Perspective

A couple of weeks ago, I was feeling sorry for myself because I had hurt my knee.  You see, I had been doing well with my exercise program and had even lost a few pounds. Then I injured my knee, forcing me to stop walking.  Bummer!  One reason I've been looking forward to retirement is because it would give me time to get into shape. Now I'd have time to increase my exercise, and because of reduced stress, I'd be eating less. I should be able to drop ten pounds before our vacation in August. So you can imagine my disappointment when my knee started screaming at me. "Rest, ice and Aleve twice a day," my doctor ordered.

Poor me!  My plans have been interrupted.  I'm hobbling around like a peg leg.  My summer wardrobe doesn't fit, I gained back the three pounds I worked so hard to lose, and now I can't exercise?  Poor, pitiful me!

God: "Get over yourself."

Me: "What did you say?"

God: "I said, get over yourself.  Let's put this minor setback in perspective.  Didn't one of your colleagues just suffer a broken neck in a car accident?"

Me: "Oh, yes. Thanks for the reminder."

God: "Another of your colleagues has spent the last two weeks in the hospital with her husband who just received an artificial heart, right?"

Me:"Yes, that's right. He'll be hooked up to a machine until a real heart becomes available for transplant. That means someone has to die. Actually, twenty-five someones have to die before it's his turn.

God: "Then there's your ninety-two-year-old mother. Didn't she fall last night and break her arm?"

Me: "Yes, she had just recovered from a fractured vertebrae, and now this."

God: "Weren't you just complaining about your knee to your associate pastor?"

Me: "Yes, but in fairness, she saw me limping and asked what was wrong.  I couldn't say, 'It's nothing, just a little problem with my knee,' could I?"

God: "Is that the same pastor whose husband has been hospitalized for three weeks with complications from diabetes and whose son just fell and broke his ankle?  Is that the same pastor who, herself, suffers from a rare disease that causes bouts of intense pain . . . pain severe enough to land her in the E.R.?"

Why do I need to spend time alone with God every single day? Perspective. Maybe a bum knee isn't quite the tragedy it seemed at first.