It was Christmas of 2008 that my feet began to hurt in a weird way. It took some months to figure out that I had neuromas (cysts on the nerve) in each foot. Last September I spent most of my daughter’s wedding barefoot; the excruciating pain eventually had me begging for surgery in October. The neuromas were three times the size that the surgeon usually removes. The medical term used to describe them was “bad-ass.”

But the one incision never quite healed, and February 28 it took 8 hours for infection to turn my foot into what my daughter later said looked like a bruised grapefruit. That night I spent on the couch weeping in agony, unable to touch it down, scooting or crawling when I absolutely had to move. I never felt so alone in my life. In the early morning, a friend took me to the doctor, and on his order, immediately to the emergency room. So began my first week in the hospital, and another surgery to lance and drain and pack, and days of IV antibiotics.

But it only healed slowly. When I would finish a course of antibiotics, my foot would swell again. I spent the first week of April in the hospital, too, undergoing surgery to remove a “smoldering” pea-sized “mass”, acquiring a second packed open wound, and more IV antibiotics, even having them pumped into my heart for a week after I came home.

This week I hobbled to the end of the semester and to the end of my new book’s indexing. When rain lets up, I expose my poor old foot to the sun, sitting gazing mindlessly at the world as I convalesce. The infection seems to be gone. But my foot aches and swells easily. The prospect of an aerobic walk with the dog still seems a long way away.

I have been humbled by how many people it takes to take care of me, and by how many did. An assortment of people got me to and from the surgery and hospital stays. My daughter skipped classes to be alongside when the crying face at the far right of the nurse’s chart best represented my pain, to see me into and out of surgeries, and to wheel me around the quiet hospital the last Saturday evening I was there. My neighbors took care of my dog. My classes met without me, students facilitating each others’ learning. Friends brought me things I needed in the hospital, and did things I needed at home.

Scads of medical professionals attended to me around the clock in the hospital. These include the two nurses who quietly packed me up and moved me and my bed out of one room into another after the situation with my dementia-beset roommate deteriorated from frequent bed alarms to adversarial attack; the nurses who figured out how to wrap my foot and set up chairs so I could shower; and the nurse with the hair lip who actually gave me back rubs. They include multiple doctors, and my foot doctor’s retinue of students and residents.

With the student mission team to Aliquippa coming to stay at my house spring break (the week after my first hospital stay), one friend volunteered her cleaning lady. Another took on a gigantic shopping run. The mother of one student came the weekend prior to help ready the house and to take care of me. That team cooked for me rather than my cooking for them. They cleaned my house thoroughly the day they departed. I presided from my recliner.

Each time I returned to class, colleagues and students parked my car, carried my books and pillow, set up a chair for my foot, prayed for me. Friends pitched in to help me pull off a wedding shower for my daughter (the week after my second hospital stay); all I did was sit and pot pansies for favors.

Pastor friends from another church visited to anoint me with oil and pray for my healing. My church organized meals. At church the morning I was to leave the hospital with the IV pump, an announcement was made from the pulpit for all the nurses to meet afterward to organize their care of me. They printed me a list of all their phone numbers. One nurse brought me home; another spent the night; and two attended my home health nurse pump set-up meeting. The next day, one returned to help me figure out the logistics of wearing a pump, and to clean my house.

I have been pretty helpless; I have been so helped. I am the richer, the wiser, the humbler for it. I have seen the ways of God in each of this band’s caring gestures. I feel bound up with them, and with him, more deeply. And I am grateful. The leaning posture of need becomes that of simple thanks. I hope it will also be the posture of my own better care of others.

Tonight I made a thank-you meal—the first of several—this one for my neighbors. It felt good to plan and shop and clean (modestly!) for them. It was good to honor them and God—good to lean into thankfulness and care.