In this day and age it is tough not to "get the message". It's not like in years gone by when someone had to throw a rock at your head to let you know they waned you to listen up. People no longer send up smoke signals or wrap notes around the foot of a bird when they have something to tell you. Thank goodness because in all those instances there is a really good chance you will not get the message because the wood for the fire is too wet to ignite or your carrier pigeon is the one pigeon in the coop who happens to have no sense of direction and ends up in Canada instead of Florida.
Lucky for us we live in such a technological world that our phones bring us an average of four thousand messages a minute. If you are lucky enough to have a signal on your phone to alert you of an incoming message you can be bombarded by a cacophony of sound every few seconds. My text message alert happens to be a whistle . . . WHOO HOO ! It's such a joy when someone sends me a group text so that not only will my phone whistle at me when the original message comes in but it will then keep alerting me when each and every one of the three hundred people in the group message respond. I came out of the shower the other night to find Dwayne with a pillow over his head trying to stop the noise caused by one of my friends sending out pictures of her little grandson to her entire contact list. The next twenty minutes were filled with "Adorable", " How Sweet", "Precious" messages from all over the country, (possibly the world), as the entire population of Guam responded to baby pictures. Having not left my phone in silent mode each message was signaled by a LOUD "Whoo Hoo" that could pierce the ear of Helen Keller. No wonder D took cover !
Unfortunately God does not have a "Whoo Hoo" to signal when HE has a message for me which He often does. The reason I get so many celestial messages is because I have so many many questions. Me, being me, often miss the answer to my questions and God then has to resend the message over and over until I do get it. This past month has been a particularly busy time for God and I must say he has done a stellar job getting back to me when I have asked for answers. In the case of a particular extended family issue that I have struggled with for over five years God finally made it abundantly clear what HE wanted me to do. A couple of weeks ago I once again was asking for guidance and I guess God had had enough so for the next three weeks EVERY sermon and reading during mass had the EXACT same message for me. I mean the answer to my prayers was spelled out over and over again so I really did get that message. FINALLY ! (I'm sure God had given me the same answer the first time I asked for help but I just wasn't seeing or hearing it. Talk about throwing a brick through my window . . . I hear you now God!)
Last week I needed some Heavenly help regarding my shoulder surgery that was scheduled for tomorrow. I've been plagued by deteriorating shoulder joint that is painful and restricting. I have had to adapt my life style to compensate for the limited movement and discomfort. Nine months ago I finally decided it was time to see an orthopedic doctor but didn't know who to go to. My initial thought was to see if my knee doctor would recommend someone because my knee doc was AMAZING and I would trust her to send me to someone as good as herself. But then I got lazy and just called a doctor I had seen a couple of years ago about my hand. She is listed as, "shoulder to hand" specialist and I did like her so that's where I went. She did x-rays and had me do an MRI which resulted in scheduling surgery for early January of this year. That's about when God started sending me messages. Things started popping up that caused me to reschedule the surgery until March. Now as it was getting down to crunch time I had to return to the surgeon who then sent me for all sorts of pre-op testing. The first road block was when I arrived for the visit with my surgeon she wasn't there. Who ever had rescheduled me from January booked me an appointment on a day when the doctor was in surgery. Time is now passing and the window of opportunity for all the required tests is slowly closing. I returned a couple of days later to try again and was left waiting TWO hours in the exam room for an 8:45 AM appointment. This was bad enough but I had made an other appointment with my GP for more required testing and that appointment was at 11:00. I saw the surgeon for all of three minutes and raced out to my next doctor. Once there I was told I had to have blood work done AND a chest x-ray. That meant having to make two additional appointments at two different locations. I am now thirteen days away from surgery and counting. Next came the phone call from the hospital where the surgery would be done telling me I had to make an appointment with them to come in to register and have a MSRA test. I ALSO needed to make an appointment to take their two hour Pre-Op CLASS that would inform me of what exactly would happen once I entered their doors on the day of my surgery. (Like I have never been in a hospital for surgery before!) I made all these appointments and went for my hospital registration meeting which took forever. At this point I am starting to wonder if God is trying to tell me something. I really started to get the message when I got the call from my surgeons office a nine days before surgery informing me I had tested positive for the MSRA virus and would have to treat it with five days of antibiotic before I could have surgery and then only after being RE tested to make sure it was gone. (All that at least got me out of the 2 hour class which I was able to take on line. I finished it in under ten minutes!) I started the medicine on Tuesday and finished on Saturday but could not be retested until Monday because the lab is not open on Sunday. When I called my surgeons office on Friday to confirm the testing plan for 7 AM Monday morning the assured me the lab request had been sent in and if I had this done FIRST THING IN THE MORNNG they would have the results in 48 hours which would still barely allow me to have the surgery scheduled for 49 hours from then. Now I am REALLY starting to wonder if I am on the right path with all this so I start asking God for a sign telling me if I should or should not go ahead with the surgery. There was no divine intervention at mass this weekend so I took that as a "go ahead" from God. UNTIL . . .
Monday morning I am up at 6AM and out the door by 6:30 without waking Dwayne. I arrived at the hospital at 6:45, the lab opens at seven but NO ONE has any orders from my doctor to do the test ! The poor girl behind the desk at the hospital went through all her files, she checked the fax machine, checked with her associates and there was NOTHING from my surgeons office which would not be open for another TWO hours. GOD HAD SENT ME MY MESSAGE ! I was so calm, thanked the girl and returned home to read the paper until D woke up at 8:00. (I think he was more upset about the whole thing than I was.) I really felt as if I now knew what I was supposed to do, When I called the surgeons office later that morning to cancel surgery and all future contact with their office the girl asked me to share my reason for that decision. I was super calm when I explained to them how poorly they had handled the whole experience and all the things they had done wrong.
I HOPE THEY GOT THE MESSAGE !
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