for all those who have restarted or who wish to restart

“See right here,” the ER doctor held the EKG strip up to me, “this is where your heart stopped beating. Flat line.” I could only nod and give my most convincing smile. Flat line, great.

I came to the ER after my heart had raced for four hours, 180 beats per minute. I have a history of SVT (supraventricular tachycardia) that had been annoying and a bit scary a couple of times, but this was the grandmother-of-all-episodes. When my heart didn’t give any indications of stopping on its own–coupled with jaw and arm pain–I knew that this was not good.

In the ER, they hooked me up to an EKG machine, put in two IVs, made me chew a baby aspirin, took my temperature, and then administered a drug that literally stops and restarts your heart. As your heart restarts, it returns to normal sinus rhythm (at least that’s the plan). And sure enough, my heart stopped for several seconds and then restarted normally.

The doctors had warned me that when my heart stopped, I would feel pretty bad. “Pretty bad?” I asked. “Yes, we can tell exactly when the heart stops by the expression on patients’ faces. Are you ready?” Six doctors and nurses stood around my bed and watched as one doctor pushed the drug through my IV. I’m guessing that on a slow day in the ER, this may be about as exciting as you get. For them, that is–not so much for me. I could have done without all this excitement and attention.

Still, a normal sinus rhythm is nothing short of a miracle, and I will always be grateful for those doctors, nurses, and the wonders of modern medicine. The slower, steady beating of my heart through the monitor was a glorious thing. The down-shift from 5th to 2nd gear was hours overdue. Now in the quiet of the ER, my heart hummed along as if on a Sunday afternoon drive. This was a leisurely pace, and as the driver, I could wander the back roads, pointing out barns and ponds of interest as we made our way through rural Davis County.

But when you’ve suffered a minor heart attack, when your heart has stopped and restarted, you pull over to stretch your legs and reflect. The normal rhythms of your life seem anything but ordinary. Time which had previously unfolded before you in an endless maze of roads seems limited–at best–and scant–at worst. And those people who have been your favorite passengers seem all the more precious. Not only are you able to tolerate the frequent Are we there yets?, but you relish them as yet another sign of the life you have loved and will continue to love. Oh that the Sunday drive would go on and on and on . . .

In John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, the tenant farmers argue that the Sunday drive is essentially over for them:

But you can’t start. Only a baby can start. You and me – why, we’re all that’s been. The anger of a moment, the thousand pictures, that’s us. This land, this red land, is us; and the flood years and the dust years and the drought years are us. We can’t start again.

I admit that there are days–and I suspect this may be true for most of us–that feel more like the flood years and the dust years and the drought years than a Sunday afternoon drive in the country. There have been days during which I have lived as though I could not, I would not start again. These are the dark days of the soul, the days during which I simply put one foot in front of the other, plodding my way through the hours. Call it lack of faith, call it unwillingness to ask for help, call it pride or call it whatever you like. I dropped my shoulders, hung my head, and muttered, “I cannot start again.”

But in the Sanctuary of Restart, you do not have to be a baby to begin again. As a community college instructor, I spent several summers teaching in a national program called Elder Hostel. Senior citizens from all over the country would spend their summers attending week-long college courses in creative writing, wine tasting, local history, etc. My courses were filled with amazing men and women who were beginning again in spectacular ways. Rose, the wife of an accomplished attorney, came to Elder Hostel with a heavy heart. Her once-brilliant husband had been consumed by Alzheimer’s, and she was simply worn out from constant care-taking. She admitted to me that when her frustration reached the proverbial boiling point, she would take an armful of Tupperware dishes into her garage and heave them, one plastic dish after another, into the garage door. The image of an eighty-some woman madly chucking Tupperware in a suburban Des Moines garage still amuses and amazes me. For this week, for this one glorious week of respite, Rose was starting over as the vital and beautiful woman she was. And oh what a restarting it was! She shared with me some writing she had done in the past, and her ear for good prose was unmistakable. And, blessedly, more than ready to be revived for another go. You can begin again, and without reservations, Rose restarted.

In A Chesterton calender, G. K. Chesterton writes:

The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.

So we may not have a new year. We may not have a new life or a long life. But, as Chesterton argues, it is not the new year or life but the new soul and new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. It is the starting afresh about things that truly characterizes the best restarts. Rose’s husband will not likely be cured of Alzheimer’s, and her life will likely be lived out through vigilant care-taking and continual worry. Still (and what a word this is!), still she can begin again with a new soul, new ears and eyes. Not to mention a new backbone, which–along with some wicked Tupperware heaving–will sustain her through the darkest of days. Starting afresh has little to do with circumstances and much to do with resting in the one who gives us abundant life.

And who is to say where things actually begin and end, poet Seamus Heaney asks?

“Since when,” he asked,
“Are the first line and last line of any poem
Where the poem begins and ends?” 

The first line of a poem, the first day as husband or wife, the birth of a child–are these the only real beginnings? The last line of a poem, the last day as husband or wife, the death of a child–are these the only true ends? Not so, Heaney posits. Not so at all. In the middle of a poem, a marriage, or a life, there are beginnings and endings too numerous to count. And after the last line, after a marriage or life has ended, there are also beginnings and endings, and Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand [Psalm 139:18]. The Sanctuary of Restarts defies conventional logic about beginnings and ending. It throws traditional wisdom to the wind and cries Redos are guaranteed at any time, any place! This is a space in which inhabitants come to see a life as a fluid thing, perpetually stopping and starting, darkening and brightening. Here is a place where first and last lines are but pieces of a larger whole, neither more nor less significant.

Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but in the ability to start over. So writes F. Scott Fitzgerald. Look around you, and you will see a whole lot of persistence. People with their heads to the plow, people whose backs are wholly bent to whatever is before them. Some will stop, lift their heads and fix their souls and eyes on something greater. And as they release themselves from the harness that has held them, they will restart. You will see it in the way they throw their heads to the sky; you will hear it in their easy laughter. More than anything, you will look on in sore amazement, for you will know that you are in the presence of a soul restarted.

In the Sanctuary of Restart, vitality is the ability to start over. I’m a fan of vitality and plan to be one who starts over. In a month, I will have a catheter ablation procedure that will, hopefully, prevent future SVT episodes and resulting heart attacks. This is a procedure to create scar tissue within the heart in order to block abnormal electrical signals and restore a normal heart rhythm. A few lesions in the heart, a little scarring and voilà! Bad heart rhythms end, and good heart rhythms begin.

The physical procedure sounds easy enough. It’s the mental, emotional, and spiritual process of restarting that is more challenging. How, then, shall I live? I plan to drive the country roads with the ones I love, stopping and starting when we wish, taking in the sites and relishing the time we spend together. Clichéd as it may be, I plan to spend more time in 2nd gear with my arm trailing in the Iowa breeze. When you live in 2nd gear, you simply see and feel things you cannot when you are speeding down the four-lane. And whatever your age, your health or circumstances, down-shifting and restarting is a good, good thing.