A Collage Of Words (Part III of III)

So here I am, writing the final installment of this three-part series... and I'm not sure if I have any one thing to say.

Easy part first... the visual update:

In my prior reflection, I noted that our lives are always on display, though we try not to think about that reality very much. I will close this series out with a series of one-word feelings.

Ignorant. By the time the doctor explained what he'd be dealing with during the surgery, I realized why my ankle doc recommended a hand specialist and why the folks at the ER were so eager to not do anything more than stitch me up. Holy cow. A tight (carpal?) tunnel. A tight tendon. Surrounded by two nerves, one on either side. Yeah. I had no idea how delicate and complicated a hand is. But I do now.

Thankful. The doc saw me on the 23rd. And came in early to operate on Christmas eve. That kindness, fitting me into his schedule on the day before Christmas, gave me the holidays to begin the worst of my recovery period. But that's just the tip of the thankfulness iceberg. Thankful that surgery is an option. Thankful that my surgeon is skilled and competent.

I could go on and on. And, to prove it, I will. Let's talk timing.

That pointless trip to the ER back in June when I got hit by a drunk driver? It seemed such a waste, because I wasn't even injured. I just realized today that all those pointless health expenses.... they used up some of my 2015 deductible. Dollar for dollar. That ambulance trip and ER care (paid for by the drunk's insurance) saved me some $2,000 over the past week. If the thumb injury had happened tomorrow? That's 2016. No savings.

I could go on and on. And, to prove it, I will. Let's talk work.

My work had reached a manageable pace. Good thing. Because I'm typing slowly right now. I am able to keep up with my must-do list. Thank God.

Dispensable. Yes, much to be thankful for. But still a poignant reminder of my human frailty. One minute in perfect health. Next minute typing like a one-handed monkey. Yeah. Did I ever mention that typing well is part of my job description as a programmer? Thank God work is slow right now. Because I am too.

Defenseless. How, I asked the doc, did I manage to take out a tendon without touching the two nerves on either side of it? He suggested that perhaps I was gripping something when the glass shard went by? Yeah. The Pyrex pan. Because of how I was holding it, my tendon was extended out beyond the nerves. Nice touch, God. The finger of God is nothing if not precise. We are helpless in the hands (pardon that pun) of a God who ordains the moments of our lives.

We like to think we are the captains of our ship. But we're not.

A post-op therapist (while discussing therapy options) commented to me that my hand doc is the captain of my ship right now. Well, she was right that I myself am not. But the surgeon isn't either. God is. And I, my friends, am a small, frail, and quite disposable assortment of flesh and blood. (And a few odd tendons.)

Loved. 2016 is a precarious future for me in many ways. But the God who has been with me and orchestrated this inchoate eucatastrophe–that God will be with me in the days to come. In the midst of all that went wrong, so many things went right. I have uncountable things to be thankful for. That the glass shards didn't get into my eyes...

But as I write these feelings down...

Ignorant... Thankful... Dispensable... Defenseless... Loved.

These words. In truth, they describe my every day. My every moment.

Well, almost. Thankfulness is the word in that mix that is within my control. Sadly, too often I fail to hold to it, even while the others hold true.

Even when, through it all, I am... Loved.

Yes, that is the best part. Knowing that I am loved. A fitting realization to close this year out with. God loves us all. Ever so much.

Happy New Year!

Surrounded By A Cloud Of Witnesses (Part II of III)

So here I am, writing the next installment on this three-part series...

...And it's going slowly. (I wonder why?)

In my first reflection, I laid out what happened to my thumb on Sunday. Here I hope to convey what happened next and to explain why I was reminded of a great passage from the book of Hebrews.

Standing there in the kitchen, I knew we had a problem. Blood dripping profusely from a clean and clearly deep incision. But it seemed like a simple problem to fix. Stitch it up and we're good, right?

No.

As noted in the prior reflection, at some point in the hospital it became perfectly clear to me that I was looking at another tendon rupture.

But... once again... not too big of a deal, right? After all... the ankles had to be opened up, but in this case, the job has done already. I'm at the hospital. Thanks to that shard of glass, I'm already open! Fix it now and go home?

No.

As noted in the prior reflection, I was pretty frustrated when they stitched me up and sent me home when I knew perfectly well that I'd be back under the knife soon enough. That kinda... SUCKS.

Part of what made it frustrating was the feeling that people were ignoring what I knew to be true. Yes, you're all medical professionals, of course.... but I know a thing or two, too. And I know that this thumb is not working properly. So I came home feeling pretty frustrated, but in possession of a recommended doctor to call in the morning.

My first clue that there was more to this story than I understood came when I tried a different route and called the doctor who stitched up my last Achilles rupture.

[And here I must stop and acknowledge the mysteries of God and seemingly random and unnecessary events. The doctor who cared for my first Achilles rupture? Dead. A very godly man with easily nine or ten kids. Died in a car accident during a snow storm. I'll never forget him, and God has not either. No, life does not always go according to our plans, nor according to our preferences, either. Somethings must be trusted to God with NO answers to comfort us, here on earth.]

I never ended up even speaking to the doctor. The receptionist took in my situation, went away from the phone, and came back pretty quickly. "We recommend that you visit a hand specialist."

Hmmmm. He did a great job on my ankle. What was that all about?

So I called the name that the hospital had sent me home with. They set me up with an appointment for Wednesday. And that seemed OK. Until I started to realize that
(a) the appointment was clearly not going to include surgery, and
(b) my (possibly long) recovery was getting delayed.

Frustrating. Very. Frustrating.

My frustration turned to action and on the morning of the appointment, I dropped the doctor's office a short note. I said, in so many words, "I know I have a ruptured tendon. Could we please dispense with the appointment and set up the date for surgery?"

I did try hard to be polite, but I made it clear that I didn't have spare cash or time for an appointment to confirm what I already knew. The response was not surprising at all. In so many words, "The doc has to see you, first." No shocker, there.

What did catch me by surprise, however, was what happened when I went in to see the doctor. As I passed between the receptionist's desk and the room where I was to examined, a woman glanced up and greeted me in a very familiar fashion. "Hi, Pilgrim!"

Oh, that's right. She works at an orthopaedic clinic. This one, apparently. My neighbor from down the block.

And you know what my first thought was, right?? "Hmmmm... did she read that note I wrote?" I don't know, and I haven't ask her, yet. But I was glad that I had worded it carefully as I had, and definitely wishing in hindsight that I had exercised even more restraint with my words.

This situation has happened to me before. I let feelings loose on a stranger.... and then discover that the stranger is actually an acquaintance. Or a friend. When this happens, I'm reminded of what the author of Hebrews had to say on the matter:

Hebrews 12:1
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles.

Occasionally this fact is visible in the earthly realm. A secret or seemingly anonymous side of our lives becomes public knowledge or, at a minimum, known to people we had not intended to reveal ourselves to. And when that happens, it's always a bit spooky.

Spookier still is the stark reality. This just in. We're totally exposed to eternity. What happened to me in that office is the tiniest, most trivial taste of a wider reality: we live, every moment of every day, surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses.

Let that sink in.

But we don't. We're like the hamster I share this office with. I'm working next to the little feller quite frequently, and he bustles about his cage, usually quite clueless that I'm watching him from time to time. But every now and then, some combination of movement and sound coming from me flips him out, and he goes into survival mode. He jumps and scurries as fast as his little legs can take him to some place of perceived safety.

Fact is, he's only as safe as I want him to be, and he's watched far more than he knows. Stupid hamster? Yeah. But we humans can be pretty stupid that way, too. More on that in the upcoming final reflection.

Until then, Merry Christmas. Seems I ought to say that before closing.

And.... yes... one other closing comment. I hate typing with one hand.

The Finger Of God. Again. (Part I of III)

Some day I should take an ankle selfie and post it to this reflection. But it's midnight and there's no way that's gonna happen tonight. What would the photo show if it were here? Two ankles, of course. And a 3-inch scar running down each of them.

Yes, I've ruptured both of my Achilles tendons. (It's funny how you learn the technical jargon of anything in your body that you break. I know what a clavicle is, and if you've broken one you surely know that word too.)

To rupture one of those tendons is a rare feat (feet?), but to rupture both puts me in rarefied air, especially since I did one in as a young kid fresh out of college. (It typically happens to weekend warriors in their forties.) So people are usually curious how I pulled off this dubious achievement.

The answer isn't exciting. I was in a racquetball court on both (separate) occasions. But that just explains where I was. The question of Why is a bit more tricky. I can grin and say, "My Achilles heel is my Achilles' heel", and that's good for a smile. But in a more serious response to that question, I often say (or at least think to myself), "The finger of God swept by..."

Why would God's finger swoop past my ankle and leave me critically injured? I don't know. But that answer works as well as any other. God touched Jacob's hip. He touched my ankle. Go figure.

But I don't think of it as a blame game, and furthermore I trust God with these random (or not-so-random) events. (The irony here is that I've reflected recently on the question of randomness–or lack thereof–in life.)

All I know is, aside from those doozies, I've been largely free of stitches.

(Yeah, here it comes...)

Until Sunday. A few days ago I was washing dishes (husbands, take note... this activity can be dangerous!) and went to rinse a Pyrex casserole dish. Whups. It slipped out of my hand. No biggie, right? Well... no. It fell an inch or two (or four?) hit the edge of the sink at the wrong angle and (quite literally) shattered into hundreds of pieces.

And one of those pieces passed by my right thumb. It left a calling card, too. A big long slice. One instant I am perfectly healthy. The next instant...

The finger of God returns. (Or was it a thumb this time?)

Yeah, doesn't look like something you'd do for entertainment, but on the other hand, it doesn't look too serious. Right?

Wrong. Looks can be deceiving. While in the ER, I was struck by the fact that I could not pull my thumb toward my palm. Echoes of a certain ankle injury... But no matter, this is just a thumb, right?

Wrong. The folks in the ER did a nice job of cleaning it up and stitching it, but they didn't seem too keen to mess with my thumb. I was irritated. I'm here. The wound is open. Just go in there and fix it up while we're here?

No.

And to cut (!) a long story, short, I have since discovered that this injury is anything but simple. Tomorrow morning in the wee hours after dawn, I'm going under general anesthesia. And they will attempt to repair a tendon that will not be making anything about the task easy.

Suffice it to say, I will say here that it is simply a mystery to me why I have such a talent for wreaking serious havoc with tendons. What I managed to do while standing in front of a kitchen sink seems to rival the first achilles rupture, which I effected while standing still.

Goooo figure. Lord willing, I'll cover two thoughts in my next reflection. First, why this surgery is going to be so bloody complicated, and second, why that fact makes me wish I had been less frustrated with the health professionals looking after me over the past few days.

Damned Words

I offended him, and he had every right to be offended. What made the situation unusual, perhaps, is that he made it clear that I had done so.

Others with thicker skin might have brushed it off, but I was blessed by the candor of his words: "Now, Pilgrim, you don't have to make me feel stupid."

Not much of a blessing? To the contrary, it is a great blessing to have your faults pointed out to you, however painful that experience may be. And it hurt a lot to hear those words, because I had earned them, and I don't like to think of myself as an asshole, especially in a public setting.

But that, in unvarnished terms, was what I had been. I did the best damage control I could in a crowded room, and later pulled him aside and apologized for having been an asshole, using those very words.

Then this morning I read some scriptures and my devotional-du-jour. (Yes, there was a break in there where I had to feed the hamster.)

It was something I read in my devotional that inspired me to write this blog, but as I began to type, I suddenly remembered the scriptures I had read, and realized that they too were pointing in the same direction.

Devotional first. From The Imitation of Christ: "Beware of much talking."

Yeah, not a long quote. But it cut to the bone. I had offended this fellow traveler with callous and careless words. I speak way too soon and way too flippantly. Way too often. Yes, Thomas à Kempis had me pinned.

But it wasn't just Thomas. Jesus piled on. I remembered what I had read...

Matthew 12:34-37

You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. Good people bring good things out of the good stored up in them, and evil people bring evil things out of the evil stored up in them. But I tell you that people will have to give account on the day of judgment for every empty word they have spoken. For by your own words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.

Another irony. As I began to type in this passage from Matthew, I was reminded gently of what I had been thinking about when I had been reading this passage on the first pass–or should I say who. Donald Trump.

Yes, Donald will have a lot to give account for, and I do not envy him his situation on that front. But Jesus had something to say about taking care of your own sins before attending to the sins of others. This morning I should have left The Donald to God and attended to myself first. I hadn't, but Thomas (bless him) helped me return to Jesus.

And now I realize they were both speaking to me. I need to watch my mouth. And be thankful for God's mercy, as well as the mercy of that fellow traveler, who immediately gave me the gracious words I needed to hear.

"I forgive you."

Lessons on Prayer From A Hamster

So we return again to the lowly hamster. I've blogged about them before.

Over the years I have, thanks to hamsters, been the beneficiary of an occasional good reminder. Today's reflection begins with a bit of hamster basics: they sleep at day and run around their cage all night. They're nocturnal. This is not a plus. They can be noisy at night, running on the wheel and making their various noises.

So when we bought yet another hamster this year (they don't live long, either, which is also a bummer) it was decided to put this one in my basement office, so that the little feller (Mr. Squeakers, to you) doesn't wake anyone up with his nighttime antics.

Here we come to our lesson, for I have a habit of heading into the basement each morning to pray. At least, that's the plan.

But Mr. Squeakers has worked out my schedule. When I come in and flip on the light, it's not more than a minute or two before he strikes the following pose:

Why? Because he know's I will pick him up. And why does he know that? Because I always do. Why do I pick him up? Because he's adorable. And because he's waiting for me. I can't just leave him there.

Now the fact is, he's typically a little anxious when I pick him up. I'm big. He's small. Even though it happens every day, letting me pick him up always seems like a struggle of the will for him. He's afraid. But he seems at the same time to know it's OK.

But I don't think it's entirely the "getting picked up" part that he's excited to have as part of his daily routine. No, I think the bigger selling point of this activity is as shown below:

He knows that after I put him back down, I'm going to give him some food. Every time. And while he's a bit anxious when I pick him up, he's totally relaxed when he places his head in my hand and retrieves the grain offering.

I find all hamsters quite irresistible, and Mr. Squeakers is no exception. It's unfortunate that he's (understandably) rather intimidated by me, and I wish he loved me as much as he loves the food I give him. But that's asking a bit much of a hamster, so I give him attention and food in the morning and appreciate him in ways he cannot begin to know anything about.

It's obvious where I'm going with all of this. I am faced every morning with a striking juxtaposition: Mr. Squeakers meets me in the morning right when I meet with God. In fact, I put off my meeting with God in order to attend to him. The parallels are many and obvious. I don't have to lay them all out. But I am reminded of Jesus' words about sparrows and worry.

Suffice it to say, I am worth many hamsters.

And I am reminded also of this:

Luke 11:11-13 (with modifications)
“Which of you hamster owners, if your hamster wants grain, will put a snake in his cage instead? Or if he wants some celery, will give him a cat? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your hamster, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

That's an encouraging reminder for a guy heading into prayer time.

Thanks, Mr. Squeakers, for the object lesson. Now off you go to bed.