Been missing from the fray for a few weeks. End of school, travel and then my husband was in the hospital.

Yeah, that last part was definitely not planned.

He’s doing great now, but was kind of at death’s door without our even knowing it was that bad.

He was sick at home for a few days before we went  I dragged him to the hospital. When we got to the ER before the crack of dawn, they whisked him in, I explained the symptoms, they did some quick blood and urine tests, sent cultures out, and hit the infection hard.

E coli waits for no one.  E coli will take your ass down fast.

They didn’t know it was e coli at first. They just knew he was really, really sick. Sicker than I realized. Sick enough to admit him for three days. I’ve had a baby and had two surgeries, and was out of the hospital faster than that every time. This was more serious than we thought.

My mom was at my house when I had to whisk him out the door in the dead of night, so she spread the news to our close family after the sun came up.

I let one family know what was going on, a family who are close friends, a family who also went through a close call a few weeks before this. I knew they would want to know, and I knew they would be there for us like we were there for them.

They were. And they aren’t even religious.

I didn’t intentionally keep his condition from people. I was exhausted from traveling, exhausted from lack of sleep, exhausted from worry. Texting people or putting details on Facebook was not on my radar. The only things on my radar were getting him well and taking care of my family.

That afternoon, when he was a bit more coherent, my husband asked if I had texted the pastor at our church. Oops. I hadn’t even though of it.

I HADN’T EVEN THOUGHT OF IT!

I felt a little bad. I knew he still believed in the power of prayer. Because of my oversight, the only one praying for him was my mother, and that’s only because she was at my house when I took him to the doctor at 1 am.

I told him I would text the pastor, thinking he would want him to come and pray for him. He shook his head. It’s ok, I’m in good hands here, let him know as a courtesy when you have a second.

So I did. The pastor came by for a visit the next day. He prayed as my husband was going out for a test, made sure I was ok, and then left.

Our one friend that I had texted came by every day.  Eventually word got out to a few more people. But by then all the tests had come back clear, the infection was abating, and my husband was starting to feel human again. He was recovering.

He recovered IN SPITE OF THE FACT that I didn’t let anyone at church even know he was sick until I knew he was out of the woods.

It wasn’t intentional. Ok, it wasn’t consciously intentional. But I think it was a test. And I also think it means my neurological impulses are changing, ever so slowly and subtly changing.

There was a time when I would have put my hope in something other those people at the hospital. I would have taken him to the hospital of course, and I would have expected them to do their job of course. BUT, I would have HOPED for healing to come from an invisible source.

And when the healing came, who would I credit? The doctors? Our sterile modern medical system? The pharma products? The knowledge gleaned from only a few hundred years of true medical research?

No. I would have told you that God answered my prayer. I would have laid hands on my husband, I would have called in prayer warriors, I would have said things like “I don’t know what people do who don’t have FAITH”, I would have spoken in tongues, and I would have claimed healing as my right, as a daughter of a King.

But now I do not believe in any of this. Here is what I do believe:

I believe we are lucky to live in a modern society with infrastructure and freedom and regulations. I believe we are lucky to have a car that will haul ass down the interstate without skipping a beat. I believe he was lucky to have a wife with good instincts and a threatening manner. I believe we are lucky that we live less than 30 minutes from several stellar hospitals. I believe he was treated in a great hospital with an excellent reputation. I believe he was treated by smart, well-trained, knowledgeable, and caring people. I believe we had the best equipment – modern plastics and sterilized instruments, powerful equipment that can see inside the human body and powerful drugs that can fight infection. I believe he knows he has a lot to live for and a strong constitution to help him heal.

I believe that is why he is alive and recovering.

However, as a frail human being, I still feel gratitude. I know my husband could be in very grave condition right now if things had gone differently. He could even possibly be dead. I feel thankful that he is alive and healing. I make no apology for feeling gratitude and thankfulness and hopefulness.

I choose to express that gratitude and thankfulness to the source of the help: the scientific community that works hard every day to better understand the world around us and to use this knowledge to make our lives as good as they can be.

My husband is on the mend. Healing from a deep and powerful infection takes time, but every day he is more free from the thing that threatened to take him down.

And – apparently – so am I