With my hip fiercely broken, my body lying on the solid tile floor, immobilized and rigid in agonizing pain, my heart racing, my mind scrambling to figure out what to do next – I was literally and figuratively, “Between a rock and a hard place.” And all of it, simply because of a Bee…
Over 6 long years prior to this I had well experienced hardships & hard places:
- Struggling with a progressively debilitating & deadly neurological disease (PML).
- Submitting to the will of God with the inevitable grim prognosis (6 months to live).
- Surviving by the grace of God (contrary to medical stats, odds, expectations).
- Striving through rehabilitation to recover some lost functionality (yet grieving loss).
None of that was sweet to the taste at all! Bitter? Absolutely yes! But, it was Good.
Oddly, I had come to realize that only through these rugged experiences could I better know my Self, my God, and my Purpose in God’s Greater Plan. Truly this was an extremely arduous, costly, way to learn, but more true to me was the realization that: God brought me through my chaos of crashing surf against rugged rock.
In being brought through, I also had come up with what I called “4 Pastor-Principles”:
- You cannot be fully present for Others, unless you are first fully present with God.
- Life is short – little time to do what matters, so don’t waste either on what doesn’t!
- Stewardship of time, activities, abilities & available resources, is not an option.
- Being less able to be in control, means yielding more control over to God, who is.
I thought I had learned, embraced, or owned all four principles, as I pressed in to this newly “disabled” life and the ministry of pastoral mentoring – MAST Mentorship. However, while I was more and more confidently speaking into other pastors, I was less and less convincingly applying them to myself!
No longer in busy pastoral ministry, I was freely engaging in mentoring pastors! However, while knowingly overcoming my adversities, I was unknowingly becoming “busy as a bee” trying to be present everywhere; providing something sweet from God that would encourage, nourish, and sustain those in their ministry adversities.
Yet, such a passionate pace was NOT sustainable, nourishing or encouraging. This was evidenced with a nagging INSIGHT: “something will just have to stop my obsessive drive!” Furthermore there was the growing AWARENESS: “my time here on earth is limited.” All of this forced the troubling QUESTION: What will it take?
Consequently, I developed a deep inward longing to just LIVE in the moment; BE.
At the end of this particular fast-paced day which was fast running into night, I was running on fumes and desperately in need. My cry, “Lord, just give me a moment in my study!” Still, with little-to-no physical balance, my crucial rollator walker firmly in hand, I was attempting to finally reach my La-z-boy recliner, relax, and just Be. It was a good plan, But then came the Bee…
Entering my study to find refuge, I heard an unsettling noise. Inside, agitatedly buzzing & bouncing up against the right hand wall and closed window, attempting to find an exit, was a not-so-bumble, bee! I froze, hoping it would keep on bouncing along the wall, working it’s way toward the open door behind me. It didn’t.
In a flash of a moment it happened. Just as the bee got to the right side of me, it decided to bounce way out and around, and fly directly toward my face! I over reacted. Lurching backward to the left to avoid the oncoming bee, I automatically released my death grip on hand-breaks of the rollator. Not recommended.
The floor came up and hit me before I realized I was falling. I crashed hard on my left side, like an old tree felled in the forest. It was a divine drop; a perfect lie just between the corner of the bookcase on one side of my head, and the sharp corner of the file cabinet on the other. My head didn’t contact the floor. My left side took it all.
Sharp pain exploded in my hip. Instinctively I drew my left leg up to grab it and rolled over on my right side, but then could not straighten that leg back out again. It hurt way too much. Holding my head off the tile floor, locked in this compromised position, and equally locked in pain, it became quite clear. Call 911.
“What happened!!” Panicking, my wife rushed in to quickly assess the situation, my condition, and what to do. While she called 911 from the other room, and was endlessly caught up answering their ongoing questions about my physical condition, actual location on the property of our residence, specific directions to the easier access door for a gurney which was on the back deck, and “no” she was NOT able to meet them outside, one flight down at the bottom of the deck stairs… I remained caught up in agony holding my crazy position, awkwardly head off the floor, weakening by the minute, pleading and praying for the rescue to please, please, please hurry, and arrive. If I could just rest my head on something!
And there it was … a Rock, just to the right of my head. I had used this smooth rounded weight as a doorstop for decades. It’s location happened to be just right for my hand to easily reach, slide over and position under my head. Right! An answer to my prayer… Relief!
Years earlier while my Dad was visiting us in Maine, I had taken him on Prouts Neck Cliff Walk (Scarborough), where Maine’s stately rock coastline breaks the crushing waves of the blue-green Atlantic. Winslow Homer’s “Eastern Point” is a classic painting of this very same location. We came across a small section of sheltered beach comprised of hundreds of hand-size rocks; each one rounded and polished by relentless bashing and battering in the surf. Seeing one of interest, Dad reached down and picked it up. He then carried it in his hand all the way back to the house too keep as a souvenir from Maine.
Only after Dad returned to Kentucky after the visit did I find that same rock. It was on the floor abutting the door of my den. Picking it up and turning it over I discovered Dad’s personal notation and a Bible reference, marked there for me to find. Feeling it poignant, I moved the rock to my office at church. There it sat for almost 20 years, hardly ever being noticed, continually serving as a mere doorstop. When I “retired” from pastoral ministry I brought that rock home to my new office/den door. Sure, I remembered Dad had given it to me a few years before he passed away, but was that all this rock was for? At that time little did I know…
Well, the ambulance finally got to me but, getting me out to it was another thing. The EMTs assessed my condition and developed a strategy as to how to get me to the ambulance! I was awkwardly strapped on to a stretcher while in the same hurting position. They gingerly carried me down the outside steps then over to the ambulance. I was carefully lowered on to the waiting gurney, secured, then loaded up like cargo into the ambulance. Relief! (I thought). However, in the transport to the hospital every jostle and bounce starkly brought awareness of the unrelenting pain of my position and the unyielding hard-place of my condition.
The four days at the hospital from ER to OR to Post-OP Floor were a horrendous blur. Equally challenging were the added ten days at another hospital for intensive rehabilitation. Despite receiving well-intended medical care, there was an overload of constant noise in my shared, overcrowded, overactive hospital room. Emotionally and spiritually I felt tossed about like a rock in the pounding Maine surf. Fourteen long days were spent “in the hospital.” Neither facility is a great places to rest, heal and recover!
Still, while desperately seeking solace in prayer, the Comforter was right there with me. I was gently reminded that I had lost touch with my own “4 Pastor Principles.” Then I received 3 words having to do with SLOW, which were intended for my new daily practice once I finally was discharged home: Slow
- BREATHE – Slow in…slow out…
- PACE – Slow in doing
- SENSE – Slow to engage anxiety
The purpose for doing this? So I could learn to stop reacting here and there, with one foot in the past, and one foot in the future. Rather, I could actually be with Him in the present… (fully present intimacy) – just BE.
Whether or not I was ready, the hospital discharged me home. Sure, I was more than ready to get out of the hospital, but I was not so “ready” to get back in my home. This too, was an adjustment for one already disabled, but it enabled me to all the more intently be aware of the incredible works & ways of God, in all kinds of circumstances.
Days later I was back in my study where it all began, and there it was… the Rock. It was still resting by the door, right where I had last left it. What was it about this rock? Perhaps it was a “stone of help” (my ebenezer). I reached down and picked it up to hold. It was a reminder of what God had done for me when I desperately needed a place to just rest my head. Pondering it, I recalled that there was something my Dad had written on the bottom, a few years before he passed away. But, what was it? Was this too a work of God?
It was, and in such an extraordinary way. Only God could have scripted the timing of it all. Turning the rock over in my hand I found the message previously written by my father’s hand: “Pap was here 9/12/05. Psalm 31:1-4.” Astonishing! My father had chosen and given me the very thing I had needed decades before I knew I needed it! And what of this Scripture reference? I quickly picked up the Bible. Could it be that Father God orchestrated all this?
I read Psalm 31:1-4 out loud. Although transcribed by the psalmist centuries earlier, it was as if my own pleading, prayerful, desperate cry to the Lord for help, mere weeks earlier! Coincidental? I doubt it. Intentional? I believe it. This was honey from the rock.
Frenetic, reactive, ministry, no matter how sacrificial or well-intentioned, is a trap. Believe it! Had I first listened to God and followed in his way with him, I would not have been so ensnared. Instead, I had to be taught, learn, and be delivered, the hard way – taken from BEE to BE.
But you would be fed with the finest of wheat;
with honey from the rock I would satisfy you.
Psalm 81:16 NIV
—RWO/MAST
Comments by Ric Ochsner