Seeking Beauty...Injured on the Sidelines

Y'all.  I've been sitting on my couch for almost a week now, with this thrown-out back, fretting over my inability to do anything.  I mean, I can barely put on my own pants so driving, cleaning, cooking, caring for my people and animals are all too difficult right now.  And I admit I really hate this, this powerlessness.  It's hard doing life from the sidelines.

I had a post in mind, about the ways I am coping, about leaning into God and finding small moments of joy and beauty. Then, yesterday, I was just a wreck.  I'm talking: writhing around in agony for hours, unable to get comfortable.  Delirium induced by muscle relaxers that apparently I need in order to interrupt this pain.  It seemed ridiculous to me in those moments that I could provide any kind of inspiration to anyone dealing with pain.

Intense pain makes you tiny, focused only on taking the next breath, on survival.  I totally get that.

But then...this morning...outside my window a little woodpecker comes back to the tree he visits every morning.  He hops around out there hunting for his breakfast, sun gleaming off his bright red head. He is beautiful, and his little routines make me wonder and give me joy.  And I would never have noticed him without this time on the couch.

How in the world can a woodpecker help me survive throwing my back out?  I have no idea.  Only that seeing him out there is so reassuring.  I even hobbled over to take a blurry picture with my phone, it just seemed that important.

Meet my dear friend Woody.

And it just seemed important that my morning visitor can bring me joy, oblivious though he is to me. It seemed important that I am still able to look outward, to observe something, however tiny, in God's creation, to just appreciate Him and the way He blesses us through the beauty of our natural world.

Seeing the blessings when life has me sidelined, it's the only thing that makes this painful time worth it.  It's been a great reminder for me to "give thanks in all circumstances," as we are instructed in 1 Thessalonians 5:18.  In my Bible Study this past week the reading asked, "Do you trust God with the suffering he has entrusted to you?"  What a crazy difficult concept, to be entrusted with suffering. For me, I guess it means letting nothing be wasted.  So while I'm writhing around in pain and needing rest, I'm praying:

God, thank you for that little woodpecker.  Thank you for reminding me of the beauty of your creation when all I can see is myself.  I pray that you would not allow this time to be wasted, but that you would turn it into a renewed heart for you, and a new appreciation for the beauty all around me...in your creation, in my home and people, and in your plans for me. Amen.