Encore!!

As an Occupational Therapy Assistant, I look for routines and habits with my patients. Those habits and routines make up a portion of the Occupational Profile and give me insight into my patient. I can also use those to my patient's advantage when attempting to complete a task.  Sometimes I ask how he or she completed a task prior to injury. Even more frequently, I watch to see what the individual will do when facing a task. Getting dressed is a perfect example. Everyone completes this task differently. Now imagine a hip fracture and a change of environment (the hospital) and the routine becomes more complex. No more bending forward to place those legs through. Suddenly new routines have to be established; now a reacher and sock aid join the session. The task is the same but the processes changes.

Lately I have had a lot of hip fracture patients and have been teaching a lot of adaptive equipment use. The days have been long and monotonous. I come home tired and emotionally drained. I think and hope that this is just a season.  Soon enough the caseload will change and spring will come. In the meantime, I am really enjoying my weekends staying cozy and warm at home. Every now and then I sort through another box. The best weekends are spent hanging out with the boys and not working :)

Spring is slowly advancing; the days grow longer and longer and the temperatures gradually climb. This means I get to see the sun rise and set each day. I am amazed and encouraged every time. My mind drifts back to G.K. Chesterton's passage from Orthodoxy. This is a somewhat lengthy passage but a worthy read! 

 "The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning, but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction. Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specifically enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, 'Do it again'; and the grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony.

But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony.

It is possible that God says every morning, 'Do it again' to the sun; and every evening, 'Do it again' to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore."

 I really think God specializes in occupational therapy. I'll have to blog more about that another day because it is rather interesting to think about. But back to Chesterton's passage. The Father thrives on repetition but that repetition varies as well. The sun greets and departs each day; the moon and stars file across the dark sky. But the tilt of the axis and the changes in the atmosphere as well as a billion other reasons cause each sunrise to appear differently. God does it again and again and yet there is always some way in which it is different from the last time.

How do I fit in this encore? As the audience member, can I see these variations? Do my eyes behold how He changes it up for me? Or do I just see monotony-on and on and on? I've been looking for those routines as well as His subtle changes. I am continually amazed. I wish that I could capture it but there is no possible way! Books could never contain it and photographs could never fully do justice to His majesty!

The other day I was moaning and groaning on my way into work. Sometimes I do that... true story. I can be a whiner. My whining that day mainly consisted of blah blah blah... here I go again...blah blah blah. The sunrise caught my eye. Sigh... He does it again and I am amazed. What? Again. He does it again. And not only that, He is asking me to do it again. Will I participate in the dance?

"It may be that our little tragedy has touched the gods, that they admire it from their starry galleries, and that at the end of every human drama man is called again and again before the curtain." (G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy)

 
Perhaps our boring moments are not at all boring to Him. Does He look for our subtle changes and find joy? What makes it more interesting to Him? This thought gave me the boost of energy I needed in that moment and in this season. How can I view each day as an opportunity to perform for Him even in the routine? How can I surprise Him? This has literally transformed those blah moments into powerful opportunities to serve Him.

And He in turn blesses me with His ENCORE!