Climbing Out of the SHOPPING Rut

When you work in a grocery store it's easy to fall into the habit of shopping every day. As I got my purse out of my locker at the end of a shift, I'd pull out the fabric shopping bag I kept inside and told myself that I was just going to pick up a few things. Perhaps lulled by the smaller daily dollar figures at checkout, I was blind to the weekly totals I was amassing due to my buying frequency.

That changed dramatically when I injured my elbow. Initial grocery store runs were of the emergency variety only, and accomplished in the companionship of my husband who hates few things worse than shopping in crowded food marts. Driving difficulties kept me home-bound more than usual, so my later visits to the store became add-ons to other reasons for going out, such as necessary doctor visits and scheduled physical therapy sessions. Limited in my ability to push a cart, shop and carry everything on my own, I was much more selective in my choices and kept my buying on a smaller scale.

I was surprised at how well we survived and even benefited by the change in my shopping habits. We became more diligent in eating up leftovers, wasting less food. I opened the freezer and cabinet doors and cooked whatever I found inside. Going through the shelves made me realize how much money I'd lost on outdated items I found there. The money we weren't spending at the grocery store helped make up the shortfall caused by my reduced income in the weekly budget.

The positives in this “elbow interruption” of my lifestyle have spread to other areas of my life, as well. I have come to realize how easily we fall into ruts in our living and thinking that sideline us from the easier road we were meant to travel. Like the textured warning strips on highway shoulders, sometimes it takes a rough spot in the road we're traveling to open our eyes to the issues we were blind to before.

“...One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!”

(John 9:25 NIV)

RECALCULATING My RESPONSE

A preacher I listened to several years ago used the following analogy, but there is a difference between hearing a message and living it out. Apparently I needed the reminder to approach life in a flexible state of mind and to approach a change of plans with a willing and expectant heart, rather than an aggravated one.

While I generally have a pretty good idea how to get where I'm going when I get in my car, sometimes I need direction at the latter end of the trip to navigate side streets and roads I am unfamiliar with. I am grateful for GPS systems of all types that help me get to where I need to go. When I make a decision that doesn't fit the route the system had selected, it just figures out a new way to get to the destination based on my current location. The dashboard models often show the word “recalculating” on the video screen while the computer inside figures out how to adjust to the direction I've chosen. The voice coming out of the speaker never varies in tone or volume; there is no hint of aggravation or frustration aimed in my direction. The system just accepts my driving decision and adapts itself accordingly. And God would be oh so happy if I would simply learn to do the same.

He and I have been on an interesting journey these last few months. We came out of the starting gate of the new year in fine form, and I was full of plans for the year ahead. Suddenly a slip on the ice, a broken elbow...recalculating. Several weeks in a brace, some physical therapy, and I'm hoping to head back to work. Oops...arm stuck in a 90-degree angle, more surgery necessary...recalculating. More weeks in a brace, more physical therapy, ready now? Not yet, needs more time...recalculating. Approved to go back to work, eagerly checking schedule, can't wait to start. Are you kidding me? I'm assigned a vacation week...recalculating.

Finally I get it. I'm not the one making decisions here. God sees the big picture of my life, while I'm caught up in the day-to-day details. He knows where He's taking me and the road I need to travel to get there. Often I don't understand where we're going or why we're headed this way. But my questions do nothing to change the direction we're traveling. How much more peaceful the trip would be if I would just acknowledge that He knows best, trust Him to do what's right for my life, and simply follow the directions He gives without question or complaint.

The Israelites lengthened their stay in the wilderness they were traveling through by complaining against God and rebelling against His authority. Some of them never got to their destination at all as a result. I learn from their example that it's my attitude that needs adjustment, and God will continue to alter the route we're traveling together as necessary until it arrives at the place He knows it should be.

“Many are the plans in a person's heart, but it is the Lord's purpose that prevails.”

(Proverbs 19:21 NIV)

QUOTING a Positive Word

I mentioned in the Let Him Clip the Chip post that God wouldn't let me speak a negative word over my elbow situation. Instead He filled my mind, my journal pages and my life with positive thoughts, pictures and Bible verses, directing my focus in their direction, instead.

The Bible tells us that God knows what we need, and that sometimes He has His answer in place before we even ask for help. Surely that was the case with me. Before I slipped on the ice that night, a coworker and I had been comparing notes on the weather conditions outside and discussing the driving difficulties we might encounter on the way home. I ended our discussion with the affirmation, “We're going to be fine.” I didn't realize at the time that the phrase was more than just an easy end to our conversations; it was instead the beginning of God's promise to carry me through a situation that hadn't even occurred yet. As situations developed over the next hours, days and weeks, God brought me back to those five words time and time again, and soon I came to realize that they were divinely rather than casually spoken, as repeatedly they chased fear and doubt away and left peace and hope in their wake.

As my first physical therapy appointment approached, I had no idea what to expect in terms of difficulty and found I was imagining the worst without having any basis for doing so. I asked God for something to change the direction of my thoughts. He gave me a silly little equation that I could easily remember and repeat when worried: PT=EZ4ME. PT is easy for me. I mumbled it constantly ahead of the first session and encouraged myself with it whenever I encountered an especially challenging moment or two in the middle of one. I reminded myself that difficulty would not be part of my experience, that PT was easy for me. And so it became; I looked forward to my sessions rather than fearing them.

There were times when despite the physical therapy in progress I doubted that my arm would ever be fully recuperated. To fight my growing negativity God took me to portions of Scripture describing Jesus' encounter with a man with a withered hand. Jesus told the man to stretch forth his hand, and when he did so, it “was fully restored like the other one.” He seemed to impress upon me that eventually the same would happen to me. I claimed that experience as my own in faith. And it seemed that whenever my belief in that promise would weaken, I would run into that story again, described in another one of the Gospel accounts. God kept it ever before me. One morning however as I looked despairingly at my right arm that seemed perpetually bent, He whispered, “You're looking at the wrong arm.” And suddenly I understood what He was saying. We become what we focus on. I was looking at the bent arm instead of the straight one that I was working towards. From that time forward I deliberately watched my left arm do the very actions I was trying to duplicate with my right and know that eventually their performance will be the same.

God is all about health and wholeness and encouraging us along the path of experiencing the same. In my case the muscles that needed the most therapy were surprisingly not the ones in my arm, but those in my mouth, my eyes, ...and between my ears.

“Words satisfy the mind as much as fruit does the stomach; good talk is as gratifying as a good harvest. Words kill, words give life; they're either poison or fruit – you choose.”

(Proverbs 18:20-21 MSG)

PEOPLE and Their PROBLEMS

We were a little early to the morning church service, giving me a moment or two to get settled in my chair and look around me. It's easy to people-watch in a church as large as ours; I looked about for a few familiar faces to greet while my husband went to look for a friend outside.

It was then that I spotted a blonde teenager and her mother slowly making their way to the row in front of me. My interest in the girl was piqued first by the sight of her crutches, and then by a black hinged brace on her leg very similar to the one I wore protecting my elbow, only bigger. Because of that brace connection I found myself drawn to her, wondering in what way she had injured herself and how her recovery was coming along. When the “meet and greet” time in the service arrived, I moved a little closer and asked.

“I tore up everything in my knee,” was her reply. We chatted for a minute about recovery and laughed over her success in getting her jeans on this morning so she could come to church. The moment passed and the church service continued, but I likewise continued to gaze around me. I was suddenly astonished at what I saw. Seated a few rows in front of the girl was a woman who had her entire right forearm and wrist wrapped in white gauze, holding it gingerly in front of her. A man in the next section had a cart beside him holding his oxygen tank, the tubes from it running into his nose so he could breathe. To my left was a guy in an arm brace similar to mine who carried himself in such a way as to suggest it was perhaps shoulder surgery that required the arm support. One after another I saw people around me with bandages and wraps, and marveled at what a banged-up bunch of believers we were that morning! Did I miss the “recently hospitalized” seating designation in our section perhaps?

Instead I later realized that God was just trying to make a point, illustrating it in a way I would understand. My attention was drawn to these people in particular because we had a common condition that I could understand and relate to. But truly everybody in that building came in with wounds they are in the process of recovering from, because all of us have experienced trouble to some degree. Some have physical wounds like the one s that were so visible to me, but probably most carried hurts on the inside where they are less obvious but equally painful. For some the pain is still fresh, the hurt intense, while others are moving along well in recovery and still others have only the scars to show what they've been through. The point is that we have a common cause that unites us and gives purpose to our days as we strive to help and encourage each other on our way through this life.

Normally I find it difficult to talk to people I don't know, but the sight of that familiar hinged brace on the girl's leg propelled me to overcome my timidity and address her. That same morning I was coming out of the restroom when another woman spotted my arm brace as she was coming in. “I wore one of those! What did you do to your arm?” She went on to tell me that she had done the exact same thing and that she had made it through and was now fully functional back on her job, words I needed to hear at a time when I was wondering if complete recuperation was possible. Her encouragement made a big difference to me that day.

Time after time, complete strangers have seen my brace and asked me about my arm, and I have appreciated their interest and concern. Yet God's concern is for those who are struggling with the less visible injuries; He desires that we become more diligent in looking for signs of suffering and reach out to those we can relate to based on what we ourselves have gone through. It's how the addicts among us find recovery, the lonely find fellowship, the confused find direction...the lost get found. If we carry Jesus in our hearts, we have the Answer that somebody else needs, if we just took the time to notice the question in their eyes.

“...He comes alongside us when we go through hard times, and before you know it, he brings us alongside someone else who is going through hard times so that we can be there for that person just as God was there for us...”

(1 Corinthians 2:4 MSG)

Rediscovering OXFORD

When we moved to Ohio many years ago, we landed on a beautifully tree-laden piece of property out in the rural countryside. North of the city of Hamilton and east of the college town of Oxford, we were content to be situated pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Before the kids arrived we spent our time and our money in both of the nearby cities. But once our boys were born and I was no longer working, our activities seemed to be centered around the latter location. From their births in the local hospital, to visits to doctor offices there, and then to the library, and eventually attending swimming lessons, soccer games and martial arts classes...we were in town as much as the students who lived and studied there, it seemed. But when our sons became school-age themselves they attended a small school with no bus service in Hamilton, and the daily ferrying them back and forth to class gradually pulled us away from the little town we once spent so much time in. By the time they were grown and gone I had been working for some time at a grocery store on the west end of Hamilton, and Oxford offered nothing more to me than a convenient Starbucks stop on the way to the state park on the outskirts of town.

All that changed when I broke my elbow. At first, I confess, it was a matter of pride. Unable to fix my hair or put on my make-up, I simply didn't want to be seen by people who were familiar with my more put-together self. Then the convenience factor entered in; I simply knew too many people in Hamilton after scanning their groceries for ten years, and visits to my old store with all the necessary greetings and explanations for my absence, while enjoyable, simply took up too much of the day. I took to visiting the Kroger in Oxford where I could shop incognito and quickly. My doctor's office was in Oxford, and soon I started going to physical therapy multiple times per week there as well. I started stopping in at the local McDonald's for free coffee on Mondays, returned my library books to the building itself instead of dropping them in a bin outside my workplace, got my car washed in the local drive-thru, and even found the Oxford branch of my credit union that I knew existed but had never taken the time to find. I discovered a wonderful new breakfast spot to kill time in between appointments. With time on my hands I haven't had to hurry through town but have looked around me with new appreciation at the beautiful college buildings, the lovely landscaping and the abundance of trees. I have simply enjoyed driving the brick-paved streets again and rediscovering the lovely place I spent so much time in during another phase of my life.

Breaking my elbow has afforded me a chance to do the same with other areas of my life, as well. I've reacquainted myself with joys that were put aside when a forty-hour work week replaced my unscheduled duties as a stay-at-home mom. Once again home-bound for a time, it's been wonderful to spend time with pleasures put aside when time pressures were constantly calling my name. Perhaps the most significant of these has simply been to let my mind dwell in the presence of God. While there really has been no change in my personal devotional times, which have simply gone on as before, my mind has been freed up from attention to other duties, and I've delighted in the increased awareness of God's nearness in all aspects of my life and simply spending time in thought and prayer and conversation with Him, a joy that an increasingly busy lifestyle gradually pulled me away from.

While checking out at the grocery store in Oxford the other day, I was suddenly mugged with a hug from behind by a dear friend whom I hadn't seen in ages. When our kids were little and we attended church together we had once been very close, but life situations and distance had reduced our chances to get together on a regular basis. Now she works in Oxford and dashes to the store on her lunch break, where we happened to run into each other. As we laughed and talked at lightning speed, the illustration was not lost on me; my elbow “break” has caused me to rediscover the joy of several old “friends”. I'm determined not to lose the joy of their companionship ever again.

“ A friend loves at all times...”

(Proverbs 17:17 NIV)

A NEW Wardrobe

One of the biggest challenges of unexpected elbow surgery was finding something to wear after the fact. While I had an abundance of easy-to-pull on sweatpants to cover the bottom half, I needed short-sleeved shirts with a button-up front, and was amazed to discover how very few I had. Even long-sleeved shirts that I wouldn't mind cutting the right arm off of were in scarce supply. My husband kindly raided his own closet, finding several old shirts and pajama tops that I could likewise alter to handle first a bulky cast and then a similarly-sized brace. While they would work for wearing around the house, I wondered what I would do about going out in public. Clearly a shopping trip was in order.

Even in the stores I found little to choose from; the stock was mostly of the pull-on variety that I couldn't yet handle. But suddenly I came across a couple of clearance items – three button-up shirts with short-sleeves that I could easily slit to slide my arm into! While they were not a style I would normally choose, at this point I couldn't be picky; they were good enough to get me through till I could wear my normal clothes once more. I didn't want to spend a lot of money on something I might only wear for a short time, so I rejoiced at the savings and dumped them in the cart. As my healing progressed, so did my shopping selections; soon I was moving on to zippered items with sleeves that I could wear inside the brace. There was a little more selection here and I could almost feel my husband's growing alarm as I got more interested in the shopping process and added sports jackets and higher-quality sweatpants I discovered in the fitness sections of the stores. While my closet was filling up fast, I knew that many of the items were for short-term use only, however included in the bunch were some real finds that made even my husband smile.

My wardrobe problems were minor in the big scale of things, but they reminded me that sometimes we find ourselves woefully unprepared to handle major crises in our lives. Physically, financially, but more often emotionally and spiritually, we discover we don't have the resources to deal with trouble when it hits. After taking stock of what we have to offer, we can temporarily borrow what we need from people who are near and dear to us. But eventually we have to get for ourselves what we lack. And so we go shopping, sometimes for physical items we need in recovery, but more often for attitudes and thought patterns, mindsets that we can put on that will get us through. While some recovery aids are temporary in nature, some of our discoveries offer life-long change, and put a purpose-filled perspective on the problem that we had never before considered. Those difficulties we initially bemoaned we can now even give thanks for having gone through, so favorably have the resultant changes impacted our lives.

Sometime during the months I've been away, my employer instituted a change in the work uniform among its employees. Blue pullover polo shirts have were replaced with white button-up dress shirts and black vests, a detail that made me smile. My thinking on some things has likewise been challenged and changed; new clothes on the outside will remind me that I'm returning to work wearing new thought patterns, as well.

“...but be transformed (changed) by the [entire] renewal of your mind [by its new ideals and its new attitude], so that you may prove [for yourselves] what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God...”

(Romans 12:2 AMP)

I Believe in MIRACLES

A miracle is defined as an “an effect or extraordinary event in the physical world that surpasses all known human or natural powers and is ascribed to a supernatural cause.” I've experienced a couple of them in my life – things that could be explained no other way than to say it was by the hand of God. And I experienced a couple, as well, as a result of my elbow situation.

The first was the complete absence of pain. I waited seven hours after I broke my elbow to go to the emergency room, due to dangerous driving conditions in an increasing snowstorm and the lateness of the hour. Not a life-threatening situation by any means, I knew it could wait till the break of day. And while those initial hours weren't comfortable, as long as I didn't move my elbow, I wasn't in pain, either, making the wait bearable. Once surgery was scheduled for later that afternoon, I turned down the offer of pain medication in the interim because I simply wasn't experiencing any. Initially told I might be sent home after the surgery, my doctor dismissed that idea immediately when he came in for a pre-surgery chat, afraid that I would wake in the night in terrible pain and be on my own to deal with it. He highly favored an overnight stay. I agreed to the plan, but was ever so thankful that the situation he described never developed. Even after the insertion of a plate and screws to hold the broken pieces of the bone in place, I was never in need of a single pain pill. It was beyond amazing, and I was thankful beyond words! The recovery process was made so much easier and the time off from work so much more enjoyable because I was pain-free. People joked with me about incredibly high pain tolerance or maybe the complete lack of pain receptors in my brain; I gladly gave the credit to God.

When a second surgery became necessary to straighten my arm, the doctor presented three scenarios of actions he would take, depending on what he found when he got inside. Suspecting that the simplest would be all that was necessary, the operation was done on an outpatient basis, and I knew I would be going home this time when he was finished. He ended up performing the most invasive of the three options, even removing the plate and screws he'd put in before, and sent me home with a prescription for pain which I filled before reaching my front door. Perhaps it was a lack of faith on my part, but a miracle is by definition something you can't conjure up on your own. Could it really happen twice? I thought it best to be prepared. As it turned out, I could've saved my money; I never took a single pill.

Surely the absence of pain was blessing enough, but there was more. Aging is commonly associated with the loss of bone density and the general weakening of the skeletal structure, so as I've gotten older I've taken to combating the same with my speech, simply declaring that I have the firm muscles and strong bones promised in (Isaiah 58:9-12 MSG). As soon as I knew my elbow was broken, I heard the enemy whisper, “ Strong bones? Clearly not so much...”. But it turned out he was wrong. In a post-operative conversation, the doctor told my husband that he had a hard time putting in the screws to hold the plate in place because my bones were as strong as those of a person in their 20's! Not to give away my age, but that's several decades away from where I stand today! Again I was thrilled with the goodness of God.

Another definition of miracle is simply this: a wonder; a marvel. The Bible promises that signs and wonders will follow those who believe, and perhaps there is a purpose to their presence beyond just the joy of an unexpected blessing. They give us opportunities to testify to those who are wondering about the goodness of God, and a chance to tell them how marvelous He truly is.

“You were chosen to tell about the excellent qualities of God”

(1 Peter 2:9 GOD'S WORD)