Pendulums and Rainbows

I was starting to get sick on Tuesday night, and I was dreading going back to work the next day after a lovely Easter in Wisconsin with family. As I sat in my armchair, beside my electric fireplace, wearily assessing my life, and planning to go to bed soon, in walked a mouse. 

Yes. It just strolled in as comfortable as you please, from the kitchen, and after a little exploration, went straight into my bedroom.
I had never seen a mouse in my house before, so I was a bit puzzled what to do next. (A little like finding a squirrel in a frozen waste basket.)  

I frantically text a few people for advice-all women, for some reason- and a Laurel Street friend suggested I spend the night on my couch at their house. My Canadian friend mentioned her sister, who had been known to kill mice by stomping on them. That sounded great, but unfortunately, the sister was in Canada. 

I really couldn’t quite imagine spending the night sharing my bedroom with a mouse. But, just when I was about to despair, he or she came strolling back out. I quickly shut the bedroom door, and shone my flashlight under my couch. Sure enough, I saw a thin black line close to the wall, which was actually a tail.  The mouse stared back at me quizzically in the light of my flashlight, and in that moment I have to say, it was almost cute. 

I decided there was nothing to do without a mouse trap, but I did take the precaution of dropping a 1/2 piece of string cheese in the hallway, hoping to lure the creature away from me. Then I went to bed, with the slit under my door stuffed shut. 

So I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I was giving thanks much this week. Rather, I sent a few desperate messages asking for prayer, and collapsed in tears a few times in an empty room at work. 

I wore a mask, sneezed, coughed, blew my nose, washed my hands, apologized, and sanitized things before handing them to other people.  And you know how some people get sick and they “can’t eat anything”? Not me–I wanted to drink an endless cup of hot coffee just to feel it on my throat, and mostly ate anything in sight. My tolerance of just about anything was just about zero. Every time my phone rang or my pager went off, I wanted to hurl the offending device out a sixth floor window. (Great…I bet that’s exactly how the surgeons feel about their nurse some days!)

But when I finally collapsed on my Laurel Street couch, and began an official whining session with a long suffering couple of friends, I realized I had a great number of blessings to count. 

First, there was the blind in the empty room at the hospital where I sometimes run to cry and pray. I was sitting there by the window, looking out at a brilliant, cloud-studded sky, complaining to God. 

“God,” I said, “life is so difficult!”

And almost like a still small voice, I felt the truth, Of course it is. 

Oh, I sighed. 

But God’s word will never fail. God’s promises will always be fulfilled. God’s laws will always hold true. 

As I looked at the clouds, the cord that controls the window blind blurred in front of me. It was swinging like a pendulum, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. I remembered learning about pendulums in physics. Waves, velocity, frequency, fancy equations.

  
Physics is possible, I mused, because the order in the world is a reflection of the reliability of its Creator. That’s why every pendulum on earth is predictable. Not because man is, but because God is. 

And in the back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, I thought of these words, memorized years ago:

So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth; it shall not return into me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing where to I sent it. 

It shall prosper, it shall prosper, it shall prosper…

Second, there was the pink scarf slipped to me by the wife of one of our patients. I had complimented her on her stunning scarf collection, and the next day, she left one for me, in my favorite color. 

“She has a hundred of them,” her husband said. 

I wore it the rest of the day, below my mask.

Third, there was the rainbow. After my final brush with insanity late Friday evening, I was sitting with the surgeon, our medical student, and a patient family in a conference room on the sixth floor. I felt like I could barely breathe anymore, and imagined how nice it would be to just lay in bed. My voice was leaving me and no one recognized me when I answered my phone. 

But as I sat collapsed in my chair, what should I see above the St. Joseph’s River, but a huge rainbow.

Now really. There is nothing on earth more expressive of God’s faithfulness than a rainbow. And there it was, drawing my mind to yet another promise: 

While the earth remaining…. Day and night shall not cease. 

Shall not cease… Shall not cease… Shall not cease…

God has a word for every situation in life, no matter how hurtful (“There is nothing I lack!,” for instance!) and His word cannot fail. It literally cannot fail. All the pendulums and rainbows in the world can remind us of that, but in truth, they themselves are merely reflections. 

I bet there’s even a word for relating to mice in the house.  So far, I’ve lost two pieces of cheese and had a peanut butter trap snap on its own. So I’m open to advice, once again, Scriptural or otherwise!