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.