Every day I'm able to wander further and further from the house on my own, and today I set up a chair, stool, and basket of cameras closer to the flame bush in hopes of capturing the hummingbird that buzzes about every morning. I'm not disappointed. Only a few minutes after I settle down with my right leg propped up on the stool and a fresh cup of coffee in my hand, I hear her chirp-chirp-chirp. Such a fun little bird to watch.
For two weeks, I'm spoiled with a physical therapist that comes to my home, but I begin outpatient physical therapy this week, and unlike my hopes for capturing the hummingbird, I'm initially disappointed. I choose a physical therapy center in our little rural community - just ten minutes from home, but it's not what I'm used to in the city.
I'm led to a hot waiting room with uncomfortable chairs where I'm instructed to fill out paperwork, and then I wait almost an hour before the therapist can see me. I can hear her communicating with another patient through an interpreter and begin to understand her delay, but both the heat and the discomfort make me feel nauseous. I want to cry and go home.
Another patient enters the waiting room, and just like the patient before me, he doesn't speak English, and I momentarily forget about hummingbirds and painted buntings and God's goodness, and I begin to entertain old feelings of resentment at having to live in a rural agricultural community.
But I've been here before - not this exact waiting room, but ones just like it, and the Lord brings them to my mind, because pity and resentment are ten times stinkier than sweaty farm workers. My very words come back to me.
I'm led to a hot waiting room with uncomfortable chairs where I'm instructed to fill out paperwork, and then I wait almost an hour before the therapist can see me. I can hear her communicating with another patient through an interpreter and begin to understand her delay, but both the heat and the discomfort make me feel nauseous. I want to cry and go home.
Another patient enters the waiting room, and just like the patient before me, he doesn't speak English, and I momentarily forget about hummingbirds and painted buntings and God's goodness, and I begin to entertain old feelings of resentment at having to live in a rural agricultural community.
But I've been here before - not this exact waiting room, but ones just like it, and the Lord brings them to my mind, because pity and resentment are ten times stinkier than sweaty farm workers. My very words come back to me.
In sharp contrast to the stale musk of an overcrowded waiting room and the lab's medicinal odors, the delightful and calming fragrance of the technician's perfume lingered behind as I followed her down the hall to the small cubicle prepared for drawing blood.Lord, let that be me today.
Yes, Lord. Please let that be me.May the sweet aroma of Christ fill the air around me as I wait in crowded and messy circumstances and linger as I wander down the halls of uncertainty. May the fragrance of the knowledge of You flow in and through me and into the hearts and minds of those whose lives I intersect this day.
