Immersion Blender

It started as a normal, ordinary day. 

At noon I picked the children up from school and drove them home for lunch. While preparing their lunch, I tried out my new immersion blender—a miracle appliance in my mind. But food got stuck in the blade, and it wasn’t working as well as I knew it should. 

No problem, I thought. I’ll just remove the food.

So I did. I stuck my finger up into the blade—up under the blade—and began to scrape. And then the unexpected happened. 

The blade turned on. 

I realize, in retrospect, that my other hand hit the “on” switch. At the time all I saw—and felt—was my finger being churned by this very sharp, high-powered blade. I dropped the blender. I probably said a curse word. And then I watched as blood came gushing—literally spraying—out of my finger. 

Blood splatter was everywhere. On the floor. On the cabinets. On the countertops.  In a moment of clarity I put my finger under cold running water. I took one look at the gnawed –up flesh and panicked again. I grabbed a towel, wrapped it up, and did the only thing I knew to do. I called my husband. My compass. My sane guide through this jungle of life. 

He wasn’t there. He was out of town, in a deposition.  Completely unavailable.

At this point I was feeling very faint. I should mention that the sight and thought of blood makes me very squeamish. I lay down on the floor, in the midst of all the blood, and cried. Laila continued to play, as if the sight of mommy lying on the kitchen floor crying was perfectly normal. Connor, however, was deeply affected by it all. He was on the verge of tears himself. He brought an armful of stuffed animals to me to hold.  

“Are you going to be ok?” he asked. 

“Yes, Mommy’s fine,” I said in my bravest mommy-voice. And then I cried again.

It was at that moment that the doorbell rang. I never would have answered it, but Connor did. The ladies at the door asked for his mom.

“She’s bleeding,” he said. “She cut her finger.”

“Can we see her?” I heard them ask.

“There’s blood everywhere,” Connor replied.

At this moment I realized that I had to get up and go to the door. I can only imagine what they thought of all this. 

The ladies were from AT&T. They were so helpful and sweet that I cried again. They offered to call 9-1-1, but I told them it wasn’t that serious. 

“Well, I’m not leaving until you get in touch with someone,” one of the ladies said. And I could tell she intended to stay.

So I picked up my phone. We don’t have family in the area, so I started running through my list of friends who don’t work during the day. Our neighbors were out of town. Who to call? I wondered. 

And then I thought of my dear friend M. She is a registered nurse, and is also very good with children. She answered her phone right away, dropped all of her plans for the afternoon, and came over. She brought her mom to watch our children while she drove me to the doctor. At the doctor’s office she sat in the room with me and did her best to distract me while they cleaned the wound and stitched it up. And, as if that wasn’t enough, she returned to my house to clean up the blood, sat with me until my husband returned home from work, and had her father bring us dinner. (And wow—it was delicious! Her father may be the best cook I know.) That afternoon as the two of us sat in the back yard watching the children play, the ladies from AT&T returned.  To check on me and make sure I was ok.

I went to bed that night with a severed finger but a very warm feeling in my heart. I have no doubt that God sent those ladies to my door. He saw me lying on the floor crying. He heard my mind race as it wondered how I would ever get the kids in the car and drive to the doctor with a severed finger. He heard me fret about sitting at the doctor’s office for several hours while my kids ran wild. He knew I would never in a million years call someone because I hate to be an imposition on others. He knows my stubbornness. He knows my queasiness around blood. He knew that I had no intention of moving from that floor.

So He sent someone. Someone who cared enough to refuse to move until I took care of myself. And then He sent a friend to step in and take over all the details. She made it easy. I remember sitting at the doctor’s office thinking “I guess we’ll have to go out for dinner tonight,” and as if she read my mind she looked at me and said “My dad will bring dinner for us tonight.” It wasn’t a question. It was already decided. 

I am humbled. I didn’t do anything to earn or deserve this generosity, but at that moment I needed  it. And God stepped in. 

I am reminded of two other events in my life where events were orchestrated in such a way that I can only believe something far more powerful than me planned it out.

The first occurred when I was 16. My grandmother called my mom one Thursday to ask if we’d come visit that weekend. She hadn’t seen us in a while, she said. I remember thinking it was strange because we had just visited her the weekend before, and we didn’t see her on a weekly basis. But we didn’t ask questions. We made the one and a half hour drive that Sunday afternoon, expecting to be greeted by Grandma’s warm hug and a kitchen filled with home-cooked food.

Instead we found a note from my aunt. Grandma had suffered a stroke and was in the hospital.  As we made the twenty minute drive to the hospital, I couldn’t help but wonder if God had somehow arranged for us to be there that day to hear the news. He knew my mom needed her sisters at that moment, and a twenty minute drive would be much easier for her to bear than an hour and a half.

The other event happened four years ago. Dad was on his way to Columbia one Sunday afternoon to help me do some work on our condo (he lives three hours away). That same afternoon my husband had a stroke. Dad arrived at our house just minutes after the ambulance left. Knowing Dad was on his way, and was so close, made the entire incident easier for me to bear. I didn’t have to worry about who would watch Connor, who was two years old at the time. Dad drove me to the hospital and then took care of Connor for me. He also called my mom and told her about it. I was free to be with Lee and focus on him. Having Dad there at that moment in time made a HUGE difference for me. And I marvel when I look back at it—how God somehow managed to have Dad en route to Columbia on the day when He knew I would need someone to help.

God always shows up. Sometimes it’s in the smile and hug of a friend who comes in and takes over. Other times it’s more subtle. Sometimes it’s hard to feel Him, but He’s there. He shows up, and not just for the big events—the times when we look at a loved one and wonder if he or she will live another day. He shows up for the little things too. The cuts and scrapes and bruises and severed fingers of everyday life. The ordinary and mundane. He is there to help us, to comfort us, to love us. All we have to do is let Him.

Knitting

On an whim I decided to learn to knit.

It started a few days ago when I was playing around on the internet and stumbled across a blog about a girl who knits dishcloths. Why in the world would that catch my attention? I have no idea, but suddenly I had to knit dishcloths.

And then I began to consider the possibilities: scarves, hats, sweaters. It even occurred to me that if we ever bought a farm (like I've been dying to do for years) I could own some sheep. And spin my own yarn.

Yeah, that's how my mind works when I'm alone.

That was Monday. This morning when I woke up it was a distant memory. Until I ran into a friend and found out that she knits. Well, that did it for me. It was as if fate were tellilng me I was meant to knit. I went straight to Hobby Lobby. I was too embarrassed to tell them that I had no idea what I was doing (why do I always pretend that I know what I'm doing even when I don't?). So I picked my favorite looking yarn and bought the needles that the package told me it was sized for.

I spent the remainder of my day rewatching the same youtube video, trying to figure out how in the world the girl in the video made it look so easy. I cast on, and then as I attempted to knit, I unraveled what I had cast on. Again and again and again.

I eventually figured it out. And then my obsessive-compulsive personality took over, and I knitted row after row after row. I have no idea what I'm making, if anything. But I'm knitting.

The entire time I sat there knitting I thought about my grandmother. She didn't knit, at least as far as I know. But she did crochet. Blankets. Shoes. Christmas tree ornaments. Christmas stockings. Doorknob decorations. Plastic-egg filled bunnies for Easter. When Grandma was sitting, she was usually crocheting and humming hymns. That's how I remember her.

When I was a child I would often spend a week with Grandma in the summer. One summer she taught me a basic crochet stitch. I think it's called a hook and loop, but I don't really know. I practiced it for about five minutes before I decided I had perfected it and was ready for the next lesson. She showed me how to turn it. I tried, but after a few failed attempts I decided that maybe it wasn't for me and ran outside to play. That was the extent of my needlepoint lessons as a child.

If only I could sit with her now.

I walk into Laila's room and pull out the baby blanket she crocheted for me. The stitching is perfect. I think about all the loops, all the twists, all the pulls that must have gone into that blanket. I am amazed.

I am more amazed when I consider that Grandma made this for me when I was just a child. She knew she wouldn't be around to see me have children, so she made the blanket and gave it to my mom to give to me at my baby shower. She knew she wouldn't be there to hear me say thank-you or to hear everyone admire the beautiful work she had done. But she made it anyway. She made it because she loved me, and I beleive that was her way of expressing her love not only for me but for the children I would someday have.

And then, unexpectedly, the tears come. I wonder if we ever completely get over the loss of loved ones. It pops up so unexpectedly--a dream that's so vivid it makes me cry. When the gardenia bush outside my back door blooms in May. The taste of my mom's vegetable soup, made just like Grandma made hers. When I sit down to read my Bible. When I wash dishes. When I go through the mundane of life. Grandma's life still influences me daily, nearly fourteen years after she passed away.

I offer up a thanks to God for giving me such a wonderful role model. And then, as I so often do, I ask him to tell Grandma how much I love her--that I miss her, and that I think, in some ways, I am becoming a little more like her every day. I don't really think Grandma can hear me. But I know God can. And I know that she is with Him. So maybe He'll deliver the message.

And who knows. Maybe I'll learn to crochet.