Pancho and Lefty: A Warrior’s Tale

“Can you take my leg out to the car?” Let’s just add that statement to about 100 different comments I never thought I would hear anyone in my family ever utter. To fully explain, let’s rewind a few years. I turned ‘50’ years old in 2014. Wow! That sounds really old when you type it out in sentence form. While the changing of a decade is a milestone in and of itself, there is another profound reason I consider that a milestone year. I lost my dad to leukemia in late 2014. His loss hit me like a runaway train. I knew we were losing him. I sat by his bedside in hospice and told him it was OK for him to go and we would miss him. I assured him we would be alright. I prayed that God would take him home and stop his suffering. But I didn’t anticipate how his loss would affect me physically and emotionally. You see, because of my mom’s ongoing battle with dementia, Dad was the one who knew my name. So the loss of him was deep, as in “deep end of the pool” deep. I stopped sleeping well. I was irritable. I felt anxious, but also felt the need to appear strong. I began experiencing panic attacks. That season of life was very, very difficult. But the enduring lesson I learned during that season was not that time heals all wounds. The lesson I learned was that time simply moves you further away from the pain. You CAN smile again. You CAN live again. Really live.

Every year in December I ask God to give me a word for the upcoming year, a word that will provide focus for me as I look ahead. On December 25, 2015, as I was packing my suitcase in San Antonio, Texas, God clearly gave me my word for 2016. WARRIOR. I felt immediate panic. The word “Warrior’, in my mind, invoked thoughts of battles fought and maybe battles lost. My response to God? In typical Lori fashion I told him, “I don’t like that word. Can’t you give me another word, one that’s not quite so scary? “I think God smiled at me that day, his impudent child. But he stood firm and I begrudgingly marched ahead, head-down with steely resolve, into 2016.

That’s why, sitting in church one Sunday morning in early 2016 when my husband, the Music Man, mentioned some stomach discomfort, I’m surprised I didn’t give his complaints much thought. What proceeded, through December 2016, was a strings of surgeries and complications that confined my Music Man to bed and caused him to lose 100 pounds as he fought his way back to wellness. Honestly, there was a moment during all of that chaos that I thought we might lose him. But God was so kind and so merciful. He healed the Music Man. I realized during that time of illness that God hadn’t called me to be a warrior to fight my own battle, but to be a prayer warrior for my husband. God knew that he would need someone standing in the gap, lifting him up in prayer when he was too weak to pray himself. So I fought and prayed, along with an intimate group of other prayer warriors who joined us faithfully in the battle.

There are a couple of Hebrew words that describe that season of life for me. Those words are “Ezer Kenegdo”. These are the words in the bible that were used to describe Eve when God created her for Adam. These words can be interpreted as helper, or helpmate. But the word “Ezer” can also mean “Warrior”. (Coincidence? I don’t think so.) There are only a couple times in the bible that this word is used in this manner. One is to describe Eve at creation. One is to describe God, in the Psalms, as the warrior who fights for his people. The word “Kenegdo” means coming alongside intimately, “face-to-face and side-to-side”. As a wife, I am trying to learn to embrace this new, alternative definition of Ezer Kenegdo. I’m a work in progress. I fail often. But I take this new-found understanding of these words and my role seriously. By the way…I don’t have any tattoos. I don’t know that I will ever get one. But if I do ever decide to take the tattoo plunge, guess what my tattoo will say?

I wish I could say this journey was now concluded, but the Music Man’s illness brought a recurrence of my anxiety and panic attacks. The name of this blog site is “The Deep End of the Pool” for a reason. I didn’t feel just like I was in the deep end of a swimming pool. I felt like I was in an abyss. The deepest part of the ocean is called the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean. It is over 36,000 feet deep. It felt like I was living there. When my hair started to fall out, I knew it was time to seek help. My doctor listened compassionately as I poured out my struggles and fears to him. He gently said that he wanted to encourage me to start thinking about taking a medication that would help deal with the anxiety. He suggested an antidepressant medication, telling me I may get to the point when I feel so overwhelmed that I need to take something to help me get through the day. “I’m already there,” I confessed. “Please write the prescription.”

I started feeling better in a few weeks, and within a few months, it was like someone had opened the curtains to let the sunshine in. I had no idea how dark life had become. But I was living again. Really living. It felt amazing. I took the medication for about 15 months and then, when I didn’t need it anymore and in consultation with my doctor, tapered successfully off and eventually stopped taking it altogether. Little did I know what we were about to face…our hardest test as a family yet.

The Music Man struggled with a persistent, chronic foot infection for over 18 months. Suddenly, almost exactly 1 year ago, I received a call from him that rocked our world. I had taken our girls to Florida for Spring Break. He was supposed to meet us there, but instead ended up in the ER. His call that morning was to let me know that he had just received the word that the infection had become so advanced that the physicians felt they had no other alternative but to amputate his foot.

Words can’t describe the emotions. Utter disbelief. Shock. Fear. Feeling like this is all just a bad dream and praying that I would wake up. But it was not a dream. It was reality. The next 24 hours were filled with changing flights and getting home to Tennessee to support our guy.

Let me tell you about the Music Man. He is so very brave and strong. His biggest concern during the entire ordeal was making sure our kids knew that everything was going to be OK. He looked the hard thing in the face and did not blink. The definition of bravery is being scared, but doing the hard thing anyway. That is my guy, and I am so very proud of him.

I prayed Isaiah 40:31 with him before they took him away to surgery. “But those who wait upon God get fresh strength. They spread their wings and soar like eagles. They run and don’t get tired. They walk and don’t lag behind.” ~The Message

Three days after surgery, he was transferred to rehab. But he refused to go unless the rehab promised that he could have a pass to leave that evening so he could go see our son perform in his college musical debut. They agreed, and he went. The photo at the top of the page was taken the night of that performance.

A few days after arriving at rehab, I got a call from the nurse telling me the Music Man had fallen the night before. He had gotten up and forgotten that he didn’t have a foot, because phantom foot sensation is real, ya’ll. Down to the ground he went. Because he couldn’t get up by himself, he had to call loudly for someone to come help him get up. But do you know what he did the next day in occupational therapy when they asked him what he wanted to work on for that day’s session? He asked them to put him on the floor and teach him how to get up. That’s bravery in action. I love him.

About 8 weeks after surgery, the Music Man got to bring his new leg home. He named the leg Pancho after an old Willie Nelson song entitled, “Pancho and Lefty”. Pancho has now become a part of the family.

So now, here we are back to present day. This warrior wife has fought battles, the Music Man’s and her own. It is true that she has grown weary at times. But she has also grown stronger and more capable in battle. Ultimately, she is more convinced than ever that God is the true “Ezer-Warrior”. I’m so glad the ultimate battle has already been won.