About the author: Deacon Chuck
Deacon Chuck was ordained into the permanent diaconate on September 17, 2011, in the ministry of service to the Diocese of Reno and assigned to St. Albert the Great Catholic Community. He currently serves as the parish bulletin editor and website administrator. Deacon Chuck continues to serve the parish of Saint Albert the Great Catholic Community of the Diocese of Reno, Nevada. He is the Director of Adult Faith Formation and Homebound Ministries for the parish, conducts frequent adult faith formation workshops, and is a regular homilist. He currently serves as the bulletin editor for the parish bulletin. He writes a weekly column intended to encompass a broad landscape of thoughts and ideas on matters of theology, faith, morals, teachings of the magisterium and the Catholic Church; they are meant to illuminate, illustrate, and catechize the readers and now number more than 230 articles. His latest endeavor is "Colloqui: A journal for restless minds", a weekly journal of about 8 pages similar in content to bulletin reflections. All his reflections, homilies, commentaries, and Colloqui are posted and can be found on his website: http://deaconscorner.org. Comments are always welcome and appreciated. He is the author of two books: "The Voices of God: hearing God in the silence" which offers the reader insights into how to hear God’s voice through all of the noise that surrounds us; and "Echoes of Love: Effervescent Memories" which through a combination of prose and verse provides the reader with a wonderful journey on the way to discovering forever love. He regularly speaks to groups of all ages and size and would welcome the opportunity to speak to your group.
An Early Christmas Gift
They tore out my heart and stomped that sucker flat
This afternoon I received an early but very unwelcome gift: It appears as though I have a very large “ascending aortic aneurysm” which has grown from 4cm to 4.88cm in a little over a year. For those of us that don’t speak metric, that’s about 2″. According to the cardiac surgeon this is cause for concern and needs to be taken care of as soon as possible.
At this point I have to have a ECHO (don’t know what that stands for but it is not an ECG as my wife is quick to point out) sometime this week to determine whether I will need a heart valve replacement to go along with the replacement of a portion of my aorta. Once we get the results back we will be scheduling open heart surgery, probably for early January.
As I understand it, since it is on the ascending portion of my aorta the only option is to split me down the middle, crack me open and hand massage the old pumper for all its worth, while cutting a half foot of vital organ from my body and replacing it with a garden hose and perhaps some portion of a sacrificial porcine animal (aka, pig.) Now that really makes me want to jump up and shout “Hallelujah” except I’m not supposed to overexert myself. Right.
Lewis Grizzard (a Atlanta GA humorist and writer) once wrote a book entitled They Tore Out My Heart and Stomped That Sucker Flat and I guess that is exactly how I am feeling right this moment. Whew, what a day this has been.
I know that God will provide but every now and then He sure loves to throw you a curve ball. But this one sure feels more like a knuckleball to me. Needless to say, I am petrified. I need some big time prayers.