Even Silence Is Praise

I lay in a hospital bed, a monitor attached to my chest counting every beat of my heart. Hours earlier, I’d awakened at home barely able to breathe. “Get to the ER immediately,” my doctor said.

The ER was a din of voices and machines. The man in the next bed had his TV at top volume. The noise made prayer impossible.

Not that I was much good for prayer right now. My only thought was a plaintive Why me? I’d had open-heart surgery years earlier to replace a defective valve. I did everything doctors tell you to do. Ate healthily. Exercised.

It wasn’t fair. My younger son, Tim, was getting married in a month. My wife, Carol, and I had just returned from seeing family in California, and all