Photo: Mike Haley
The view outside my hospital window stretches out over Forest Park, quiet and steady, like it has seen everything before and knows how this story goes. Trees standing tall, people moving along paths, life continuing in a way that feels both distant and deeply connected to where I am right now.
There is a story we hear often that the world is divided. That there is more hate than love. That people have grown too distant to truly show up for one another. If you only listened to the news and the noise out there, you might think we have lost something.
We have not. It is still here. It is alive. And it shows up when it matters most.
I would never recommend getting sick as a way to restore your faith in humanity. There are easier roads, better paths, less painful ways to get there.
But I will say this.
If you have started to believe that people do not care, that kindness is fading, that the world is more divided than it is connected, this experience has shown me something different. There is an outpouring of love in this world that is very real. Sometimes it just takes a room with a view to see it clearly. I see it in the strength in my wife, the Facetimes from family, the messages from friends, the donations, the prayers from strangers, the nurses that work 13 hours to turn around and come back in, the doctors, the custodians. It’s endless if you look hard enough.
Speaking of…the doctors have me on fluid restriction, there is a different kind of challenge that comes with intense thirst. A quiet kind of intensity. Thirst becomes something you are constantly aware of, something that sits with you and does not really let go. It can make you feel a little unsteady, a little restless, like your mind and body are both trying to negotiate with something that will not budge.
There is a bit of insanity in that, if I am being honest. But somewhere in the middle of that physical thirst, something else has started to grow. A different kind of thirst.
A thirst for an unbridled life. For being outside and actually feeling the air instead of just passing through it. For being with my girls on a side by side ride, soaking in the laughter, and the loud music. Watching the neighbors fireworks from the Toyota Tacoma tailgate next to Sarah and three cats. Game nights with nephews. Concerts with the boys. Cardinals games with the family. Fishing down at the river at the grandparents. Ya know, the little things that are actually BIG things.
And maybe most of all, a thirst for saying the things that matter while there is still time to say them.
For telling the people I care about just how much they mean to me. Not in passing, not assumed, but clearly, intentionally, and aggressively. Making sure they hear it. Making sure they feel it.
It is strange how being told you cannot have something as simple as water can sharpen your awareness of everything else you have been given. It pulls things into focus. It reminds you that so much of life is not about what we are missing, but about what is right in front of us, waiting to be noticed, appreciated, and held onto.
For me, what’s right in front of me is a view of Forest Park and a reminder that even in the middle of uncertainty, there is still a rhythm to life that does not lose its timing and a heart that’s still beating.
The Barn 