Thursday night around 10:45pm, I received a message from my husband, who was at work:

I’m ok but I got hurt, something wrong with right foot. Going to mercy Anderson. 

This is every wife’s worst nightmare. “What’s wrong?  What happened?” I asked. 

He replied: Too much to say but I’m out of commission. I don’t see myself walking for a while. 

I was dressed and in the car on my way to the hospital in minutes.  My mind was racing: Did he get shot? Did he break his foot? Did he get hit by a car?  

I arrived and the lady in the ER asked me to fill out his paperwork. She said he was in a lot of pain and she didn’t want to ask him to do it. My heart raced faster. 

Finally they took me back to see him and I was suddenly relieved. He was intact. No blood. 

“What happened?” I asked again. 

“I think my Achilles’ tendon is torn.”

He explained that he had been in pursuit of a man with a gun when he heard a pop and fell to the ground. His foot wouldn’t work. It hurt. A deputy waited with him while they called for an ambulance. 

They did an X-ray in the ER and from the looks of it, they were thinking his tendon was torn. 

When we saw the orthopedist the next day, he looked at the X-ray and said it looks like a chunk of bone came off his heal with the tendon. See it up at the top, in the middle?

So now we begin a life of intermittent running to appointments, waiting in offices and sitting at home being lazy.  Josh has taken up residence in his chair in the family room. 

I, of course, also have to keep up with the farm and my other jobs too, and I’ll be doing all the driving when we have my stepsons. If I think about the big picture it can be overwhelming fast, so I’m trying to just focus on what needs to happen today and be present. 

The other day I was running around getting things done on my to do list when I saw him sitting there in his chair and I told myself to stop and take a break: just be there for a while. 

So I sat on the couch and we watched a movie together. Later that evening we played a game of Scrabble. I can’t tell you the last time we did that when we weren’t on vacation. Perhaps that will be the silver lining in this: giving us the time to slow down and just be together in a life that has become too busy and work-filled. 

And I repeat this mantra: 

All things change.

This, too, will pass.