Sparrows Sing, and a God-thing

 I hadn't dreamed of not wanting to leave the hospital, but it happened. I was so weak and in so much pain when I was discharged, that I only wanted to continue lying in that comfortable bed and not move. At least I could maneuver it with buttons and sit myself up, but the bed in the RV we'd be staying in for a few days in Rapid City was just a bed. And the RV recliner wouldn't recline, no matter how much Jonathan had tried to figure out why not. I didn't know what I was going to do--other than depend on Jonathan to pull me up every time I needed to get up.

At least, once I got sat up in that hospital bed, with Jonathan's help pulling my good arm, (the one that hadn't had three lymph nodes dug out besides the mastectomy) and got myself dressed, I started feeling better. The worst pain happened when I was trying to get up from lying down. I had no idea how many chest muscles you use for that. For 59 years, I had always taken that for granted.

We were waiting on transport in a wheelchair because Jonathan had determined it was too far for me to walk to the exit and the vehicle, but the wheel chair was not a normal, soft one. Every bump jerked as the stiff little wheels hit door jambs and tile grout and every imaginable crack or bump in the floor--also things we take for granted as we hike carefree over them when we are in good health.  

As we headed back to the RV that we'd stayed in two nights earlier at Bible Christian Church, I asked Jonathan to take me down some pretty streets, and he remembered there was a greenhouse down a nearby street. Pink and purple petunias were overflowing from the window and hood of this motley old antique car.

Jonathan went inside and bought exactly 4 Colorado peaches and a cucumber and a sun-ripened, greenhouse-raised tomato that actually would not give me an instant mouth ulcer like store ones do, while I sat and admired the petunias made into trees nearby. As long as I wasn't moving, I was surprised to not be in much pain at all, for which I was intensely grateful.

 

Once I had been safely delivered to the RV, I decided to sit a while in the warm, but not hot sunshine at the picnic table while Jonathan ran a few errands. A sparrow was twittering nearby on one side, and then another one or two answered from the other side of the parking lot. 

I sat there, leaning on a pillow on the table, my head down, hands up reaching for the warm sun and drinking in the beauty of the summer day and the songs of God's sparrows, sent, it seemed just for me.  I hadn't had such warm, blissful moments in a long time. At home, I can't sit outside because of chiggers--all summer long. It's been a HUGE disappointment here, having the scourge of chiggers all over our property literally all summer long until first frost. And inside I am often cold with the mini splits keeping the house cool enough for the hotblooded in our family. 

 

Anyway, I got through that afternoon and evening, and the next day I was doing okay for a while, so Jonathan decided to finish his shopping for Building Hope Enterprise projects at Menards. That is when the "God-thing" happened, as he called it. 

While there, he was just getting ready to check out when he remembered that he needed a copper wire to finish an electrical repair at the police station back in Mission where he's doing a repair or remodel job. So back to the electrical section he went where there is a list posted of remnants of wires, etc, and he was searching that list to see if possibly he could find the wire at a cheaper price. That is when someone came by and said, "There's nothing there." 

Jonathan didn't pay any attention, but the man persisted. "They're out. There's nothing there."

Finally Jonathan looked up and here it was someone we knew who was teasing him but then started just unloading as he discovered Jonathan to be a man with a listening ear. Going through some deep waters now, the man was beating himself up for years of rejecting God in the past, and not sure how to proceed with certain problems in his life right now, much as he himself was trying to serve God.  

 

Jonathan listened and tried to encourage the man the best he could. They must have talked about 30 minutes, Jonathan said, and then Jonathan prayed with him. He told me later, "It was a God thing." Turning around at the checkout was not what he had planned to do, and after visiting with the brow-beaten man in the electrical aisle, Jonathan decided he really didn't need that copper wire that bad after all. He just went back to check out, knowing that God had a special reason for him being back in that electrical aisle that day.  

 

I remembered out loud to Jonathan the verse we had listened to from Psalm 103 that morning, how God does not reward us according to our iniquity. He is such a good, kind, and merciful God that He actually doesn't give us what we deserve! I wish someone could remind the man of that--he needed to stop beating himself up. Of course, there are consequences to years of rejecting God, but we have to focus on God's mercy, not His judgment. 

I've been watching how God is using Jonathan more and more as we walk through this valley of the shadows of cancer and pain and uncertainty. He just keeps faithfully pursuing the calling he felt God laid on his heart--that of providing jobs and mentoring to men on the reservations. Only a couple days earlier, on Jonathan's last day of work before taking me to Rapid City, he'd decided that instead of taking a worker to work, he would instead help the young man, husband and father, to fix his own vehicle tire. Jonathan took time to show him how to squeeze the tire with a ratchet strap to get it to pop back on the rim correctly, and then he took him to purchase a lug nut to replace the broken one. Now the man could move ahead with finishing getting his own vehicle fixed so that other people wouldn't have to pick him up. And there he is in a selfie with Jonathan!

Sometimes just a simple repair is the difference between a man's ability and his downfall. Few men on the reservation have had a father figure at all, much less one who took time to teach life skills. Teaching a man skills is a God-thing, too, if you ask me.