Unlikely Place

Posted on January 30, 2023January 30, 2023 by Christine

One of the most jarring sentences a parent can hear is when their child says from behind a closed bathroom door,

“Mom! I need help.”

Those words will make you stop whatever you are doing, even if you are breaking from a ten-day fast and are about to eat your first morsel of food. You might weigh your options for a second and pretend that you didn’t hear the cry for help, but that only lasts for about ten seconds before the plea comes again.

MOM! I NEED HELP!”

Nothing ever good awaits behind that door, like on a game show where you get to pick a prize. There’s no yacht or vacation there for you to shriek over and text your friends that you won.

And it takes a seasoned individual to listen for the pitch and tone of the voice calling out for help. Was it a high octave or a struggling whisper that caught the attention? Was it more steady and self-assured, or was there a hint of apprehension?

These slight inflections can make a world of difference.

“What do you need me for?” you say with your lips pressed against the door and then turning your head to place your ear there to pick up on obscure facts before the bomb is dropped.

It can be anyone’s guess what is going on in there, and many situations flash before one’s eyes.

“Help!”

That is when you know you will have to open the door blindly and prepare yourself for whatever might come your way. Usually, the high drama happened when the kids were younger, and often it was not as bad as they made it out to be.

“I have this funny looking thing on my ankle. Is that normal?”

You examine it like you just graduated at the top of your class from medical school and say in the most reassuring voice you can come up with,

“I had one of those once. It just went away.”

That often brings peace and calm to a situation that is on the brink of going hysterical. When you interject a bit of camaraderie, it sends the message that one isn’t alone in their turmoil, but a whole network of people has had the same issue.

You have become WebMD without the scare tactics that leave you awake at night, wondering if you will see your next birthday.

“Here. This cream will heal it.

You put on the hydrocortisone so that it further appears that the life threatening situation has been taken care of. Everyone has their smiles back, and the sandwich you left on the counter awaits.

If you get by only having to get another roll of toilet paper from the closet and carefully throw it in, that’s the best outcome. You crack the door and use your best bowling move to get it in without disturbing anyone’s privacy.

Until the other night, I thought I had met the worst of unpredictable circumstances, but I realized another could be just as complicated. In my house, it’s possible. How can one find so much trouble while sitting on the furniture?

I was speaking to my daughter and leaned my right arm back. One of my rings slid off my finger in seconds and fell behind the couch. I jumped up quickly, not wanting to disturb the original arrangement of the crime scene. I have learned that you don’t move quickly when something falls off your person. You try not to disturb the ground in your quest to find what has gone missing.

A similar situation happened to me while shoveling a few weeks before the couch ate my ring. One of my white wireless earphones had fallen into the snow in the driveway. I had just scooped up an enormous load to dump into the yard. I slowly put the shovel down and moved carefully away.

I tried to see any imprint it had left. But there wasn’t one.

After looking for a minute, probably more like twenty seconds, I summoned my daughter. I called in a favor for all those times she was in the bathroom and needed my help, and I had left my sandwich on the counter.

While I stood frozen, she came out and located information on her phone.

“I just saw someone do this on Tik Tok. You can find these by having them play a sound.”

Like a submarine below sea level, she demonstrated how they could be retrieved by getting quiet and listening for a tone that played. Within minutes, I found it. I took comfort in knowing that the technology was created because that meant I wasn’t the only person on earth who had lost one. There was a group of us with lost earphones and funny things growing on our ankles.

My ring suddenly being snatched away, that was a different story. There was no rescue other than flipping the couch in all directions. First, I used the tactic of wedging my hands down the cushions on each side. I removed my other ring and watch because I have had the experience while searching for something, I lost another.

That brought no answer. We moved it forward. We shifted it back. I prayed while she looked in every crevice. Weirdly, it was in the front part of the seat in between two pieces of material. She plucked it out and handed it to me. How it ended up where it did was a mystery to me when it had fallen behind me, nowhere near the front. Maybe in all of our shuffling around, it had been displaced.

The upside was that once we had the couch moved, I decided to vacuum all the items that spilled out of it from the past twenty years, and we have only owned it for eleven.

Crisis averted with it back on my finger, a few nights later, she said,

“I dropped my pen, and I can’t find it!”

Now that it wasn’t my precious jewelry, we could be more casual about it—no need for panic. Pens are a dime a dozen around my home.

However, it was her pen that writes on her tablet. It has equity in it, similar to what I had lost. It isn’t your ordinary writing utensil that you can forget about and move on.

“It fell into the side of the chair.”

The last time I had to put my arms deep into the cushions of that rocker recliner, she had been running a fever. As I had tried to give her a pain reliever, it fell directly down one of the sides. I tried to get it back but pulled up handfuls of hair, change, and every imaginable snack crumb you can think of. It could have served as an emergency food shelter during a famine. There was not enough hand sanitizer to remove the filth that jumped on my hands.

I was not looking forward to doing a seek-and-find mission for her pen. But I took off all my valuables again and dove in with both hands shoved to the far back of the chair. I was up to my elbows with my face directly where she had been seated.

“I hope you had your blanket under you because my face is where you were sitting.”

She laughed.

“No, and I need to wash these pajama pants.”

I just told myself she carries my DNA. It wasn’t like she came in unwashed off the street.

All the pens she had ever lost were hidden in the back part of the chair, screaming to be set free. My right hand hit what felt like a pen, and I unearthed two of them. With my left, I did the same.

To add to the insult, I found an AA battery. Those are like mining for gold when we desperately need one, and unbeknownst to us, she had been perching herself on that for months while I was turning out every junk drawer trying to find one.

The last thing I pulled out of the cavern was her missing pen. I felt like I had delivered multiple children or performed an appendectomy.

“Oh, no! I can’t find my pen,” she said. This was a day or two after the last episode, which involved one she had just bought at the office supply store. Right as I was going to tell her she was on her own, she held it up.

“I found it. I have my blankets stuffed down on both sides of this chair.”

Sometimes you must be proactive to fight back against the forces of darkness.

Just like my couch and chair swallowing our possessions alive, we can allow our mindsets to make us lose our positive outlook.

Nothing is lost or stolen in the kingdom of heaven.

I have often quoted this out loud when I misplaced an item, and it will usually show up quickly. Whether it’s a prayer or a statement, it has proven effective.

This idea can be applied to people as well. Many take it upon themselves to save ‘the lost.’ They view those who do not share their belief as a competition, and they must race about trying to ‘win’ souls. But this may be the wrong perception.

What if it’s a misplacement, and they need someone to come along and pull them from a far dark corner where they are hanging out with the lint and cracker crumbs? It’s not that a good act hasn’t been done to remove someone from a mess, but who gets the credit?

I have been in religious circles where the number of rescued souls is broadcast like a lottery jackpot.

“We have reached 1.4 million people.”

And, I have wondered, has that been an effective, long-term approach to having people know the nature and character of God?

Last summer, while trying to get on a bus, a woman was going along the line handing out cards warning people to repent, and many were throwing them on the ground. It had no impact on anyone because it has been done so many times. It had been a long day at a state fair, and everyone wanted to board, get on with their lives, and overcome their indigestion.

Was she wrong for what she was doing? No. I put mine in my purse because I didn’t want to be rude, and I believe how you treat others is how you would like to be treated. Did God tell her to go out and do that? I don’t know. Maybe.

Much of what was on the card wasn’t positive. It presented God as an angry entity ready to smite, which is probably why most people discarded it quickly.

From my experience, opportunity comes when I am led to someone who needs to know that God cares for them.

It’s not a forced conversation or a wrestling match to see who can be the victor. One nice gesture can mean a lot to someone who is struggling and can transmit the love of God to them in seconds. Holding a door for someone or getting something down from a shelf at a store they cannot reach can be all it takes.

Or retrieving a special pen from a yucky, unlikely place.

I am pretty sure I can deliver a baby now…

More Than A Number

Posted on December 7, 2021December 7, 2021 by Christine

“Are you near your computer?” He asked me.

“Yes.”

“I need you to type in..”

He went into turbo speed talk, trying to give me a string of numbers and letters to put into the browser to get to a website.

“Wait,” I said.

He was on number or letter fifty, and I was still putting in one from the beginning. I was on the phone with a helpline representative.

“Are you at the portal?”

Like to leave earth? No. But sometimes I wish.

“No. I’m still trying to get what you said in.”

I went back and read off what I had been able to keep up with.

“Oh, ok. I didn’t know you were that far behind.”

He started off where I was, and I hit enter. I knew when I saw code error 404, it wasn’t going to work.

“It says that the link is broken. I can’t go to that site.”

“Well, I’m there, so I know it’s working.”

I went back to where we started.

“I will go through each letter and number one by one.”

“Okay,” I said.

“A as in apple. Do you have that now?”

For real, guy? You go from speed talk to now acting like I’m four years old.

“Yes. Got it.”

“Are you ready for the next one?” He said in soft tones so as not to mentally break me.

“Yes,” I said.

He went at a snail’s pace to ensure I didn’t miss anything.

“Did we make it?”

Like we were hiking a treacherous mountain.

When I am made to feel ‘old’, I recall what I have read in multiple publications: age is a mindset. Most of these are written by people from a long time ago in history and are dead, but their words make sense. When more than one person says something, and they are not associated, that is when you know you are on to the truth.

A year ago, while visiting my dad at his assisted living when restrictions were still in place, he proved this theory. He was in lockdown, so his meals were being delivered to his apartment, and there was no contact with the outside world, really.

I had arrived before noon to find him still in bed, fast asleep. His days and nights were mixed up, and I often found meals stacked up in his refrigerator untouched, which led me to believe he was sleeping around the clock.

I clicked on the tv trying to find Christmas music but landed on a community channel. I could hear music playing, and with his hearing being impaired, it was like a live band had suddenly rushed into the small space.

He slowly came around the corner and parked himself. I realized it was polka music, and he was all entranced because of his polish heritage. He used to play the accordion when he was young, so it didn’t take much to make him stop in his tracks, and he forgot all about eating.

Over the noise, he said,

“Look at all those old people dancing!”

They all appeared slightly younger than him, but who wants to ruin his perception?

“What song is this?” he asked. “I can’t tell.”

That type of music makes me cringe, so I didn’t inherit some of his DNA. But, out of some long-forgotten memory bank, I said,

“I think it’s called Help Me Make It Through the Night.”

“Help me make it through the night? These people are so old, they aren’t going to make it through this song!”

“At least they are up and moving. You barely made it out of bed today,” I said. He laughed.

When I fill out a survey that asks me my age range, and I’m at the first number in the series, there’s still something to celebrate as I check off the box. I wonder how I will feel when I’m in the last bracket like him?

While it might appear that the world has sped up, it’s really about keeping up with changes and learning new things.

Speaking into the remote control has been a monumental leap forward. I purposely say the wrong thing just to see where it will lead me. It takes its revenge, though, and refuses to hear what I have said correctly at other times. It’s a love/hate relationship. It knows we have no buttons to use like the older models, so it owns us.

Then there are those times when I hear someone of my age say,

“Rewind that video.”

“You know we don’t have VCRs anymore, right?” I say nicely. I can’t let this soul wander around so blatantly showing their age.

I asked my daughter when she knew I was no longer breezing through life.

“When I had to teach you how to copy and paste on your computer.”

And she said it real quick, like it was just minutes ago. So apparently, that was a pivotal point in my aging process.

Isn’t that why I had kids? To take all the guesswork out of life? If I can’t figure something out, I just hand it over, they give it back, and I am on to my next technical issue.

One of the things I do not like is when an older person who may be related to me is in the middle of a health crisis and says,

“Just wait until you are my age!”

They say this from their hospital bed like they will feel better knowing someone else in the future will be in the same poor condition. Misery loves company, and when someone doesn’t have the answers, they will pull you in to make themselves feel better. They are just hoping that you will start talking about the ailments that plague you.

I stopped being quietly polite along the way and will say I refuse whatever they are trying to make me believe. I have said back,

“We were designed to be in good health and heal. That is what God wants.”

That usually changes the direction of the conversation for the better. I realized I didn’t have to agree with something just because it was spoken. The ‘respect your elders’ idea is fine unless they talk negatively. It’s wise to counteract those ideas before they take root and replace them with thoughts like this from 3 John 2 that states,

God wants me to prosper and be in health, even as my soul prospers. (KJV)

Why expect to get sick just because your cousin Nancy did? If you look at what others in your bloodline have as a diagnosis and claim it for yourself, you will live out what you believe.

I was reminded over the summer that age can be positive when I visited a cave that was discovered in 1881 by two brothers. As I stood in the depths of the caverns that had existed for way longer than I had, and they were still growing and bringing to life various gems, it reminded me that even as we age, we can be useful.

The history of its existence was made up of many new discoveries as explorers found new passageways and hidden places. As they kept searching, they kept finding.

That is how your walk with God can be. You toss aside what the world says is so important, like the number of candles on your last birthday, and know that there are many things you haven’t even understood yet.

The space was treated with great reverence, and while on tour, we were told to be very careful along the way, so we brought no harm to it. We were many feet below the surface, and for some reason, it felt safe to me, not suffocatingly frightening.

“When a horrible tornado went through, the owners came down here because they knew they would be safe,” our guide told us.

One of the advantages of being a little further along the way is that you can provide security for someone who hasn’t been down the same road. You have had experiences, some good, some not, that can shed light and bring revelation to someone who needs help.

One thing is for sure. No, not taxes and death, but yes. Other than those, there will always be problems that need solving, which is why we are here. When you can stand firm in the face of adversity and when someone younger than you witnesses this, their faith is allowed to grow.

Don’t fall for the lie that you are no longer valid because you think you’re too elderly to be of any use anymore. Digits are used in our society for crowd control. Like at the DMV, when you are standing in a sea of humanity, you are looking at a ticket that says 3000, which signifies that is the year they will get around to you.

The message is sent many times over to us through media that once you hit a particular time of life, you might as well hang it up. It’s a lie, so don’t fall for it.

The world may tell you that, but to God, you are more than a number.