Got Purpose?

I was reflecting today on an incident that happened back this last summer. I would venture to say it would have been called the "brink of death" for me. I was eating some venison steak one evening, as it seems to me that I have been on a low carb diet called the Primal Blue Print for six to seven months. Venison is a very dense steak and tends to be a bit drier. For anyone that does not know what venison is, it is deer meat. I absolutely love venison...especially a doe. This particular evening, my husband and I was enjoying a venison steak, when I took a bite a bit too big.
Have you ever taken a bite of something and actually thought to yourself..."wow that feels pretty big going down...sure hope it goes down ok?" Well that particular day...that is what I thought when I took a bite too big and of course I didn't chew it long enough or well enough. I began to feel the meat get stuck and the more I tried to swallow it down, the more lodged it became. I sat the plate of food on the coffee table and jogged into the kitchen where my husband was doing some dishes at the sink...with his back too me. I tapped him on the shoulder and placed my hands to my throat (the universal sign of choking). He asked me "Are you choking?" All I could do was nod. He turns me at this point to where he was now behind me in the kitchen. He places his fists where he could thrust up to help the food to come out. He thrusts up once...looks at me and precedes to ask if I was still choking. I nod. At this point I remember thinking  to myself "Ok...I think I might die. I can't breathe at all and my kids are going to watch there 38 year old mother die. This is pretty serious...this meat isn't coming up!" He turns me back around and does two more thrusts....still choking:( I am beginning at this point to lose  consciousness ...my vision is a box and that box is beginning to get smaller and smaller. The box focuses on the magnet on my fridge that is shaped like a question mark and in the middle of that question mark it simply asks.."Got Purpose?" I even remembering thinking to myself...my purpose was done.

  If you have watched the animated movie "Stuart Little" , there was a scene where the case worker comes to the house of Stuarts adoptive family and tells the adoptive parents that Stuarts biological parents were killed in a deadly cream of mushroom soup can incident while they were at the grocery store. The case worker looks at the soon to be parents of Stuart and says in a whispering voice, "Cream of mushroom soup is a very heavy soup." That was what I was thinking to myself. My kids would have to say to others, "Yeah my mom died from eating venison...its a very dense meat." Ugh!

 My husband turned me back around after he asked if I was still choking and I nodded with affirmation that I was still choking. Again three or four more thrusts and I feel my legs giving way, but the meat quickly dislodges and and moves on down the right way. I collapse. My husband catches me and gently lays me onto the floor. Got purpose? That was still in my minds eye.

The story concludes a trip to the emergency room the next day because I was not feeling well. When the ER doctor came into the room and all my x-rays showed no broken bones after my husband performed the Heimlich on me, she began to say  how lucky I was to have a husband that not only knew the Heimlich, but did it so well that I had no broken bones...my hero! Later my husband, Andy, tells me that for years during his Navy career and other jobs in the past that he had , he was made to take CPR and lifesaving classes. He said he felt as if endured those classes over and over...the repetition of them was just relentless. He said that he even thought to himself, at the time,  that he would probably never use them and what was the use of sitting in them so many times. But he told me that night, that he would do it a million times over if he thought for even a second,  that one time in the future he was going to have to save my life. God isn't done with me yet...He showed me that very clearly...what He was saying to me is that I do still have a purpose here. Question for the day...got purpose? I know that I do thanks to my night and shining armor...my husband...Andy! Thanks to my Lord above for showing me that He still has a plan for my life.

                                       Thanks Andy! I love you!

Jeremiah 29:11 KJV
For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.