Seeing

Today I'm pulling from the archives.


I'd actually forgotten about this post, but when I was looking for something else I came across this one. I believe its Providential.


This afternoon I am headed back to the same hospital, with the same child. 


Perhaps, coming across my own words, getting a good taste of my own medicine, is a reminder to start this day with a focus that is radically different than four years ago.  


I pray today my "Seeing" will be filtered through compassion and grace, with love and mercy... and yes, even patience. 


(Originally posted in February 2007.) 

~~~~~~~~~

The lens in which I see the world is shamefully, selfishly, colored.

Yesterday, my prescription was changed.

I spent the afternoon taking The Boy to an appointment at a Children's Hospital. It was an appointment I had to book three months in advance. A timeline I felt was far too long and inconvenient.

I started the day grumbly, irritated, because our insurance carrier won't cover a GI Specialist in our town... even though there is a well known major medical health system that sits literally 6 miles from my front door.

This meant that I would have to drive twenty miles away, to a place I'm unfamiliar; navigate through a construction zone, and park (for a fee) in the parking garage across the street. Oh yeah, and by the way, it was 33 degrees outside (and you know I don't like to be cold.)

My mind was a myriad of grumbles over details and annoyances.

I'm certain my ingratitude was palpable as I walked hand-in-hand, both children in tow, to the hospital doors and into the first of several lines where I would spend the next three hours.

After giving a long history (although I had already called and given all this info to someone over the phone) we were finally whisked away to the first of three waiting rooms.


I'm grieved, now, to list the sad and selfish condition of my heart. But the crusty exterior of my callused heart would soon give-way to new perspective.

It was in the first large waiting room, colorful and friendly, with child size chairs and toys that I had my first dose of reality: Your child is here for stomach aches, and that bald 4-year old boy sitting next to you is dying. You are going to get a quick-fix medicine that will help your son. That little girl is going to get a year of chemo.

I looked at these beautiful children, pale and poorly, and quietly looked into the faces of my healthy, robust kids;  faces rosy and flush from our walk in the cold.

Life. Sometimes it isn't easy.

Life shouldn't be about comparisons. But every so often, when the focus becomes so self oriented its good to take a look around you and realize that your life, in comparison, is easy.

Sometimes we have to be inconvenienced to remember that we aren't the center of the universe.
Sometimes it takes seeing the faces of other people's struggles to see that we should just shut-up and sit-down... to wait a minute. To wait your turn.

The doctors were fabulous, the radiologists kind, the phlebotomist funny. The visit was so worth the drive, the time, the "inconvenience."

It was time to check out. The ream of paper work I had shuffled from place to place was handed over to a clerk.  I watched as the clerk took a big black marker and wrote, NO COPAY, across the top of the page. I looked to my left and a young father, tired and weary with worry for his sick child, stood in the next line working out his payment plan.

I was given a prescription for my sons belly... and a prescription for the eyes of my heart, and was sent on my way.

Humbled.

Righteously so.

Life is comfortable for me. What a shame that I don't raise my thanksgivings in all circumstances instead of throwing tantrums like a child. How pitiful an attitude of entitlement looks and feels!

These lessons are hard. Selfishness is ugly; it makes me uncomfortable.

I guess that's the point.

Life isn't always about being comfortable. It isn't always about avoiding pain. It isn't always about being easy. Or having my way...

May I see through the lens of gratitude and praise, in times of trouble, in times of peace. Not just today, but in the days to come...