In a gentle way, you can shake the world (Mahatma Gandhi)
Perhaps everyone has heard some variation of the old joke: What’s the difference between major and minor surgery? If you are having it, it’s always major surgery. Someone I know and love is facing something huge in the next few weeks. I pray for her frequently. However my husband is approaching a simpler procedure with an overnight hospital stay now, this last week in January.
Unfortunately, Mother Nature is in a bitter mood. Below zero temperatures and brutal winds have closed schools. My loving mate is concerned for my safety, so I will be staying in a hotel for the duration. The hotel provides shuttle service.
My sister-in-law, Kris, calls and asks if I want company for a while when my husband is in surgery. I’m surprised and pleased. She works long hours at the hospital. Her gift of time is precious. I have this strange sense something special and unexpected will come from accepting her offer. I have no idea how right-on that omen is.
“I’ll meet you in the waiting room around seven,” she says. Then she calls my cell at seven fifteen, the exact moment when I leave the pre-op area to enter the waiting room. She locks my heavy coat, scarf, and backpack in her office. (Before the day has ended I have a suspicion that my coat and backpack would feel as if it had gained 150 pounds, probably more if aggravation could be measured.)
When my shoulders are free she gives me a tour of the hospital. This is significant since the only directions I know with any certainty are up and down. In the cafeteria she pays for my yogurt and coffee, Starbucks, the good stuff.
Somehow Kris has tapped into the spiritual realm of perfect timing. She calls exactly at the moment my husband is being brought to the Recovery Room and then again as he is wheeled into his room. That evening she appears just when I want something from my backpack before I go to the hotel. It’s uncanny! I feel a strange sense that all is well even though my husband’s recovery process hasn’t yet begun.
The next morning I ask at the front desk of the hotel where I can get some coffee. Transportation to the hospital may be free, but coffee isn’t. However, when I tell an employee at the restaurant that all I want is take-out coffee, something about me must bleed not-here-on-vacation. She gives me a complimentary cup of fresh, hot java. And I feel the blessings continue to flow—in the form of caffeine.
More incredibly timed situations occur. And I’m not sure what part my awareness plays on their sacredness. I do suspect that one goodness can touch another and then another, like ripples on a lake that travel from one shore to another.
I also believe that it is important to send those ripples back from the other shore and bless the original giver. Thanks, Kris. I wouldn’t have made it without you.
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Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it. (
terrypetersen 