Angel over my Shoulder

It's Christmas, so I might as well tell you about the time an angel came to visit me. 

It's a long story, and to tell it properly, we have to go back to the afternoon March 16, 1995.

I was a junior in high school and at my surgeon's office for a final appointment before I was set to have knee surgery.  It was to be a fairly standard arthroscopic procedure the next morning to fix a torn meniscus and remove some wayward cartilage I had suffered from a bad triple jump landing in track practice. 

But the doctor entered the room with a frown carrying my MRI results.

He had noticed a small abnormality that no one had seen when they first got the results back.  It might be just a smudge, he said, or it might be partially hidden tear of my ACL.  Either way, he said, he needed to cancel my surgery in the morning. 

They couldn't know exactly what was going on in my knee until they went inside, and if it was a ligament tear, the swelling would need about another week to subside before it could be operated on. 
The doctor suggested rescheduling my operation another week so that they could fix whatever it was they found. 

This was bad news on multiple fronts. 

An arthroscopic surgery was a fairly minor deal from which I could recover in a matter of weeks.  My track season would be over, but I'd be just fine long before basketball season next year, which is what really mattered to me.

A ligament tear meant full reconstructive knee surgery, months of rehabilitation and a strong chance I'd never fully recover.  This possibility was devastating to my high school mind. 

The world seems smaller in high school, so I was just as concerned with what the news meant in the short term.  I'd been hobbling around my high school on crutches for 8 days.  The foam in my crutches had absorbed my sweat from the exertion and was starting to smell bad.  My classmates had grown beyond tired of helping me carry my books.  Another week of begging for mercy seemed excruciating. 

Plus, I had told the world I was having surgery in the morning, and one of my teachers had gone to great trouble to videotape a "Get Well Soon Party" in my absence. I was going to have a lot of unwelcoming explaining to do if my surgery turned out to be a false alarm. 

I couldn't face it. I had to have surgery tomorrow.

I begged the doctor to go ahead and do the operation, just in case they were wrong about the ACL tear.  He explained that it could lead to lots of unnecessary trouble if it turned out that I had to have another surgery a week later.  And I didn't have insurance, so my dad was looking at the possibility of two $10,000 operations rather than one.  It made no sense to do the operation. 

So the expression on my face must have been one of abject misery, when, against all logic, both my dad and the surgeon relented and allowed me to have an operation the next day, even though I might need another one just one week later.

I went into the operating room nervous, not just because I was 17 and had never faced anything like it, but because the next year of my life, my promising basketball career (and a whole lot of my dad's money) was at stake.  I would wake up from the operation either a couple weeks away from being as good as new, or I would wake up facing another surgery, a chorus of "I told you so," and months of rehab before life seemed normal again. 

I didn't sleep well the night before, but once I was prepped for surgery the nurses gave me the happy drugs. I quickly fell asleep.

The next thing I knew, my eyes groggily half-opened to see a figure standing over my left shoulder.  "Your surgery was successful," a woman's voice told me. "And you don't need another one." 

I wanted to scream with joy, but I was barely awake and couldn't yet respond.  I saw her disappear behind me and didn't have the strength to move my head. 

After a minute or two, I managed to gather my wits and fully open my eyes, but the nurse in the room with me had her back turned across the room.  

"That's great news," I managed to say. 

"Oh, you're awake," she said, although her voice suddenly sounded very different from the one I had just heard. "But what are you talking about?" 

"My surgery.  That my ACL wasn't torn.  You just told me I didn't need another surgery." 

She had no idea what I was talking about. 

The nurse had been assigned to the room I had been wheeled to to let the doctor know when I was awake, but she knew nothing about my procedure or my results.  I asked if another nurse had been in the room, but she said it had just been her and I in the room for the last half hour.  I looked behind my left shoulder in the direction where I had noticed the woman disappear, and saw nothing but a cinder block wall. 

The only door to the room was on the other side beside where the nurse was standing. 

A few minutes later the doctor came in.  I met him with an exclamation: "My ACL isn't torn!!!! I don't need another surgery!!!!"

"Oh, it was torn," he said, as my heart began to sink. "But the tear was so small we could fix it with the laser.  You were right about having the surgery."  After a moment's pause he then asked:

"But how on earth did you know you wouldn't need another surgery?"

I hadn't had time to process what had happened, so I just shrugged off the question.  But, in fact, there was no earthly way I could have known my surgery results.  Instead, an audible voice that the nurse in my room didn't hear had accurately described my surgery and then disappeared into a wall. 

Sounds reasonable, right?

It sounds even crazier considering that I don't know why it happened.  I would have found out the same news from my surgeon five minutes later, so I never understood the point of this visit.  And when I had a colonoscopy earlier this year that found three polyps, I was disappointed my Guardian didn't visit again when I came-to, forcing me instead to wait five days to hear whether or not I had cancer.  

I haven't shared this story much because I couldn't come to grips with the point of it all.  On one hand, there was no rational explanation for how I knew my surgery results before anyone at the hospital had told me.  On the other hand, while I believe in the theoretical possibility of divine intervention, I couldn't grasp the point of it coming to give me a five-minute heads up on news I would have heard anyway. 

No, an angel didn't come to tell me my surgery results.  There would have been no point in that.  As I consider it now, a much more likely possibility strikes me, though.  My Guardian had been there for my whole surgery.  She just happened to tell me my results on her way out the door. 

Or rather, her way out the wall.

---------------------------------------------------------

As it turned out, I never fully recovered from my slightly torn ACL.  My left leg is bigger than my right one, and I have back problems from the lack of cartilage in my right leg.  I could never run as fast or jump as high after my injury as I could before it, and I didn't score as many points in my senior basketball season and I didn't get that basketball scholarship that I had dreamed of.

But now, every time my right knee barks at me when I run in the cold or don't stretch before working out, I'm reminded of the time that God sent an angel and proved he loved me. 

All in all, that's a pretty good trade. 

The Meaning of Christmas? The same as last year.

I was busy selling a house this year, so I didn't even start Christmas shopping until December 20th. In the frantic rush of selling a house and buying presents, there hasn't been time to blog. 

My brain has turned to mush anyway after enduring the ups and downs of 2012, so it might be for the best.

Don't yell at me. 

There will be one or two more columns coming by the end of the year, so check back often.  In the meantime, here's a peace offering. 

It's last year's Christmas blog (Disappointed in my gift? Well, what did you get me for Christmas?).

I'd tell you what this post is about, but I really don't remember.  Something about Christmas, and why it should be meaningful to everyone, and I think there's a reference to my favorite sitcom (Community) in there somewhere. 

It was pretty good.  I just can't remember the details. So see it for yourself.

 http://www.andrewsmithsthoughts.blogspot.com/2011/12/real-meaning-of-christmas.html

Fighting the Good Fight Against Bad Christmas Songs

Everyone has a favorite holiday tradition.  Mine is making fun of bad Christmas songs.

Don't judge me.  Or go ahead and judge me, if you want, because I don't care.  I will still drive my wife crazy overanalyzing every song on the radio for the next two weeks regardless.

I will even bear the burden of being called a Scrooge if I must. I know the holidays are a happy time when no one wants to criticize anything, but I am sticking to my principles on this.

Just because a song is about the holidays doesn't give it the right to insult the collective intelligence of humanity.

I believe this firmly. 

It's not that I hate Christmas or the holiday season.  I actually think it's the most wonderful time of the year. (you see what I did there?)  Because I do, I feel justified in saving the holiday season from being corrupted by an endless avalanche of stupid holiday songs. 

My favorite example is a holiday song so bad it's actually sort of entertaining. With the song "Do they Know it's Christmastime," a collaboration of musicians known as Band Aid got together and decided to advance every negative stereotype of Africa they could think of in the hopes of benefiting the people there.  The melody is catchy and the song nobly attempts to raise awareness of hunger in Africa, but its actual lyrics couldn't insult the population more thoroughly if the musicians had flown to Africa and given every person there an atomic wedgie.

In the chorus, the song proclaims that the entire continent of Africa has no rain, rivers or plant life whatsoever, and the people there are too stupid and poor to own calendars.  What's more, it presents as tragic the fact that people there might not even "know it's Christmas time at all," when the majority of the continent are not Christians and wouldn't celebrate it anyway.  It never occurs to the well meaing but ethnocentric musicians that maybe the people there know about our Western holiday, but just don't care. 

Similarly, the song bemoans that "there won't be snow in Africa this Christmastime." Is this really a bad thing?  If the children are as barefoot and shirtless children and the song suggests, wouldn't they be thankful that it isn't going to snow?  They'd freeze their butts off!

But I digress.

Plenty of traditional Christmas songs are dumb as well.  "Away in a Manger" is a sweet, melodic and good-intentioned song, but the line stating "the little lord Jesus, no crying he makes" is flat-out heretical.  The Bible records Jesus crying as an adult when his friend Lazarus died.  So the song's suggestion that baby Jesus was free of human emotion is demonstrably offbase. More importantly, it runs counter to the central message of Christianity that God loved us enough to come to earth to live exactly like we do.

It's actually amazing how many religiously based Christmas songs get the details of the Christmas story completely wrong, considering the songs exist to celebrate the story. 

For instance, take "The First Noel."  According to the Bible, the shepards didn't "(look) up and see a great star, shining in the East beyond them far."  Actually, the shepards saw an angel; it was the wise men who saw the star.  And they came from the East, so the star would have had to appear them in the West.  They also didn't "come sailing in" on "three ships" on "Christmas Day," they walked through the desert from Babylon and arrived long after Jesus was born.

Also, while the little drummer boy (who is not recorded in the actual Christmas story) might be a poor boy, Jesus was not. He wasn't born in a manger because his parents were broke, it was because the inn was full.  In fact, by the time the wise men got to the scene, Mary and Joseph had already acquired their own house in Bethlehem, even though they didn't live there and didn't plan to stay.  (If you don't believe me, look it up).

Secular holiday songs don't have to worry about getting factual details right, but they don't fair much better in the logic department.  While "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" is one of my favorite holiday songs, I still don't understand why it references telling "scary ghost stories" along with tales of the glories of past Christmases.  Who tells ghost stories at Christmas?  And why? Is it to scare children into hiding in their rooms on Christmas Eve so the parents can play Santa? 

That particular line is curious, but at least the premise of that song is logical, which is more than one can say about "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus." The song is about a kid's confusion that his Mom and Santa are making out, as the unsuspecting doofus of a kid is unaware that his own Dad is the one in the Santa costume.   But here's my question: why exactly is Dad dressed as Santa? 

I can understand Dad dressing up as Santa while the kids are around.  But in this story, they are supposed to be asleep already.  So why is dad bothering to put on the costume?  Is this some kind of role-play fetish on Mom's part?

I feel gross even thinking about this.

But even this song isn't as bad as the "Christmas Shoes."  In fact, no song in the history of time is. 

In the song, a hapless boy leaves his mother on her deathbed in an attempt to buy her some shoes, for the totally logical purpose of giving them to his mom so she can impress God with her pinache in the afterlife. 

The boy is oblivious to the facts that he has no money to buy the shoes and that his mom can't take them with her anyway. It's never explained how the boy expected to pay for the shoes, and I can't help but think that maybe Mom would be in better health if she didn't have to worry about Junior roaming the streets and blowing what little money the family has on dumb, pointless crap. 

But ultimately, someone steps in and covers the charge for the shoes on the boy's behalf, notwithstanding his lack of forethought. In the end, Mom gets her shoes and dies.

Uplifting, no?

I'm not sure what the message of this song is supposed to be, but it offends on every level. It exalts materialism over relationships, as it applauds the boy's choice to spend his mother's last moments shopping for her instead of being with her.  It suggests that God cares more about how we look and what we acquire than how we live or what's in our hearts. 

The plot rewards the boy's failure to think ahead about his decisions.  Every time I hear it, I wonder how many kids are inspired by the song to take an expensive item to a department store counter in the hopes that someone will buy it for them if they look sufficiently downtrodden.

It's also an open question why the little boy's dad let him wander out of the house and into downtown while his mother is dying in the first place.

Whatever the message of the song is supposed to be, when I hear it, I mostly have grave concerns about this little boy's future.  His only living parent is his irresponsible enough to let him wander around the city alone, and the boy has come to believe that the world at large will cater to his wishes whether he can pay his fair share or not. 

In other words, this boy is the embodiment of Mitt Romney's 47 percent! 

Merry Christmas!

Maybe I'm thinking about all this too hard.  Christmas is supposed to be the time we stop analyzing things and enjoy the moment.  There's no real harm in any of the logical or factual errors noted above, except maybe some cultural insensitivity and a heaping dose of consumerism.

So maybe there's no real harm done, and we shouldn't complain.  After all, some people, even in this country, never get the opportunity to discuss in heated comfort the silliness of the songs they'll listen to as they enjoy an upcoming week of paid vacation.  Instead, they'll be delivering your mail, bagging your groceries, or policing your streets while you and me enjoy our eggnog. 

So instead of complaining, we should do something to show our appreciation. 

What to do?  Well, according to Band Aid, there's only one to express our gratitude at winning life's lottery and being free from the miserable burdens other people have to carry. I think we should do it now.

So tonight, thank God it's themmmmm insteaaaaaad of yooooooooooooou!

Merry Christmas, and enjoy whatever bad Christmas songs come your way!  If you're like me, you'll miss making fun of them come December 26th.

Answered Prayers

It was a long and winding road, but one that finally-- after a longer journey than seemed possible-- led to a happy ending.

After five-and-a-half years of trying, we finally have a contract to sell the house in St. Louis we left in 2007!

I repeat: WE ARE FINALLY SELLING OUR FLIPPING HOUSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This changes everything. 

It marks the end of a very long walk in the desert.  It's the end of:

Five-and-a-half years of unanswered prayers, and wondering where God was in my life.  Sixty-five straight months of making two house payments, while only living in one.  298 consecutive weeks where I saw something fun happening the upcoming weekend but couldn't afford to do it and dreamed of the day when I could.  2008 nights in a row of going to bed with a giant unresolved problem on my hands, and nothing I could do to fix it.

The worst part of owning two houses isn't the wasted money, though, it's the chains the situation puts around your life.  There's a constant uncertainty about everything. 

You can't visit distant friends and relatives very often, because you never know when you might need that airfare money to go toward closing.  There are constant maintenance needs that you don't even know about until they've mushroomed into something huge, and the ever-looming threat of a break-in.

We had three. 

You can't make any long-term plans whatsoever, because you haven't the faintest idea what life is going to look like a few months down the road.

It's a never-ending source of administrative headaches, from having to supervise repairmen from long-distance, to remembering to pay two sets of bills every month, to pleading with heartless insurance companies about writing a policy for a vacant house that's been broken into three times. 

All that is ending now. 

The house is selling, the extra bills are disappearing, and soon, whatever else goes wrong five hours away won't be our problem. 

But that isn't even the best news I've received in the last eight days. 

As I've noted here before, it was March 15th of this year when we heard that our former tenant at that St. Louis house was not going to buy it after all, and, in fact was breaking her lease and moving out.

But that wasn't the worst news of my day--far from it.  

About two hours earlier, I listened as an emotionless doctor casually told my brother and his wife that he had a 48 percent chance of beating cancer and still being alive in five years.

It doesn't make sense, and my brother's issues were a million times worse, but the two problems had sort of been spiritually linked in my mind from that day forward, and I rarely prayed for one without the other.

After his appointment, my brother endured 12 grueling sessions of chemotherapy.  His treatments ended at the end of the summer, but the doctors wanted to wait a couple months after to see if the treatment had been effective, or if the cancer had returned. 

On Monday of last week, he checked out clear.  No sign of cancer whatsoever. 

It was late afternoon of the day before the results came, when my realtor called.  The last few showings hadn't gone well, so I assumed he was calling with yet another maintenance issue.  My wife even said that theory out loud when I announced who was calling. 

Instead, the realtor was calling to say that a woman had offered to buy our house on the spot upon her first viewing of the house.  And somehow, at that moment, I knew then that my brother was going to be just fine.

As I told a close friend today, it's funny how God seems to disappear for the longest time, only to beat you over the head with reminders of his presence at some point later on. In my case, God waited much longer than I would have liked to answer my two defining prayers, but when he did, he answered both of them at the same time. 

I can't prove that God made all things new in my life in at once to show that he never deserted me when it all went South at the same time back in March.  I don't believe in easy answer to complicated questions, nor do I pray to a Cosmic Vending Machine who answers prayers according to a specific formula or even in ways we are meant to understand.

But when I think about how the two defining problems that have shaped my 2012 were solved at the same time, and on the weekend after I'd come to the place of being able to write a blog about being thankful for life notwithstanding its difficulties, I can't help but shake my head and wonder how things look from the other side of Heaven.