Most of you probably spent July 4th outdoors, but I spent it inside: on the fourteenth floor of a Manhattan teaching hospital, recovering from major heart surgery. I’m telling you this only because I had a lot of time to think in the week I spent there lying in bed, and I want to share my thoughts with you.

When I drove down to the city in late June, I planned to stay only for the day – to see a specialist recommended by my cardiologist in Kingston. But that all changed in an instant when this doctor told me I should have had surgery to repair my valves a month earlier. By the end of the day I was in a hospital gown, and underwent a grueling seven-hour operation the next day.

Many of you have likely undergone major surgery, but until you experience it yourself you can’t have any idea what it is like. I’m sure there was a battle raging in me while I was under anesthesia, and when I woke up there wasn’t only excruciating physical pain, but also inner turmoil, which was worse. It seemed like dark powers were surrounding me and that God was very far away – though I knew he wasn’t. I have to admit I was not a good soldier, and there were times when I wanted to give up. But I knew I couldn’t, and that is because of your prayers.

Being absolutely helpless and needing help with every move was at first discouraging, but in the end it was a good experience, because it allowed me to understand what it must be like for so many others – the old and infirm, the weak, the physically or developmentally disabled.

I was also afraid: afraid that the surgery wouldn’t be successful, and that I would have trouble breathing, and that I would choke on the tube in my airway (which I then did, and there was no one around to help me.) But I had to think of the old freedom song from the Civil Rights Movement, which I sang side by side with Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1965, which says, “We are not afraid – we shall overcome, some day!” – and I had to remind myself that even if we are afraid, the best antidote to fear is to step out bravely and believe that we are not.

So I am no longer worried about tomorrow or the next day. There is more than enough to think about for today. I am thankful just to be alive, to see the sky and the birds and flowers and trees, and to see my family and all of my friends and brothers and sisters.

Johann Christoph Arnold

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