There you are, just doing life, when one day you look outside and notice two large holes in your swimming pool cover. A closer look reveals that something is MOVING under there.
You mentally round up the usual suspects: a possum? squirrel? raccoon?
You lift the cover and YIKES! – it’s a buffalo! Wait just a doggone minute. A BUFFALO?! Yep, a buffalo, and he’s big, he’s alive, he’s ticked and he’s in your pool.
That’s exactly what happened to a Georgia couple last month. I read about it in the newspaper and strangely enough, I could relate to their story.
Like this couple, I was just doing life last month, when–BAM! — a buffalo wandered into my pool, too, figuratively speaking.
My buffalo was called melanoma, the grand pooh-bah of all skin cancers.
If this couple were to list the 500 weirdest things that might happen to them, finding a buffalo in their swimming pool would probably never make the list. Sure wouldn’t have made mine. But neither would melanoma, even though it turns out I have several risk factors for it.
For example, I was a sun-loving youngster back in the pre-sunscreen era (when dinosaurs roamed the earth). I’m also quite the “speckled pup,” as one inebriated old man once told me. People always said my galaxy of freckles would disappear when I grew up. People were wrong, so noticing new or changing spots is quite the needle-in-a-haystack challenge for me.
But rather miraculously, a small cluster of dark freckles on my arm caught my attention and caused a persistent blip on my peace-of-mind radar, so I had it checked out. Turns out those innocent-looking freckles were actually quite sinister.
So there I was, staring at a mighty scary buffalo in my pool.
That Georgia couple called for some help and had the beast hoisted out and hauled away. (Turns out the buffalo belonged to some neighbors.)
I got some help, too, from some of you who heard about my predicament and prayed for me, and from some wonderful doctors who removed my “buffalo” before he could do a lot of damage.
I now know what it feels like to get the c-bomb (cancer) dropped on you. One moment I’m planning a new house and a new farm, and anticipating the birth of a new grandchild … and the next I’m having surgery and fighting off a barrage of scary “what ifs.”
Mental, emotional, and spiritual whiplash.
That’s the way life goes. Blissfully sipping coffee one minute, dealing with an angry buffalo the next.
It feels like our lives can fly apart in an instant, with one phone call, one diagnosis. Everything can change … or can it?
Maybe not everything. People? Yes. Circumstances? Yes. But God? No. He never changes. Not ever.
Relationships and circumstances can go bad, but God is always good. It’s His nature; He is the definition of good.
God does allow pain and suffering, but if that makes me think He isn’t good, my perception and definition are skewed, not His character. He is good; this fallen world isn’t, and for now, this is where I live. So sometimes a buffalo wanders into my pool.
God knew I had melanoma long before I knew it, and He was ready when I called out to Him for help. I could accept His help or blame Him. I could run to Him or from Him.
I ran to Him, because I’ve run from Him before and have found that to be a dark, downward spiral.
To whom, indeed?
He’s the only One big enough to get a buffalo out of my pool.