What happens when anesthesia wears off

Believe it or not, I've never had a hemispherectomy done to me. I pray I shall never need one, seeing as I'm rather partial to having both hemispheres of my brain in tact. However, inexperience can't hinder me from imagination, and after a week like this past one, I have been able to quite vividly imagine what it might be like to be in this situation: 

You're a patient scheduled for the rare performance of a hemispherectomy and the neurosurgeon is inside of your skull. Unfortunately, the anesthesia wore off, so now you are acutely aware of the tension created as he pulls your brain in half. 

Others may have different, less gruesome ways of describing the feelings they get when they're overwhelmed, but having your brain torn apart is how I have personally categorized the situation, so it'll have to do. Excuse me while I go find an oxygen mask. 

For me, that oxygen mask is nothing less than the Word of God, something which has become increasingly precious to me recently, for from it I am revived with the hope of better things, the hope of promises fulfilled in God's timing, the hope of dead things being resurrected. Because in that hope, I can see better things that are not yet here, I can trust the Lord is not slow to fulfill His promises, and I, in my dying, can be resurrected. 

It can be so easy to think that life should be easy. So easy to imagine that, because we're friends of God, we'll understand all His ways. 

I like to approach God with all that I am. Especially my mind. I set my mind up to hound Him down, to corner Him and say, "Gotchya!" and then fit Him into a box built with my own two hands. Isn't this the greatest struggle of the human race throughout all of history? To comprehend God by boiling Him down to our own level and then allowing that to justify all that we do? 

My mistakes stem from a misconception of God's love towards me. I have a tendency to forget that all was accomplished on the cross and anything that I might try to add by my own effort is nil. This tendency to forget, it comes from a heart that doesn't completely let itself be loved unconditionally. Because if this heart pounding inside of me were to let go of trying to be perfect, trying to know everything, and trying to try, then it wouldn't experience palpitations. It would simply rest, knowing that it's already loved. That I'm already loved. 

I don't always realize what I place my hope in until it's pulled out from underneath me. Plans, knowing what I want to do, and what I'm about, that's always been my stronghold, my crutch. I like to map things out, know what's up, and be in control. I love spontaneity, but not when it's painful. 

Therefore, you can imagine how horrible it might seem to not know what to choose, to have many conflicting desires and voices telling you what to do. Hence the feeling of a hemispherectomy, but to be honest, I'd rather be aware of the procedure and know Who's hands are performing it than be completely oblivious, drugged up, and lost in a world of floaty feeling with no anchor. Because the deep joy in all of this has been knowing that because my hope really is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness, I can fall on that and have no need to fall any further. I am upheld in my falling down, and that's astoundingly reassuring. 

I pull out the IV of lies, condemnation, and confusion and let my pulse beat for the King.