockery, and finally the most cruel form of torture and death known to that age, God embedded salvation and eternal life into the rocky record of the human race, evident in the split second that it became clear that Jesus had come alive. He had won by strategy so unexpected that not even his closest followers had anticipated it. 

My grandma will go through tests and procedures first, and then many long minutes on the table as the valve is loaded and positioned. But when the valve expands, it happens in a flash, the calcified leaflets anchor the new valve in place, and her heart can begin to work properly again. 

I am convinced that when we see God’s strategy in action once-really SEE it, truly accept it– we are never the same. Because we know that if God can use the evil of the human race to save the human race, he can do the same thing with our tears, our exhaustion, our regrets, our pain, and even our temporary insanities, no matter how long the process takes.