Letting Go

It still seems surreal. There I lay last Saturday night on a bed in the emergency with wires attached all over me. And, I wondered and feared what they might find. The nurse came in, and with a serious look, asked me if I realized that I have a very low heart rate. She seemed a little surprised when I told her I did know. I asked what the rate was and she told me and I responded that it gets a lot lower than that. “How long have you had this condition?” “About 20-30 years. I do endurance sports” The nurse left and I lay back and thought about all the great times; the times I have been broken and the times I have overcome. What a journey! And, I began to pray a prayer of thanks. As the peace settled in over me, one of the monitors started buzzing off and on. It was my heart rate. It had dropped below some pre-set number and the alert came on. I prayed again and as the peace settled in again, the monitor went off again. Then it became sort of a game to see if I could focus on the peace, be into my prayer and get feedback from the monitor about my personal and spiritual state. Before they turned that monitor off, I made a lot of noise, found a lot of peace, and felt close to God at a time I needed His presence. It would be nice to have such a monitor all the time, in training, in racing, in everyday life, to provide feedback on how much of the world we are letting go and how focused we are on the truly important aspects of life. There is nothing like thinking that the night might be your last one on earth, to make me reach for the peace on the day to day monitor, set the bar high, and listen for the buzzer which tells me I have truly let go.