When life hands you a pause button

“Stop the world, I want to get off!”

Well, okay maybe it’s more like “stop the bus, I wanna get back on.”  But right now the reality is that no one knows the spirit of a mans own troubles except that man himself. Perhaps God is the only one who will ever understand the depth of another’s soul. 

When I collapsed in a heap on the floor after finding the puppy gate, there was no doubt something was broken. Inability to move is very suffocating. When the chiropractor invited my husband to peek at the X-ray and left me sitting, it was as if someone handed me a pause button. 

Not really. The pause button in life comes in many forms. A father with a broken hip? A company moving locations, a loved one with cancer, and the loss of a dream. The pause button happens for the most unassuming. Others seem to go right on with life. Children continue to grow up. Traffic still flows on the interstate. The news on the radio resumes it’s unbelievable coverage of protests and crazy people. 

The disasters continue to happen amd yet the defiant spirits rage on against the sovereign will of God. They attempt to erase history or pillage flood damaged neighborhoods. How do we take that pause button and sit for six weeks while bones heal?  The pause button of pain that includes three years of chemotherapy. Or perhaps it’s not really a pause button at all. 

And in the middle of ones break from normal daily activities, someone asks a question from their own fast moving train and the pause button gets accidently placed on fast forward. The mind cannot find a response. As if I am put on hold with the whole world on the other end of the receiver going about life with no clue the “hold-button” has been set in my life. 

I have been recovering from a fractured rib and a bruised rib. The pain at times drive me to the pain management box. At times it asked me to just do nothing. All my life I have been a doer. I have never sat amd watched television without something in my hands.  Crochet has been my do nothing. When the bruised muscles on my right side required me to sit and rest, leaving my crochet baskets on the opposite side of the room became the only option. 

Watching television wasn’t something I grew up doing. We were a family of readers. My father read, books, newspapers, field and stream magazines. My mother sewed and generally kept our home spotless. My sisters and I all learned piano, worked at odd jobs, did homework, and babysat the neighborhood children. Never mind that those children’s parents were either at work, at the bar or at the volunteer fire meeting-which in our small town was at the bar. 

There were occasional TV watching. We would go to a neighbors house and watch a required tv show for school. We also watched the classics at the holidays. Sound of music-anyone!  So when my phone has the worlds favorite movie app uploaded, I had the constant choice of watching my pause button.  

Pause to take out the dog. Pause to answer a text message. Pause to answer the phone call. Pause to lunch, bathroom or go get the mail. Pause. 

The final reality hit me hard the other day. No matter what pause button is handed to us, we are never really allowed to fully rest. Our final resting place is not here. Though life gives us a prolonged Sabbath rest, or sabbatical the rest of the world around us will march on. 

The pause button can only be experienced by the one who receives it. There is no choice. The is no control over the plans that we make. We have the pause button only for it’s appointed time. Six weeks to heal the bones. Three months to enjoy the summer. Three years to visit with doctors and nurses. Two weeks to house sit a patent. Whatever time the pause button is handed to a person whether it is definrd or not that time will not be given back. There is no rewind in life. 

There is no rewind. There is play, there is fast forward. There is pause, and there is stop. A sure end for everyone. We all have the inevitable end. But there is no rewind.  

Yet while the world marches on seemingly oblivious God has taught me one lesson these weeks. 

“Wait on the LORD; Be of good courage, And He shall strengthen your heart; Wait, I say, on the LORD!”

‭‭Psalms‬ ‭27:14‬ ‭NKJV‬‬ http://bible.com/114/psa.27.14.nkjv

While I sit in this side of my own plans and to do lists, God is , God is doing, and God is here. Whether I can feel Him or not, I do have the choice to believe He is both able to heal and to help me through this time of waiting.