The Mentalist
Epiphany Greetings from Greenfield, Indiana, where Colts fever runs high and the color blue abounds!
Last night I was watching “The Mentalist”. Patrick, played by Simon Baker, was held captive. He convinced the man who was holding the gun on him to sit down and look directly at him. Patrick talked to him about peace in a calming voice and was hypnotizing the man when, suddenly, the police spoke loudly over a bullhorn, saying that they had the place surrounded. The hypnotism came to an abrupt halt, and Patrick wasn’t too sure what would happen next.
On Monday of this week, I had plans to write the day away. I attended my first-ever writer’s workshop on Saturday and was excited to follow up on some of the writing prompts that had started there. One of the exercises was to spend 7 minutes writing sentences that begin with “I remember.” They were not to be long, complicated sentences and were not supposed to relate to each other—just a string of short remembrances. The following 7 minutes were spent taking one of those “I remember” statements and writing as many “I remember" short sentences about that remembrance. It was fun and sparked my thinking. Monday would be spent at my kitchen table with a pot of tea writing. Sunday night, before going to bed, I set everything up to make this happen.
Then I woke up at 4 am Monday to a screaming pain in my lower left side. Neither Aleve, Tylenol, nor Advil touched the pain. It got worse as the day went on. It had been four years since my first and last experience with diverticulitis, which hospitalized me for a week, and I recalled that pain vividly and knew that was what was going on. I called my doctor, hoping he would prescribe some antibiotics and pain medication, and it would all go away. When he said I had to come into the office, I was concerned that he might send me to the hospital again, and I had so much to do. The idea of spending the entire day writing abruptly stopped, and I wasn’t sure what would happen next.
How about you? Have you ever had things happen like that? It can be frustrating.
And this is all minor compared to the people who had their week all planned in Haiti and ended up facing the consequences of a significant earthquake. Lives ended. Lives changed forever in a moment.
When major disruptions occur, some end up blaming God. Some blame themselves and leave God because they feel they aren’t good enough. Yet, it always reminds me that God is in control, loving me, taking care of me, and with me no matter what disruptions come my way. I don’t believe God caused the diverticulitis or the events of my Monday and subsequent week. They happened due to things I had done and left undone. What I need to take from this disruption in my life is to follow Christ's example in the Garden of Gethsemane and pray to God that God’s will be done and not mine in all situations. If Christ could do it when his life was disrupted by impending imprisonment and death, then so can I.
God is with us!
Hope
