We had a lovely trip from Ontario to Alberta and back. Four and a half weeks of seeing the beauty of our beautiful country in its many-splendoured diversity. We had time for reminiscence, for visiting family and friends and even for finishing up Not Far from the Tree, the sequel to Not Easily Broken. We arrived home on six o’clock Friday night.Less than an hour later we got a phone call to let us know a very dear friend had been diagnosed with stage four breast cancer. Ten minutes after another call informed us another dear friend had been found to have a mass on a kidney. By 930 the Saturday morning I was in a meeting trying to support a young husband whose second wife’s breast cancer has now has returned to her bones and liver. They have four young girls ages 7-14. They have carried the lead in the ministry for which this committee had gathered and we had some hard issues with which to deal. In the next six days, there was a speaking engagement, four more committee meetings, with more hard issues to be discussed and dealt with as creatively and with as much discretion as possible.
Tucked in somewhere amidst the trauma and heavies were the pockets of joy: deciding on a cover design which included some precious parts of people dear to me, hearing the positive comments from my sharing at the speaking engagement, the positive testimony from those who are facing such difficulties. But those seemed so brief and small compared to the grave and weighty difficulties of the week.
By following Thursday I felt completely snowed under. Everywhere I turned, I saw something I needed to do, something that had been waiting too long, something I neglected, and it all seemed very important. I don’t think I am unique in having a host of UFOs (UnFinished Objects) , but whenever I begin to feel overwhelmed or overburdened, those UFOs raise their heads and glare at me with their evil, beady eyes and scream “You procrastinating failure!”
At this period of our lives, we have two homes, an hour apart from each other. Since our marriage in 2005, we have had enough medical problems that we haven’t decided which of our houses to keep and which to let go. Some have wondered how we do it and why. Friday morning as we left one for the other, I still felt heavy and overloaded I wondered how I was going to accomplish everything for which I was responsible. As we drove the familiar route and the picturesque countryside, we passed harvested fields, dairy cows grazing , black-eyed susans,mums and other fall blooms in aradiant explosion of diverse colours, the tension melted away. By the time we reached our destination, I wondered what was so important for me to be doing? By that evening, I had done the immediate necessities and asked God to just feed me the tasks as they need to be done. I went to bed and slept well.
Sometimes, leaving the scene of frenetic activity and taking time to breathe and pray gives a different perspective!
Ruth Smith Meyer http://www.ruthsmithmeyer.com/
Not Easily Broken, Word Alive Press . Coming soon: Not Far from the Tree
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