Vows

When you take wedding vows, you say... "for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health." I remember wondering even as I repeated those words what they would mean for us.

As it turned out, they meant everything.

The morning after I turned 25, Jim woke me up to tell me that he was having trouble breathing. We went straight to the emergency room. A series of tests showed that he had congestive heart failure due to a congenital heart defect. His heart was enlarged and there was an aneurism the size of a man's fist in his aortic arch. His open -heart surgery was scheduled before the end of the week.

He did recover, but that process was the turning point. Jim, who had always believed in God, began to prioritize how he wanted to spend the rest of his life. And, he put his foot on a path of service that has taken our family from the heart of the midwest to the mountains of New Hampshire to settle on the coastline of Massachusetts.

"In sickness and in health..." What does it mean for you? For me it means the familiar fear followed by a firm resolve to soldier on; it means the hospital bed intended for one that expands to hold the weight of the whole family; and it means the knowledge that the world changes without your permission.