Insignificance?

Here it is, Sunday afternoon, and here I am reflecting in front of the computer. The casserole is in the oven, and all is well on the home front. I might mention that the "wellness" of our home front was in great question yesterday morning when I found myself taking my precious husband, Eric, to the hospital.

Before going into detail, it is important to note that Eric is a man who, historically, does NOT obtain medical services willingly. I have nagged, begged, even stooped to snivvling to try to get him to get a physical...to no avail. One time I did manage to get him to check his blood pressure at one of those little pharmacy gizmos, but that's the extent of my success. Of course, remembering that we've been married not even two years yet I suppose that's not all bad.

Eric does remember a time, about 13-15 years ago, when he saw a doctor because of pneumonia. But since then, there's been a huge medical dry spell in his life.

Now...knowing that background information makes it even more meaningful when you consider that he actually asked me to transport him to the hospital yesterday.

The day started out just like most other Saturday mornings. He's an up-and-at-'em kind of guy, the first one up and showered ("daylight's burnin'" is a favorite quip of his)...and that morning was not out of the ordinary. He had showered and dressed and gone to the kitchen to fix breakfast. Bacon was on the griddle, and I'm sure his imagination was teasing him with thoughts of all he was going to accomplish in the garden that day.

Before I could even get in the shower (I had lazily been spending a bunch of time trimming my hair in front of the bathroom mirror), I thought I heard something a bit out of the ordinary, almost like a groan, coming from the other room - and to my amazement, this was followed by Eric's voice, calling me to come help him. Quite unlike him.

Out of the blue, without any warning, Eric had been stricken with pain of incredible intensity in his side. He had all the signs of something being very wrong; he was almost ready to pass out and was profusely perspiring. I immediately wanted to call an ambulance, but...in true Eric fashion, he said I should just drive him over there. It's a good thing we don't live very far away from the hospital...

Long story short (because I really do have a point to make here), after blood tests, a cat scan, and enough narcotics to drop a small army, we had the confirmation from the radiologist that he indeed was the proud "father" of a bouncing itty-bitty kidney stone. Thankfully, the scan also showed that the stone was almost to pass into the bladder, which would mean the end of the pain. After spending the better part of the day in the ER, we were sent home with more pain medication to ride it out, and with instructions to watch for this little culprit to appear in the outside world (with the intention of delivering it to the doctor's office for analysis). I am pleased to report that the remainder of the day was fairly unremarkable; Eric suffered only a couple more severe episodes.

Today all the pain was gone, and as predicted, we were finally able to actually view the "stone." Now, my idea of a stone is something you have in your driveway or maybe something you skip across the top of your favorite river. You can imagine our surprise as we studied this "thing" that turned out to be not much larger than the period at the end of this sentence. Why they refer to that as a "stone" I'll never know...but our minds couldn't help but wonder how anything that miniscule could cause that much pain.

As I consider this little episode in our lives, I can't help but realize the obvious spiritual parallel here. "How can anything that miniscule cause that much pain?" tumbles around in my mind, reminding me of a truth that our pastor talked about in church today. He was discussing a passage from John 15, where Jesus is talking about the necessity of abiding in the Vine and that He may do some divine "pruning" in our lives to get rid of characteristics or things that are not good for us or will prevent us from being fruitful. We considered ways to begin to separate ourselves from those things that tend to take obsessive priority (TV, food, money, etc), those things that would keep us from being focused more on Christ. How can we spend less time doing those things, even perhaps ministry, that keep us too drained to learn to know Christ better?

I believe that as we begin to explore that question in our lives, it is good to remember that there are those things that will sneak in on us almost imperceptibly. Things so "miniscule" that they may go unnoticed, yet if left to grow could cause immeasurable damage and pain.

Jesus, please help me to recognize those things in my life before they take over. And help me to begin to release, moment by moment, those things that cloud my vision of You in my life.