Previous Challenge Entry (Level 2 – Intermediate)
Topic: Green (10/22/09)
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TITLE: Our Daily Bread | Previous Challenge Entry
By Linda Boutin
10/28/09 -
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My husband wrapped his arm around my waist as we surveyed our work. For the first year living here, I’d been happy to keep the walls brand new white. Slowly an image formed in my mind. I’d loaded the patio and front porch with potted plants to soften the beige and brown walls outside our windows. Now I wanted to invite the color of growth inside where I prepared our daily meals.
Our daily meals, our daily bread, the Lord’s Prayer began running through my mind. I’d chanted it over and over until the words blended into a comforting blur. These were the words I used to survive the long waits in the Emergency Room where I’d landed over a half dozen times in one year. It kept my legs moving when malnutrition and anemia threatened to topple me over while grocery shopping. These words sang through my anxious thoughts while I faced tests, procedures and surgeries in the hospital.
At the end of June, my doctor had sent me back to the hospital with the hope that the surgeons would insert a new feeding catheter and have me out in time for our anniversary. As it turned out, my beaten up circulatory system didn’t cooperate. Surgeon after surgeon took their turns trying to save my life. Time and time again they failed.
The doctors tried their best to coax my balky digestive tract back into motion. Thirty year of fighting a motility disorder had kept me in close touch with doctors, hospitals and medical gobbleddy-gook. When Gary arrived at my hospital door on our 30th wedding anniversary, we barely spoke. Weren’t we supposed to be in Maui or the Bahamas or on a cruise? Instead he held my hand through the bed rails and we watched TV while the clock ticked off the hours.
Five weeks later, I made it back home. I struggled from bed to the recliner in the front room, dragging an intravenous pole, pump and food behind me. I spent my days stitching needlepoint in front of the TV. My husband searched for work on the computer because he had given up his job in despair when his employers gave him no family time to stay with me in the hospital. But that was two years ago and now all I could feel was gratitude that once more My Savior had chosen to preserve my life.
I had prayed, my friends, family and church had prayed and lots of people had helped to keep us going through that lean year. My sister-in-law, Donna, realized that some of my medical problems came from mold growing in the duplex we rented. So my brother, Greg, and she decided to buy a new home for us to rent from them to get us into a healthier situation. When they proposed this just 6 months after I’d been released from the hospital, I could not believe it.
The developer built our home from a simple concrete slab into a beautiful new abode for us. We moved in almost a year to the day after my release from the hospital. I didn’t think I would have strength enough to move. On that first night I looked at our furniture in place and realized that once more God had found His way of providing. Eventually He even opened the door for us to buy it from Greg and Donna. Job demonstrated for us the example of believing in the Lord in the face of life’s difficulties. In a different way, God made it plain with my life that He holds the master plans for each of us in His hands.
I whistled while I prepared our anniversary dinner in the now green kitchen. A simple meal really, just a single steak to share served with a baguette, baked potatoes and broccoli on the side and a home-made apple pie for dessert. No sandy beaches or cruise ship meals here, but just exactly what we needed when we needed it.
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