Life, interrupted.
Sometimes you don’t realize how steady the treadmill of your life is plodding along until someone, or something, pulls the plug on it.
My treadmill drastically changed pace recently when my husband and I went to be with my parents as my father had major surgery in Indianapolis.
For several days, the boundaries of our world became very small as we slept in a hospital hotel, spent our days camped out in a critical care waiting room, and adapted to the strange rhythms of hospital life.
There were certainly many deeper, more important issues surrounding my Dad’s surgery, but one of the most annoying aspects of our daily waiting room vigil was the steady dose of TV shows like “The Jerry Springer Show” we had to endure. Almost enough to send me shuffling up to the psych ward.
I’ve always wondered, “Who watches those shows? Who really enjoys seeing others expose their sad, dark, dysfunctional lives on national TV?”
Now I know. I shared a waiting room with them; I saw their faces; I heard their conversations; I watched them climb up on chairs (the TVs were mounted high on the walls) to tune in to the tackiest fare on television.
And it made me sad to realize that these shows appeal to that dark element in all of us that, to varying degrees, gets a perverse kick out of seeing lives more messed up than our own.
Hospitals are to “peoplewatchers” what rainforests must be to birdwatchers.
One day, a family blew in to our little waiting room – about a dozen folks – and had themselves quite a party. They plowed through bags of Doritoes and a big container of chicken wings, laughing like they were at a picnic at the state park.
Later, I was walking to my Dad’s room and heard a patient in a nearby cubicle repeatedly tell the nurse she wanted some chips to eat. There she was, in the critical care unit, tubes sticking in and out of her, and she was craving chips.
“Ahhh,” I thought and grinned, “I think I met your family. They were munching on chips the whole time you were in surgery. Afraid there weren’t any Doritoes left after that party.”
I learned about the kid in the room next to my Dad’s room who permanently fried his brain with drugs. I walked down a very long hallway with a draped corpse being pushed behind me, then beside me, then ahead of me. Very sobering … and creepy.
I watched my very witty, spry, 88-year-old father lying there helpless and nearly incoherent from the trauma of his surgery and the strong pain meds he was taking.
I experienced all these things only because I was forced to.
Sometimes when life is relatively easy and normal, I forget that it’s guaranteed not to stay that way. I get so used to my routine, my world, my little life.
I think God shuffles the deck sometimes just so I won’t get so doggone comfortable.
When I chafe at being forced out of my comfort zone, I need to pause and think about Jesus. From King to carpenter; from glory to the cross; from the exaltation of heaven to the humiliation of earth.
Life interrupted, indeed. All for us, all for love.
Lord, give me that kind of selflessness, that kind of obedient love, that kind of “bend” in my branches, lest I break when the wind blows, as it inevitably will.