Doxology and Ducks

There’s a duck in my backyard. I’m not sure where he came from or how he ended up here, but indeed there he is. However, let me start at the beginning.

The snow started falling last Sunday afternoon. I had dozed off in the recliner after church and awoke to the sound of Chuck putting another log on the fire. "Look outside," he told me; the ground was already covered and the snow was falling hard. By evening we were totally snowed in and still it continued to fall.

To all my friends that live north of me, you probably by now have had enough snow to last you a lifetime. But to this southern girl, a snowfall is still magic. Unfortunately, living in a city unaccustomed to snow has its drawbacks. The extent of our snow maintenence consists of a handful of salt/sand trucks that try to hit the main intersections and bridges. Everywhere else, we are on our own.

The other unfortunate circumstance is that people here are unaccustomed to driving on snow. To venture out onto these icy roads is to watch your life flash before your eyes, so I called in to work and spent Monday curled up in front of the fire crocheting. More snow fell on Monday afternoon and by nightfall we had almost 6 inches of magic on the ground. 

I called in to work again on Tuesday morning and spent another snow day sipping coffee and watching movies. By midmorning the clouds scattered and the sun shone in a sky of china blue. By nightfall, the roads had cleared enough for me to know I’d be working the next day.

The rest of the week passed by in a blur of sick patients and chemo orders; the clinic was overwhelmed with trying to work in patients who had been unable to keep their appointments during the snow. On Thursday night, my last patient left just before 6:00; I walked back to my desk and surveyed the wreckage there. Charts and papers were piled haphazardly where I had flung them. Orders were waiting to be put into the computer and faxed to where they belonged. I had a stack of phone calls to return, and prescriptions to call in.

My friend Cheri and I were the last ones there; she finally finished  around 8pm. I just sighed and kept working. Vaguely in the distance I heard the night shift housekeepers arrive; I heard them calling to one another in spanish, and the sound of the floor sweeper start up. Finally I finished up just after 9pm. Snapping off my desk light and wrapping my scarf around my neck, I  called it quits for the night. I was too tired to think anymore.

Stepping outside the back door, the cold air almost took my breath away. There were still patches of ice and snow on the ground as I picked my way carefully past the new construction, then across the street to the parking lot. My little silver car was the only one there. As I unlocked the door and put my bag inside, I was wishing I was already home and tucked into my own warm bed; I was still another hour away from that.

When my alarm went off Friday morning I thought it was a cruel joke. I had only had four and a half hours of sleep, and wondered where I was going to get the energy and the will to go back and do it all again. Some days I have to reach really deep inside me; some days I have to  ignore my own aches and pains and my lack of sleep. I just do it without thinking; I have long ago stopped asking myself how I feel about it. I just do it because this is what I do.

Friday was a repeat of Wednesday and Thursday; too many patients and too few nurses. I try to care for everyone to the best of my ability; some of my patients are much needier than others. I hug them goodbye, wishing them safe travel, and reminding them that I love them. I have learned to do that, because I never know which ones I will never see again. I never know which ones will leave an open and empty place in my heart.

By 5:30 I had finished my last patient and cleared most of my desk. Chuck and I had a date for dinner and I was more than ready to leave, but as I pulled my bag out of my overhead bin I found a schedule I had forgotten to give to my last patient.  Sighing deeply, I put on my coat and picked up the schedule. The only right thing to do was take it to the infusion center and ask them to give it to him when he arrived for his appointment with them the next day. So….off I went, through the waiting room to the elevators, down four floors to the parking deck, across the cold parking deck , down the ramp and across the street to the Cancer Center, through the huge lobby to the elevators, up four floors and around the corner to the infusion room. After dropping off the calendar, I reversed the long process to return to my desk.

"That went well," I said to Cheri when I returned. "Where did you go?" she asked me. "Over to the infusion center."  "What for?" she asked. "A job interview," I told her. She looked at me incredulously; "Really?" she asked. "No," I told her, "but I wish you would start that rumor."   We were still laughing when I left.

An hour later, I met Chuck at the restaurant. I had circled the parking lot twice before I had  found a parking space; the line of hungry customers was out the door. Chuck squeezed his way through the crowd to put our name on the list. Squeezing his way back, he told me there would be a 35 to 40 minute wait. "Let’s go somewhere else," I said, grabbing his hand and pulling him out the door. Outside inthe cold he asked "Where do you want to go?" Looking around, I spotted Hardees across the street and impulsively said "Let’s just go there." So that is how my beloved and I came to be sitting across from one another at an orange plastic table eating chicken sandwiches instead of the quiet steak dinner I had envisioned.

Our waitress at Hardees was delightful, serving our food with the grace and skill of someone working at a five star restaurant. Pulling a $20.00 bill from my wallet, I folded it into a tiny square and dropped it into her hand as we were leaving. "Thank you for being so sweet to us," I told her. It was a perfect ending to a hard week; it was a perfect way to grind my heel into the head of the enemy.

……which brings me to today, and the duck in my backyard. He obviously didn’t belong there, but that’s where he found himself. By design or by divine intervention, he was truly a duck out of water. I watched him as he marched around in my yard, surveying the dead grass and little bits of snow that are still there. He finally chose a spot near the woods and curled up to wait.

Sometimes I find myself in places and situations where I don’t seem to belong. I’m cut from different cloth, you see. Sometimes I feel like a duck out of water, surveying the sights around me. But I am where I am by divine intervention; I have been chosen and placed where my Father has ordained. And so I strive to be pleasing in His sight, until such a time as He whispers to me that it’s time to fly away. And then I will.