I had taken care of everything in our lives for so long that when Ken finally retired from the Marine Corps, there was an adjustment.  Problems?  I could take care of it--whatever.  That was a very false assumption.  God had been giving me grace to 'manage' and I didn't even know it.  Besides that, all the financing came from Ken's salary.  I hadn't had to get a job.

But when I had heart surgery, when they removed the walls of my heart and damaged the timing mechanism, I was released from the hospital helpless.  They got the tumor, but they destroyed my ability to take care of myself--or anything else.  Ken and my children had to take over everything, including our one year old.  

And I was a guinea pig for medical science.  Since nobody had lived from this surgery, everything they did to keep me going was trial and error.  The drugs made me hallucinate horribly.  After I finally got to come home, after I would go to sleep,  I would wake up suddenly yelling, screaming that the ceiling was falling down.  My rational mind knew it wasn't true, but I would be standing in the middle of the king size bed with my hands on the ceiling trying to hold the ceiling up.  Ken would  tell me everything was alright, it was okay, to lie down, that the ceiling wasn't falling.  He tried to assure me.

But night after night I woke up terrified that the ceiling was falling. Then one night, when I was standing in the middle of  the bed, holding the ceiling up, he stood up beside me, raised his hands, took hold of the ceiling and said, "I've got it sweetheart.  Lie down and go back to sleep.  I've got it."

He loved me even when I was mentally and physically shot.   I could depend on him.  After twelve years of marriage, I didn't have to depend on myself anymore.  That was the moment in my life that I realized how blessed I was to have someone who loved me unconditionally.  He was going to be there for me.  He wasn't leaving.  He was going to hold my ceilings up.

Ephesians 4: 32a, 5:2 "…be kind to one another, tenderhearted,…walk in love, as Christ also has loved us, and has given himself for us as an offering…"