Elephants and Tea - March 2022 - 37

DEAR JACK FOUNDATION Finding Peace in the Divine
T
he first words my husband, Karol, spoke to me after four days
of a medically induced coma were, " I saw Madeline. "
" You mean Molly's sister, Madeline? " I asked. I had a
hard time wrapping my head around the statement. We
had never met Madeline. She was five months old when
she passed away in January 2011, and we didn't meet her
family until August 2011, right before what would have
been her first birthday.
Karol's thoughts were fuzzy in the first few hours after
being brought out of his coma, but his statements about Madeline
never wavered. " She was there, pulling me back, telling me it wasn't
time yet. "
It wasn't until later that I was fully able to process the words
Karol told me and use them to guide me over the coming days,
weeks, and years. Days before, I had been told that Karol had
Plasma Cell Leukemia (PCL). When I Googled PCL, I learned the
first rule of being a caregiver to a cancer patient - never Google
survival rates. I was disheartened at what I
learned - likely within a few months, I would
be a widow with three young children. While
my husband was blissfully asleep on (as his
sweet nurse put it) a " sedation vacation, " I sat
with my Bible open, unable to speak a single
word of prayer.
Eventually, I went to the hospital chapel and
sobbed, " God, please make it be something else! "
In the chapel was a framed Bible verse: " My
grace is sufficient for you. My grace is made perfect in weakness. "
How would I be strong without my other half? How could I watch
our children graduate from high school, get married, and have
children of their own without their father to be a witness to it, too?
And yet, there was peace reading those words. Over a weekend
when my family's life had flipped completely upside down, I felt a
peace that I had never experienced. We had friends and family all
over the world praying for healing, comfort, and peace. I remember
the feeling of being caught in a wave that I couldn't escape
from. Of course, there was the wave of panic, there was the wave
of worry, but the overriding wave was one of being carried. We
were carried by the prayers of our friends, carried by love, carried
by God. I could give no other explanation than, " It's a God thing. "
The day after Karol awoke, learned of his PCL diagnosis, and he
received his second round of chemotherapy, we were told the PCL
diagnosis was incorrect. Instead he had Acute Myeloid Leukemia
(AML). I made the smart move to not Google AML survival rates,
Karol's thoughts were fuzzy in the first few hours
after being brought out of his coma, but his
statements about Madeline never wavered. " She was
there, pulling me back, telling me it wasn't time yet. "
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MARCH 2022
37
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Elephants and Tea - March 2022

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