Ever feel like you’re missing out? You see the commercial with the snow-capped mountains in the background, the horse-drawn carriage pulling up to the home of the loving family offering toasts beside the wood-burning fireplace, and you sigh. That’s certainly not your life. The view from your window is the wintry blast that’s left your roads ice-covered and a front porch too slick to shovel. Your kids are cranky from being couped up inside and are griping about the Kraft Mac and Cheese you’ve given them for the fourth straight night.
How is it that some people’s lives represent Hallmark moments, and others…well, don’t? Right now, I’m looking out at the beach, listening to the waves crash against our sea wall. Most people are lounging at the pool or ordering food from our Palapa restaurant. I, on the other hand, am bundled in blankets, trying to fend off some nasty flu/cold, trying to stop coughing so I can attend a huge meeting tomorrow where I will resign after serving seven years on the Board. A meeting where I will serve as Parliamentarian because Carol, who always officiates at this bilingual, annual meeting, can’t be here. Instead, she’s at her home in Aspen, Colorado, no doubt making those Hallmark moments come alive.
If Carol is a 100 in her knowledge of Roberts’ Rules of Order, I am a four. Last year, when someone tabled a motion and it was opened for discussion, it was Carol who announced that there would be no discussion, only a vote. I didn’t know that. Only because I sort of understand the amendment process am I this year considered “qualified.”
So tomorrow, when someone tables a motion and another person stands to discuss it and I say he/she can’t and that individual argues, I will melt. Sort of like the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz. “Why can’t we discuss it?” someone will scream. And I will melt. “I don’t know,” I will answer. “Ask Carol. Carol who’s not here because she’s sitting beside her wood-burning fire, looking at the snow-covered mountains outside her window.”
Two days later: No one at the meeting called for my head, probably because I texted Carol for help when I foresaw a need arising. (I now accept this is as one more talent I do not have.) All I know is this: I am officially off the Board. Such relief. So why, in the middle of the night, did I break out in hives? Literally.
Not exactly a Hallmark moment. I am miserable.
Little did I know how bad “miserable” could look. Within a day, I would end up in the hospital here in Mexico, covered in welts that gave me an empathetic feel for what Job went through in the Bible. “Be careful what you complain about,” my mother used to say, “because it can always be worse.” She was right.
What I did find over the past six days in the hospital is how much I relied on my praying friends who daily sent encouragement, scriptures and sweet messages of comfort to let me know that God would carry me through this ordeal. Some offered medical advice while others shared that they were spending time on their knees for me. It couldn’t get any better! And then today, in an Instagram post, I read this: “The secret is Christ in me, not me in a different set of circumstances.” God had it all under control, even if I didn’t.
And suddenly, I realized I didn’t have it so bad after all.