Me letting you take care of me

I have spent the last 9 days letting others take care of me, not just in the sensitive new age way, like "Let me take care of you, man! But in the walk me to the bathroom, wash me in the shower, wake me up for pills and put warm wet compresses on my infected incision way. It has been a study in surrender and accepting love. The kind of love that I can dish out, but that I find very difficult to take in. I had Jesse holding my hand while the nurses struggled, with decreasingly optimistic chatter to get a working IV into me. On the 4th try, after a particularly excruciating and unproductive skewering, a nurse who was prone to singing things like "teeny, weenies, teeny weenies!!" over and over again finally got a small but useable catheter in my left foot. Yes, my foot. They had to get special permission to place it there, but place it they did. As I squeezed his hand for support, Jesse whinged a bit with the 3rd and 4th attempts. We sat together waiting for the surgeon to arrive, Kent arrived from his doctors appointment so I got to be entertained with clean jokes from his favorite free office magazine and we engaged in some more hand holding, only I wasn't having to have sharp objects shoved into me during the palmar embraces so it was nicer.
When I was taken to the OR, I was very awake and aware, to the point of joking with the nurses, who asked why I wasn't working there with my vast OR experience, I told them I would think about it after I had had time to heal. When I woke up from the anesthesia, I knew for certain that working for a hospital was below the bottom of my list of things that I ever wanted to do again in my lifetime. 
After a few weeks of accepting help and caring, I have found myself ready for the me I know to be in here to emerge and take charge of my own life again. Of course somehow my own life has morphed into one where room has been made for another person, one who has his own needs, ways of operating in the world and a desire to serve my every whim. I find it lovely, scarey, fascinating and all and all confusing. Confusing only in the fact that while I have been loved deeply in the past, the depth of adoration, tenderness, willingness and honesty of this man in my life feels unsurpassed by my previous relationships. I feel that all my partnerships up to this moment were testing grounds for what God has laid at my door presently. I thank Doug, Bennett and Jim for helping me grow and develop into the woman who could recognize who Kent is and the infinite spiritual potential of what the us that we are becoming holds. I also am grateful for all the experiences and relationships, good and bad that my sweet man has endured to become who he is.
I have no doubt that we stand to face many difficult challenges together. I also know without a doubt that together we can change our small corner of the universe in unimaginable and infinite positive ways.
I am filled with wonder, certitude and a deep abiding gratitude for this chance to share a love with the potential for service to each other and ultimately to all those lives that we touch.
It is such a paradox of feelings to be standing on the threshold of commemorating the death of the man who changed me inexorably for the better while celebrating this new love that God has so mercifully and compassionately blessed me with.
So as I revel in the joys and tribulations of all this, the laundry still has to be done, the bills paid and the dogs fed and breakfast cooked and consumed, it is a perfect melding and the mundane and the mysterious, and I couldn't be happier to be the who, what and where I am. 

Can I just say that having a man in my life who wants nothing more than to make me smile every morning is disconcertingly lovely. I spent the day (yes the entire day) rearranging my home space, healing room, dining room, living room and bedroom. It would appear that my inner wisdom is calling me to purge, shed and move. It feels as though I am getting ready for more to move into my life and to advance my work. It is exciting and compelling. I feel so very blessed.