All Roads...

I have logged many hours in hospitals and have come close to reading every magazine that has ever been published while parked on my hind end in waiting rooms.  I have uncovered the birdwatcher in me by thumbing through outdated copies of “Birds and Blooms” and had once even thought I might like to try my hand at a round of golf after reading an entire year’s worth of “Golf Digest” at the neurologist’s office. (That was a fleeting idea and I blame that monetary lapse of reason on low blood sugar due to the lunch-hour timing of the appointment.)  For the most part, the magazine selections in waiting rooms stink and I blame the scant choices at doctor’s offices on women. Around the first of every month, receptionists all across the country come out from behind the plexi-glass of their registration desks to shuck all of the fresh magazines out onto the coffee tables of waiting rooms. If you are lucky enough to get an appointment during the first week of the month, you have half a chance of getting to read a “People” magazine or another prime read before other patients walk off with them. For some, it’s hard to think about picking up your purse and coat after being paged by the nurse midway through Brad and Angelina’s latest adoption.  I blame the disappearance of magazines on women simply because we have purses and there are no reads in a doctor’s office that men are willing to steal by shoving down the tops of their jeans. If you are the unlucky schmuck, like myself, who always seems to be weeks shy of the new releases, you will be doomed to sift through the leftovers in the racks on the wall. We pick them up to read despite our advance lack of interest in the available titles. Though on rare occasion I have found a recipe for a paper plate art project in a children’s Highlights magazine that I thought I would like to try, I have never found enough enjoyment in it to make me want to roll it up and cram into my purse for later. Seasoned waiting room veterans are easy to pick out in a clinic or hospital. They are the ones who come with a tote bag containing a knitting project, a laptop computer, or the latest Dan Brown novel.  Though I spend much time in hospitals with the care of my husband, I have yet to obtain “the tote.”  I have shoved bananas into my purse and have smuggled in a peanut butter sandwich or two as I do plan ahead for hunger.  But when it comes to the passage of time in waiting rooms, I guess you could call me hopeful. I am always hopeful that there will be enough periodical reading scattered on coffee tables to peak my interest and cover whatever appointment duration we have ahead of us.  I am most often disappointed when after I have overturned all waiting room furniture in hopes of shaking loose a “Glamour” magazine, I sadly discover that all of my pillaging produces nothing but another year’s worth of “Birds and Blooms.”

The other day, I was in the hospital visiting a friend in the ICU when I had an “aha” moment. That week has been an especially trying one in our home and my mind had been abuzz with worries and “what ifs.”I was standing casually at the counter of the nurse’s station flipping through a newspaper when I overheard a conversation from behind the pulled curtain of a patient’s room.  My back was to the curtain and I continued to peruse the paper as the conversation carried on between an adult woman and a young girl.  I could hear the inhalations and collapses of the ventilator that was running in the room they were visitors in.  Heart monitors beeped and oxygen flushed through tubes and hoses that were threaded in all of the patient rooms of the unit.  The ICU is a special area of the hospital where patients are in really tumultuous situations and can be admitted for anything from drug overdoses to heart failure to severe burns.  It is a place that begs for healing and mercy and a place that floats on the hope that those notions will manifest in the bodies and hearts of the patients who lie in beds there.

As I stood and flipped though the noisy newspaper, it became clear to me that the woman and the girl in the curtained room were working on a crossword puzzle to pass the time while their loved one dozed, hitched to the switchboard of hoses that sustained the ventilator. “Okay,” the woman said, “our next word has four letters. Second letter is “o” and the last letter is “e.”  Your clue is: All roads lead to ______.”  “Easy,” I thought to myself. “Rome. Everybody knows that. Say Rome.”  The dialogue had ceased as I envisioned the little girl who remained invisible to me, scanning the horizon for the right answer, her young brain unacquainted with Rome or sayings of antiquity. Spryly, she piped up. “Well that’s easy, mom! Duh! Hope! All roads lead to hope!” I froze hard and was unable to budge from the classifieds while I processed what I had just overheard.  I quickly tossed out scenarios in my mind that couldn’t possibly have a hopeful ending.  Could a life sentence in prison lead to hope? Sure. Look at all of the wonderful prison ministries that spring forth from the hearts of hopeful inmates like Karla Faye Tucker.  Could a terminal illness lead to hope?  Sure. Miracles happen and a healing could come and if it didn’t, my hope isn’t in my physical body anyway! We have been dying since the day we were born.  Physical bodies pass away and isn’t my greatest hope in Christ?  I left the ICU that afternoon with a renewed sense of hope and applied the “all roads lead to hope” concept to every situation in my own life that I could think of. When I had exhausted my own circumstances, I began applying it to the circumstances of friends and family who had situations in which their own hope was waning. 

Later that afternoon, I spent some time at the gym hammering out a little stress and letting my mind process the whole hope thing.  While barely hanging on for the final fifteen minutes on the stair-climber, I noticed a woman on a treadmill in the row directly in front of me. She was white-haired and plump and reminded me of Mrs. Claus.  She had a neatly matched sweat suit on and her sneakers were perfectly white. She walked on the treadmill, hardly breaking a sweat, but pumped her arms steadily at her side as if she had a bake sale to get to!  She had a magazine opened on the treadmill’s console and she read it while she wiggle-walked.  She was reading a muscle magazine, the kind that bodybuilders and the scrawny teen boys that are eager to become bodybuilders subscribe to.  She was intensely studying the pages of rippled abdominals on the men and women who posed in bathing suits made of nothing more than what appeared to be licorice strings.  They were heavily spray-tanned and flexed in horrific poses that made their faces look contorted with agony.  The article headline blared “Your can achieve your best body now!”  Surely the sweet, round lady who looked like a first-grade teacher who was good at bandaging knees and broken hearts did not spend $6 of her own money to buy this magazine in the hopes that she would actually be able to get fitness tips out of it.  I hoped that a staff member of the gym would pass by and notice her reading this magazine and kindly take it from her and remind her of the safety policies that are in place.  (Hack squats are not for folks in rainbow sweat suits!) Perhaps like me, she was at the mercy of the reading rack next to the sports drink machine that only supported the few magazines that others had not carted back into the locker rooms to toss into their gym bags.

Although I have never seen a “Birds and Blooms” at the gym, it is entirely possible they have been consolation reading material. Perhaps Mrs. Claus just didn’t feel like listening to the rap music that blared overhead from the large box speaker hanging from the rafters and decided that learning how to do a perfect power lift would be a better way to pass the time.   Or perhaps she was hopeful.  I applied the “all roads lead to hope” concept to Mrs. Claus in the rainbow sweat suit. Was there hope for her?  Of course.  She was not a good candidate for a future photo shoot with the muscle-head magazine, but I was certain that a renewed sense of confidence and a way to hammer out her tensions would be a side-effect of her hopeful thinking. Besides, maybe she was hoping for a chance to put a little wear on the perfectly white sneakers I pictured she had been saving in the closet until January 1^st.

There is a sign in my home that hangs above my sofa that reads: “Hang your hope on God.” It is true; all roads lead to hope.  What our eyes see is often conceptualized through a heart that lacks hope.  We feel desperate when the answers don’t come; when the world tells us that we aren’t favored to win.  Be hopeful and keep your eyes on the cross.

Dashboard Confession:  Dear God, I have put my hope in others and of things with worldly value.  I confess, Lord, that my heart has lacked hope.  Thank you for reminding us that the greatest hope we have is the cross and that no matter the path we have taken to reach the cross, Your road leads to the hope we have in Christ.