TGIF
It was an important milestone in my recovery, a big deal to me emotionally.
I had driven the few blocks to the convenience store by myself and I was going in for an ice cold Mexican Coca Cola to celebrate.
My daily visit to this little store was part of my life routine and being able to drive there by myself and buy something meant life was going to be normal again after my surgeries.
My strength was small and my gait slow and deliberate…it took a lot to get out of the truck, more to inch my way to the back of the store where the bottles of bliss are shelved.
I made it though, and began to shuffle toward the cash registers with my frosty treasure in hand.
About half way up the aisle I was more than a little disturbed to see the clerks in emotional distress…one was unable to control her sobbing, the other seemingly unable and unwilling to look my direction.
“I can’t stand to see you this way”, the crying one almost shouted.
I was…stunned.
They didn’t ‘know” me.
They didn’t go to my church.
They had never read my book.
They had never read my blog.
I had never given them anything, counseled them through anything, never done anything except shop for a few minutes everyday.
Yet, I mattered.
A lot.
This confused me, as I have always expected to be loved according to the measure of what I could do or had already done.
Thus, I have spent my life focusing on doing, rather than being.
I have worked myself to exhaustion and illness to “do” in order to feel worthy of love and acceptance.
Sometimes, I have even believed that what I have done should entitle me to be less responsible for what I am…
What a shock to find that my role as “customer” had trumped ‘pastor”, writer”, “blogger’, etc.
What a shock to find that some had accepted me for who I was rather than anything I’ve done…that the mundane living out of my daily life had more impact than any of my works.
What a shock to find that who I am really is more important than what I do.
That’s almost biblical…
Make your own application…
Love……”it’s the real thing.”
WOW…
Great stuff Michael. Michael you don’t understand it but those who know you understand. You care and that is something that people can see in your eyes. When we met you earlier this summer, I saw the pain, the love for those who hurt and the desire to do something for everyone. That’s rare.
Nonnie, that was very clever! 🙂
There was a morning not long before Maddie was born that just ripped me up emotionally.
Our 11 year old White Shepherd, Simon, had been acting funny. I went to bed at 1am and left him and our other dog outside. It was early May and the weather was good.
At 4:30 am I came down and started to put coffee on. I heard a commotion on the porch; what I found broke my heart. Simon was under the couch and the other furniture had been knocked about. His belly was swollen at least four times its natural size.
He was thrashing in pain.
Steve came down and by the time we had called the emergency vet I knew Simon wasn’t going to make it. He died within ten minutes of my finding him…he had turned his stomach.
We loaded him into the Jeep with the help of a neighbor who set aside his morning rush to help us as we fought tears. We allowed the boys to come out and say goodbye…one last pat on his head.
Steve took him to the vet and called a few minutes later just bawling. The whole staff were waiting for him. He got there just a few minutes after they opened. All the groomers, the vet assistants, the three vets and the receptionists…and they were all crying.
They all came and gently unloaded Simon and carefully covered him with blankets as they ushered him to the back to be cremated.
They did not mock our sorrow. They did not belittle our deep feelings over an animal. They did not even rush Steve as it was the start of their day.
They embraced us with kindness and recognized our loss and our pain.
Your story, Michael is the same….when we are recognized and treated with kindness and with an awareness that we “are” and that our simple existence, and all that is summed up in that, impacts those around us.
That is part of what so saddens me in the political debate, and even in theological debates…we forget that we are connected.
We forget that we are engaged with those who bear the image of their creator.
These moments of recognition…..may they mark us as we encounter those around us…may we really see an not just exist.
Sarah,
Once again, I can only say “amen”.
Thank you…
I’m just reading this one …
This captures so well what we spend a lifetime learning. While doing is part of our lives and faith without works is dead, becoming aware, or remembering, that we have value simply because we breath is HUGE!
This example of the clerk caring about you, Michael, is an excellent reminder of how our lives become intertwined with other’s simply because we have been in proximity to them.
Relationships…we lose the importance of relationships in our culture. Be it typing behind a computer screen, or just shutting ourselves off from the rest of the world when we shut our doors, our culture has a way of exalting the individual into thinking “It’s just me against the rest of the world.”
Yet the “rest of the world” is comprised of individual people. People such as an otherwise nondescript convenience store clerk who saw far more relationship with her customers than what ought to have been expected.
No doubt Michael, you will never once look at that clerk the same way again.
God help all of us (and me most of all) make a similar impact upon the people around us.
I am rendered speechless.
Mike-
I don’t commnet here but I have read a few posts from time to time. My name is Eagle, I’m an agnostic trying to figure myself out. I hang out on the Internet Monk, Wartburg Watch and Christian Monist.
I recently had a medical scare. Here’s how mine went…the doctors think some bacteria got into my body through some cracks in my skin. On July 29 I found myself in shock barely able to walk into the emergency clinic. I had violent chills and a fever of 104. I found out that I was dealing with a bacterial infection in my leg and some blood poisoning. One of the most frightening things I expereinced was just laying on a gurney being surrounded by 2 paramedics, 2 emergency doctors, and 2 nurses. As I was in shock my blood pressure was falling, where it was at 70/40.
I was transfered to the ER and ICU. My leg turned red, yellow, etc.. It had swollen so much that the skin had started to fall off. Each day in the hospital I looked on it when the nurses changed the dressing. The doctors didn’t know if this was one of those infections that was resistant to antibiotics. After a few days they found one that worked. It took my a month and a half to get back on my feet. Though I was discharged from the hospital on August 20 my IV was finally removed about 4 days ago.
I came to love Washington, D.C. traffic, the neighbors, and I leanred how much I took things for granted. I never thought I’d be back on my feet but I got there and am still working it. I can’t hit the gym for a few more weeks. But hang in there, others have dealt with medical crisis and been in a similar situation and slowly they came back. We’re all here for you.
Eagle,
Thank you…and know that you’re welcome here and our prayers are with you as you recover.
amen to that, Michael … i tend to forget that there are more folk lurking than posting and must remember them at prayer time, too
Eagle, welcome to the Phoenix Preacher! Thank you for sharing your story and the encouragement that comes with it.