Five Minute Friday: View

Five Minute Fridays are the beautiful, unscripted moments that happen between Thursday night at the FMFParty on Twitter and for days and days after as post after post of inspiration and encouragement gets linked up at Lisa Jo Baker’s site here. Writers and joy abound and it’s a great place to be.

This Week: View

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It wasn’t where I wanted to be. In fact, I would have rather been almost anywhere else on the planet. But I’d promised. Promised my daughter that we’d go to the fair that year. It’d been a few years … we’d had some lean desert times and hadn’t done anything fun for a while. But that year – that year we had free tickets and a little money – so we should go. Right?

Almost right. Except a few months before, I’d had a conversation with my doctor – the first one in seven years who had listened seriously to my concerns about joint issues and pain. He’d run the right tests – but mostly listened, which in my opinion was worth so much more, and we had answers. Complicated answers. Answers we’re still working to unravel. But answers that mean walking is not something I take lightly or for granted anymore. I can walk into work. I can walk (mostly) through Costco. I can walk into church. Much more than that and it’s just not happening for me. So walking all day around the largest fair west of the Mississippi – well, that was hardly even in my range of possibility. But I’d promised.

From the Grange Exhibits - My favorite part of the fair

So plan B. Or C, D, or wherever this fell in the line of plans.

Plan W. W for wheelchair. Might as well have been plan S – as in smash my pride to bits. Or plan H – for humiliation should I run into any living person that I’ve ever known. Or plan O – as in “oh my goodness there’s no way on this earth I’m getting into one of those things at my age.”

I wrestled and fought (like a lion on the inside) and prayed so hard (God, would you please consider just a small miracle before September of this year?), but in the end, went to the Fair in the chair. After about thirty minutes of sitting tensely, I loosened up and admitted that everyone wasn’t stopping to stare right at me. My husband and daughter had no qualms or embarrassment about pushing me around (no, that was all me). And in the end, the view from the chair made me reconsider a lot of things I take for granted. And walking is the very least of them.

I’m not permanently trapped in a wheelchair. And I’m working on getting better. I still have so much available to me and going for me. Not everyone does. And for a few hours that day, I got to consider what it’s like to not have everything at your disposal. To see life for just a moment from the viewpoint of someone who might be considered the least of these. It changed me.

To be continued …

Stop

In all fairness to the rules, I have to stop this here. It's a good thing I can still type fairly quickly. But I've been wanting to explore this topic, so I'm sure I'll be back someday soon. Stay tuned.

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