Going on a dreaded routine to the most dreaded place ever, I willed myself to keep focus on my main destination – the physiotherapy room, and not be distracted by the surroundings of patients on stretcher beds, drips & plaster cast. Inevitably, there is bound to be at least one. The moment I walked into the building, I kept my head straight, no left or right. But then as we passed the operating theater, I saw a patient with metal rods and screws protruding through his legs. Gosh. My mom was whispering under her breath about how it broke her heart to just look at them and how they had to suffer the pain and agony. She was just someone who happened to “see” one like that. How do you think the patient himself feels? Or how do you think someone who has gone through the experience herself would feel (Thankfully I didn’t have screws in my legs. I was given the choice to pick between a plaster cast and screws to pull my bones together. Of course I chose the plaster cast. I didn’t want to bear the ordeal of daily seeing rows of screws through my legs).
I shrugged the horrifying picture off my mind, just to fit another one in. Why do all these happen? A young, handsome-looking boy came in with 2 assistants who did everything for him. All he could do was lay motionless in the chair and stare upwards. Everything else was done by his 2 assistants. I have unending questions as to why such things must happen (of course I know that God is in control and He knows what He is doing). It is not that I am grumbling to God about it, but just in my own thoughts. It was just a casual sharing with Alvin about what I saw and how I felt about the whole situation. So, being a part Phlegmatic [good listener] and part Melancholy [will listen to complaints] that he is, this is what he sent to me as encouragement to me.
Truly, I am blessed. 2 days in a row. Blessed by the moral of the story below especially the last sentence, and by the fact that a great friend was willing to hear me out. And so the story goes:
When I was a little boy, my mother used to embroider a great deal. I would sit at her knee and look up from the floor and ask what she was doing. She informed me that she was embroidering. I told her that it looked like a mess from where I was. As from the underside I watched her work within the boundaries of the little round hoop that she held in her hand, I complained to her that it sure looked messy from where I sat.
She would smile at me, look down and gently say, "My son, you go about your playing for a while, and when I am finished with my embroidering, I will put you on my knee and let you see it from my side." I would wonder why she was using some dark threads along with the bright ones and why they seemed so jumbled from my view. A few minutes would pass and then I would hear Mother's voice say, "Son, come and sit on my knee." This I did only to be surprised and thrilled to see a beautiful flower or a sunset. I could not believe it, because from underneath it looked so messy.
Then Mother would say to me, "My son, from underneath it did look messy and jumbled, but you did not realize that there was a pre-drawn plan on the top. It was a design. I was only following it. Now look at it from my side and you will see what I was doing."
Many times through the years I have looked up to my Heavenly Father and said, "Father, what are You doing?" He has answered, "I am embroidering your life." I say, "But it looks like a mess to me. It seems so jumbled. The threads seem so dark. Why can't they all be bright?" The Father seems to tell me, "My child, you go about your business of doing My business, and one day I will bring you to Heaven and put you on My knee and you will see the plan from My side."
The damage has been done. The most I can do is just say a prayer of blessing over them (yea, I do not know them, but so what? Jesus came to seek and save the lost, anyway) and hope that whatever situations they may be in, they will remain strong.
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