“I Am a Busy Person or The Appreciation of Sunbeams”
I long time ago, a back injury challenged my identity. Fortunately, I gained some spiritual insights...
“I Am a Busy Person or The Appreciation of Sunbeams,” essay, Tapestry, CBC Radio, aired June 2003
A few years ago, on a Monday morning, I bent down to pick something up off my hall floor – a simple action, the kind we do fifty times a day – but when I tried to get up, I couldn’t. My back had given out. I hobbled off to the chiropractor and found myself sobbing all over his table. It wasn’t because of the pain – I can deal with pain. These tears came for another reason; they came because I was stopped. I had errands to run, phonecalls to make, kids to feed, projects to launch; I had plans. If I could barely move, what was I going to do?
Me being me, what I tried to do was carry on as best I could. On Wednesday I had three meetings scheduled – one for my work, one for my kids’ school, and one for church. Surely I could get to these meetings, I told myself. Or perhaps I could cancel one – but which one? Perhaps I could get someone else to chair the one meeting I was supposed to chair…. The fear, deep down inside, irrational as it was, emerged: If I cancelled, everyone would think I was a slacker. I had no idea who everyone was, but the term encapsulated anyone of any importance: all the people who would attend the meetings; all the people associated with anyone who would attend the meetings; all the people waiting out there for me to slip up, to finally accuse me of failure. In short, all those people who own the critical voices in the peanut gallery crammed inside the back of my head; everyone.
Finally it came to me that barely being able to walk was actually a pretty valid reason to cancel out of things. Grudgingly, guiltily, one by one, I removed myself from my commitments.
By Thursday night, walking was no longer an option, and I could only crawl upstairs to the bathroom, and when I could not get myself up onto the toilet, I sobbed and sobbed on the bathroom floor. Like many people before and since, I asked, “Why, God? Why me? What do you want of me?”
The next morning, my back was no better, but something in my brain had shifted. I didn’t even try to get out of bed. The kids got themselves ready for school. My husband delivered breakfast and lunch before and between clients. I had moved beyond frustration, finally trading one reality for another.
I lay in bed, where a sunbeam found me and drenched me with its warmth. I napped, read a Maeve Binchy novel, or just lay there, thinking. The startling thing was, I felt as if I were being held in the palm of God’s hand. I did not – could not – do a thing, and the world kept going. I had mistakenly believed that I kept it spinning with all my efforts, but there I was, helpless, but held, warmed by a sunbeam, fed and loved.
Slowly, surely, I realized that whatever God requires of us, it has little to do with being busy, and a lot more to do with the ability to appreciate a sunbeam.
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