Three Messages

I was eating Raisin Bran and honey and milk on Saturday morning in a bowl in my living room. I had just text my family to tell them that I hoped to come visit if I managed to recover my house and my health after getting off a three week stretch of work. My brother asked just how bad my health was and I set my bowl down to text him back. 

Unfortunately, my mental health was such that I miscalculated the edge of the coffee table and set the bowl half on the table and half on thin air. It fell, and milk, cereal and honey cascaded across my carpet and my feet and splashed on the microfiber couch. 

This is the state of my sanity, I explained to my brother with a description of the incident. 

I didn’t bother to mention the clean laundry piled on my couch… The laundry basket overflowing… Dishes which have been piled by the sink for days… Three issues of The Week scattered around my living room, unread but not put away, one open to a crossword puzzle unfinished. Weeds growing tall in my lawn… And what is wrong with my new hydrangeas? Some of the leaves are turning brown. 

Oh. And. I must have eaten about 100,000 calories in the last week and a half. I should post a list of the fast food I’ve eaten since June 1, but it would be too embarrassing. 

And then I remembered how we had an emergency at the hospital and I had tried to make two phone calls and the phones just rang and rang and rang, and I couldn’t find anyone. I hadn’t cried at the time, but now I burst into tears, remembering that moment of helplessness. 

Working long, stressful hours is no excuse, although I think I do better when I’m prepared ahead of time for the loss of focus, the strain on disciplines like prayer and fasting, which I hate to say have practically evaporated during this time. 

But through this fog, this, “I think I may be losing my mind,” I remember three distinct moments. 

Shortly after spilling the cereal, my neighbor Mary called me. It was that 90 degree day, although I hadn’t been out. 

“Do you have AC?” She asked. “Just calling to make sure you aren’t burning up over there!” 

I then proceeded to tell her my troubles and she said, “Don’t be discouraged! How are you supposed to help anyone if you’re discouraged?”

What a good thing to have good neighbors!

Second, one night a few days later, I had gotten home from work and was hoping to go to bed early. I had showered and had to go to the door in my bathrobe when the doorbell rang. 

It was my neighbor, wanting to pull weeds for money. I was tired, and wanted to go to bed, not hire a gardener, but I pointed out a few places she could weed. 

“Do you know what I saw yesterday?” she asked suddenly, clasping her hands together. “For the second time since I was a little girl! You know that pot of flowers you gave me? A hummingbird came to it yesterday!”

What an influence flowers can have! 

Third,  I was racing around at the hospital one afternoon, trying to finish some things so I could go home at a decent time, when the receptionist in the waiting room called me and said someone wanted to see me. I was three floors away, and busy, but I headed down, mentally calculating how much longer I would need to be at the hospital because of this interruption. 

He was a middle-aged man in a plain T-shirt and a bill cap. 

“You have no reason to remember me,” he said. 

But as he started talking, it all came back from months ago… Another long stressful week when my house was probably trashed and I was likely eating too much junk food. A long, stressful night, one of those times when I needed to walk from the operating room to the waiting room with bad news.

Sometimes, on those journeys to the waiting room, I stop halfway and stare at the ceiling and ask, “God, what do I say?” Unlike my partner Sue, I’m not gifted with natural, expressive compassion and empathetic tears. 

“Thank you so much for what you did,” he said. “I know about post-traumatic stress and I still have it about that night, but you helped us so much. I don’t know how you do it.” 

“I don’t remember doing much to help,” I said, truthfully. I had been the bearer of bad news! 

And there in the waiting room, my eyes filled as time stood still, and all the things I had to do, and the state of my house or my calorie consumption seemed less important. 

What a good thing to be reminded that your work matters! 

“If you see the surgeon, tell him I was here,” he said. “I loved that man.” 

I love the heart surgeons, too. I admire their vocabulary, their knowledge, their untiring work hours after the average person would collapse. 

But most of all my eyes look with admiration to the heart surgeon they seem to symbolize, the surgeon who is the essence of vocabulary, knowledge, and tireless activity, the One who has no weaknesses, only strengths. He is the one who creates miracles in our hearts at just the right time, the One with a constant monitor on our pulse. 

Specifically, I love how He reminded me, through a series of three unexpected messengers, that there are more important things than cereal on the carpet.