Beautiful Flower in a Broken Pot

From the Internet and worth reading, this story was passed along to me by sister. I don't know where she finds these stories. I wish I did so that the author could be credited.

Our house was directly across the street from the clinic entrance of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. We lived downstairs and rented the upstairs rooms to out patients at the clinic.

One summer evening as I was fixing supper, there was a knock at the door. I opened it to see a truly awful looking man. "Why, he's hardly taller than my 8-year-old," I thought as I stared at the stooped, shriveled body. But the appalling thing was his face, lopsided from swelling, red and raw.

Yet his voice was pleasant as he said, "Good evening. I've come to see if you've a room for just one night. I came for a treatment this morning from the eastern shore, and there's no bus 'til morning."

He told me he'd been hunting for a room since noon but with no success; no one seemed to have a room. "I guess it's my face. I know it looks terrible, but my doctor says with a few more treatments..."

For a moment I hesitated, but his next words convinced me: "I could sleep in this rocking chair on the porch. My bus leaves early in the morning."

I told him we would find him a bed but to rest on the porch. I went inside and finished getting supper. When we were ready, I asked the old man if he would join us. "No, thank you. I have plenty." And he held up a brown paper bag.

When I had finished the dishes, I went out on the porch to talk with him a few minutes. It didn't take a long time to see that this old man had an oversized heart crowded into that tiny body. He told me he fished for a living to support his daughter, her five children, and her husband, who was hopelessly crippled from a back injury.

He didn't tell it by way of complaint. In fact, every other sentence was prefaced with thanks to God for a blessing. He was grateful that no pain accompanied his disease, which was apparently a form of skin cancer. He thanked God for giving him the strength to keep going.

At bedtime, we put a camp cot in the children's room for him. When I got up in the morning, the bed linens were neatly folded, and the little man was out on the porch.

He refused breakfast, but just before he left for his bus, haltingly, as if asking a great favor, he said, "Could I please come back and stay the next time I have a treatment? I won't put you out a bit. I can sleep fine in a chair." He paused a moment and then added, "Your children made me feel at home. Grownups are bothered by my face, but children don't seem to mind."

I told him he was welcome to come again. And, on his next trip, he arrived a little after 7 in the morning. As a gift, he brought a big fish and a quart of the largest oysters I had ever seen! He said he had shucked them that morning before he left so that they'd be nice and fresh. I knew his bus left at 4:00 a.m. and I wondered what time he had to get up in order to do this for us.

In the years he came to stay overnight with us, there was never a time that he did not bring us fish or oysters or vegetables from his garden. Other times we received packages in the mail, always by special delivery; fish and oysters packed in a box of fresh young spinach or kale, every leaf carefully washed. Knowing that he must walk three miles to mail these and knowing how little money he had made the gifts doubly precious.

When I received these little remembrances, I often thought of a comment our next-door neighbor made after he left that first morning. "Did you keep that awful looking man last night? I turned him away! You can lose roomers by putting up such people!"

Maybe we did lose roomers once or twice. But, oh!, if only they could have known him, perhaps their illnesses would have been easier to bear. Uur family always will be grateful to have known him. From him we learned what it was to accept the bad without complaint and the good with gratitude to God.

Recently I was visiting a friend, who has a greenhouse, as she showed me her flowers, we came to the most beautiful one of all, a golden chrysanthemum, bursting with blooms. But to my great surprise, it was growing in an old dented, rusty bucket. I thought to myself, "If this were my plant, I'd put it in the loveliest container I had!"

My friend changed my mind. "I ran short of pots," she explained, "and knowing how beautiful this one would be, I thought it wouldn't mind starting out in this old pail. It's just for a little while, till I can put it out in the garden."

She must have wondered why I laughed so delightedly, but I was imagining just such a scene in heaven. "Here's an especially beautiful one," God might have said when he came to the soul of the sweet old fisherman. "He won't mind starting in this small body."

All this happened long ago. Now, in God's garden, how tall this lovely soul must stand! "The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart." (1 Samuel 16:7b)

Note: I also posted this in the Mahlou Musings blogsite. I found it too good not to share with both sets of readers.

An Awful Ending to an Awful Week

Sometimes things can get worse than bad. They can become awful. That is how the ending of this week turned out to be.

Not that earlier in the week things were all that much better. Matters actually began their downturn on Wednesday. That was the day that my deputy, who had called in sick the day before, wrote me an enote, saying that he was being admitted to the hospital for emergency surgery for a staph infection that had proved resistant to antibiotics. I sent flowers; we all sent prayers. The surgery took place Thursday morning. All went well, and my deputy will be home tomorrow. Thank God!

Later that day, the senior manager of one of my subdivisions appeared in my office to relate that her deputy had just been admitted to the hospital with unexplained internal bleeding. No cause has been found yet, and he remains in the hospital. Fortunately, doctors are more puzzled than worried. Dr. House, where are you? No flowers this time; this employee is allergic to them, and we would not want to make a bad situation worse. Prayers, though, continue to be sent. Help, Lord, we need you!

Also on Wednesday, one of our employees, let's call her Jackie, checked into the hospital for routine knee surgery. Today, one of Jackie's colleagues rushed into my office, crying. It turns out that after the surgery, Jackie had stood up and fallen down. She had instantly gone into a coma. A quick medical check showed that her lungs had filled with blood and no blood was circulating into her brain. She is currently packed in ice, with a temperature maintained at 34 degrees, trying to preserve her brain. Last night, doctors had given her two hours to live, but she held on. Now the doctors are saying that after 24 hours they will stop heroic measures because her brain will be past the point of being able to function again. The subdivision is in shock. So is our entire division. How can someone be a vibrant colleague one day and potentially a vegetable, or worse, the next? Ironically, Tuesday afternoon the entire subdivision, minus one colleague, Y, whom the others do not like, had asked for a sensing session with me. It was clear that they were ganging up on Y (there is an ethnic difference between them, as well as a difference in raw talent). Their arguments revealed racism and jealousy. Two people led the attack; one of them was Jackie. Two people went along with the attack but clearly had no evidence to support their contentions and were being egged on to trump up complaints by Jackie and her co-leader. Two others sat quietly, obviously uncomfortable, but unwilling to speak up in defense of the attacked colleague. They avoided answering my direct questions. That department has been ravished by clique behavior and backbiting. This was just the latest example. Y learned about the meeting (perhaps they wanted him to learn about it in order to needle him) and came to see me the next morning, demanding his own day in court. It took a long conversation, but I ultimately convinced him that his best course of action would be to forgive them, forget about what happened, and focus on continuing his excellent work. That was Thursday. Friday everything changed. Jackie was in a coma, the department was in shock, and everyone needed each other. Jackie's co-leader in the Tuesday attack brought me the first update; Y brought me the second and last update and request for prayers, telling me that they were all praying for Jackie. At least, some good has come from the bad. It is not the right time to send flowers to Jackie, but we (the management and the reconciled colleagues) are sending prayers. Help, help, Lord! We really need you on this one!

Could anything more happen to contribute to a general feeling of unease and unhappiness? Oh, sure! Right after all the medical discussions were over, a senior manager who was on vacation showed up. He was picking up a gift I had for his daughter, whose wedding I missed this past weekend. I had not meant to miss it. In fact, it was held in one of the most beautiful places in our area, with the reception at one of the most exclusive clubs. Donnie and I were looking forward to it for two months, and then suddenly we were looking back on it, having missed it. I had accidentally left my calendar book at the office. How we both managed to forget an event we had looked forward to is mystifying. I am now becoming concerned about the possibility of early Alzheimer's. The only possible explanation was the need to attend a funeral that weekend and having to rearrange other plans to make that happen. The senior manager was disappointed -- he sent me an enote the following day. He had forgiven me, however, by the time he arrived this morning to pick up the gift to take to his daughter and brought the remainder of the wedding cake for Donnie and me. Ouch! That hurt.

And, oh, yes, all those things were not enough obviously because Thursday we had two false fire alarms caused by power failures, and off and on throughout the afternoon the Internet went down, most annoyingly exactly at the time that I had to brief some high muckety-mucks from Washington on our innovative use of Internet-based technologies. That required some finessing, but we made it past that awkward moment intact. Today, however, the Internet was still down. All day.

By early afternoon, too much was simply too much. People were anxious from bad news. People were bored from the inability to complete their work, given the nonfunctional Internet. People were depressed from the gray rain that filled our atrium instead of the usual sunshine. Oh, right, I forgot to mention: it rained today, rather an odd thing to happen in the summer in California. Indeed, too much is sometimes just too much, especially on a dreary Friday afternoon. So, I sent everyone home. (At least, that made quite a few people happy.)

I stayed late, finishing what I could without a computer. Then I headed home, hoping for some brightness at the end of the day. Donnie suggested watching television, something I don't do often. The interesting show we thought would brighten our day, however, turned out to have a sad ending. Bummer!

Sometimes you just have to leave your entire world in God's hands.

(Photo montage by Code Scythe)

The Good Side of Being Sick

I guess I was born a Pollyanna. I cannot help myself. Whatever happens, I always see a good side to it, the proverbial silver lining in the dark cloud. So, I suppose it should come as no surprise that I have had a delightful time being sick this past week (other than being annoyed at the physical symptoms that get in my way of completing daily work that requires me to be a human whirlwind).

I apparently caught some kind of foreign bug that would not respond to American medication in the middle of last week. I thought it might have accompanied me on the plane back from Hawaii, but I have learned from one of my managers who recently spent time in Korea and was sick upon return that it looks and acts just like the bug she imported from Korea. So, that may explain why American medicines did not work. I gave up taking them and enjoyed the drama of being sick, something that rarely happens to me. Friday I dragged myself to work and paid the price: I was in bed all day Saturday and most of Sunday. I got better in time to go to our SFO meeting, then catch the midnight plane to Omaha, do a day's work (the human whirlwind kind), and return to California. I got sick again just as the plane landed and spent Tuesday and half of today in bed again. (There seems to be a 36-hour cycle here.) Now, I am well again -- at least as well as I was on Monday.

Some wonderful things happened while I was sick. Among them were the following:

- I got sleep, deep and delicious sleep, a dessert of a kind I rarely taste.

- I got pampered; Donnie went to the store for me; I am usually the one going to the store for everyone else.

- I got pampered again; my managers did all my work for me; every single report got turned in; all the preparations for our team for Afghanistan got taken care of without my involvement; our new organizational chart got produced and forwarded; two of my managers took care of a video conference that I would otherwise have had to attend (together, they were able to cover what I would have contributed); several business trips were arranged; several visitors were briefed; my meetings were convened by others. I was dialed into a couple of policy-changing discussions, and I did run my eyes over that org chart, but for the most part, the senior managers did it all, keeping my informed by email so that I could interact only when awake, aware, and willing.

- With my energy sources replenished as of the middle of the day today, I was able to attend noon Mass and afterward say the rosary with Sr. Maria and some of the retired members of our parish who stay after Mass on Wednesdays for the rosary. (This was the first time they had invited me to join them because they know that whenever I do go to noon Mass, I usually have to run quickly off to work or to some kind of appointment. It is rare that I take a day of vacation, even rarer that I take it on a Wednesday, and even rarer yet that I have not planned it chock-full of errands.)

- I even got my hair cut, and that only happens once every couple of months. When you have a job as a human whirlwind, you have a changing hairstyle as the weeks go on: short, medium, long, longer. I am back to short now, ready for another two-month stint of tilting at windmills and breezing through our distance offices!

- I got to walk in the rain; I suppose I should not have done that, but it so rarely rains here, and I so love to walk in the rain and splash about like a little kid that I gave myself permission to do so! And while I was walking in the rain, I got to hear the town's roosters crow.

Yes, there is indeed a good side to being sick. I found it. Tomorrow I have to return to zipping and twisting through mounds of work, including whatever number of emails have been added to the 1143 that left unanswered when I left, ill, on Friday afternoon. But for today, for me, the world stood still!

Image from ImageChan.com