Welcome, Jean Bailey Robor! Thank ya' for bein' my guest blogger!
There was something wrong with this picture. I’d just walked into the Emergency Room of the hospital, pushing a soon-to-be patient through the door in a wheelchair. And there it was. Right there for all the world to see. Almost…challenging.
I looked at it closely. No, I didn’t like this, not one bit. Now, far be it from me to let you think I know all there is to know about hospital waiting rooms, and particularly the waiting area of an emergency room. But something seemed amiss. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the very reason there is an emergency room is because people need e-m-e-r-g-e-n-c-y treatment, and they need it now. If whatever ailed them could wait, they’d go into their physician’s office the next day or whenever he could work them in. Right?
So, here, just three feet from where I stood, was a sign that told me the average wait time was six hours. SIX HOURS??? Are you kidding me?
I looked down at the patient I’d just checked in. He was in pain and I could just imagine how disheartened he would be if he saw that sign, that HUGE sign glaring at me from across the room. So, I positioned his wheelchair in such a way that the sign wasn’t quite so obvious.
Fortunately, the wait was somewhat shorter than six hours. I guess showing up at four in the morning helped. There weren’t that many people in the waiting area. Interesting how the sick (aka contagious) folks are all grouped together on one side while the injured and sick-but-not-contagious folks are on the other. We happened to fall into the sick-but-not-contagious side.
After an hour or so, when our name was called, I was ready. I quickly pushed the wheelchair toward the triage area, when I heard my patient say, “Slow down!” I screeched to a slow crawl, never realizing I had been jogging and was just about to break into a run. Best to keep the patient happy. And it probably wouldn’t earn me any brownie points with the staff if I’d slammed him into the door jamb or worse, accidentally dumped him out onto the floor. I doubt he would have found any humor in that either.
As it turned out, within nine hours (yes, nine!) we were on our way. There would be no overnight stay this time of which I was thankful. But, on the way out, that six hour wait sign still stood there. I could only imagine how heart breaking it must be to some who come through that door, expecting and needing emergency care.
And then, I thought of it a little differently. It was a sign. A sign that ‘spoke’ the truth. I knew it was true. I’d been there before and had to wait much longer than I had this night (or morning). Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing after all. Maybe it was actually good to know, to be prepared, to wait.
Have you ever had a sign? Maybe you saw something coming, something you really didn’t want to face, but you had a heads-up, a warning, before it got there? Sometimes a sign that seems like a bad thing, can really be good. It can prepare us for what’s to come. It can make us aware and give us time to get ready for what’s coming.
But not all signs are bad. Sometimes something comes along to alert us to something good coming. What about a phone call from your adult child that says, “Hey, mom, I’m coming to visit you this weekend!” Or the one that says, “Mom, you’re gonna be a grandma!”
In the Bible, God gives us words of wisdom that I like to think of as signs that help me along on my journey through life. In Philippians 4:8, I read, “Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”
What wonderful words to live by! If only we could fix our minds on things that are true, honest, just, pure, lovely…. Can you imagine how less stressed we would be? But we live in the real world, a world where most every day, we’re bombarded with negative thoughts, things that are untrue, dishonest, impure and ugly.
I thought the six hour sign was ugly. But it wasn’t. It was true. And it helped prepare me for a long wait that might have been much more stressful if I had not seen the sign going in.
Can you think of something that God has put along your path to help you out? Maybe it was something that prepared you for a trial or challenge. Or maybe it was something that prepared you for some joyful news!
My challenge to you today is to live in the moment and look closely for the evidence of God’s hand in your life. It’s there. Sometimes you just have to find your sign.
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