Today is Maely Bonita Sarai Hernandez’ 12th birthday and thanks to her host family, she will enjoy her very first birthday party. It has been a busy week for her. She left the hospital just over a week ago after a very successful surgery, and has quickly learned how to walk on crutches. Which is a good thing because the original plan called for her to be in a wheelchair for a couple of months. Picturing Maely in a wheel chair brings back scary memories of my near death experience as she bore down on me in my John Deere mower laughing gleefully as I scrambled for my life (see previous episode). I doubt if there would have been much left of Kevin and Gaby’s house by the time she graduated from a wheel chair to crutches.
She recently attended her first Halloween party (dressed as an Indian Princess) and we can only imagine what must be going through her mind as she continues to discover the wonders of our world here in the 21st century. You know, I have always been fascinated by the dimension of time and the prospect of time travel. Presented with that opportunity, some would choose to go forward in time in order to return with insight that could be converted into instant wealth via the stock market or the lottery. Call me twisted, but if I had the chance, I would choose to go back in time and see history as it really occurred and not just as it was recorded through the lens of human bias. Perhaps that’s why I have been so moved by Maely’s story. Here is a little girl, that up until a few weeks ago, lived in a world that has been pretty much unchanged for the last 300 years. No electricity, no indoor plumbing, no phones, no vehicles, no computers, cell phones, television or radios. Her life is no different than was her grandmothers, or her grandmothers, grandmother. And now she has been transported forward into time, into a world that she couldn’t have imagined was possible. Her wide eyed wonder at our world has given me a new appreciation for all that we have, and all that I have taken for granted.
I mean, stop and think about it for a moment. When was the last time you stopped to marvel at the world around you? We get so caught up in the hustle and bustle of our fast paced lifestyle that we fail to stop and enjoy the moment. It seems we are always looking ahead to some event in the future, or reminiscing about the past and fail to realize that Today, is the Tomorrow, we were worried about Yesterday! We can learn a lot from the Maely’s of the world, but only if we make the time to focus on what really counts. For example:
It had been raining here in Northwest Washington for the last two weeks straight and after living here for 10 years….you get used to it…..more like you learn to tolerate it. Anyway, its that time of year when the days are getting shorter, the mornings are getting colder and the leaves are turning their timely shades of red and gold. I had just come home from a long day at work and immediately began working on next years plans for The King’s Storehouse. There I sat at our home office desk with my back to the window and my face buried in my computer screen. Suddenly the sun broke through the clouds and shafts of light burst through the window and filled the office with a warm glow…but I was too busy to be distracted by it. I continued to focus on spreadsheets and word documents until I was forced to pause for a moment while waiting for a file to load. I leaned back in my chair, stretched my arms over my head and just happen to glance out the office window. Words cannot describe the beauty of what I saw, so I have attached a photo and will let that explain why I did what I did next.
I grabbed my camera out of the desk drawer and bolted out of the office, ran down the hall, charged into the garage and shot out the back door into the back yard….all the while yelling for my wife to come take a look! Before me, was the most beautiful double rainbow I had ever seen in my entire 53 years upon this earth. It seemed close enough to touch and the colors so bright, I could almost hear them! I was so awestruck by the beauty of the moment, I almost forgot to start taking pictures. By the time I had taken a half dozen photos, the clouds moved back in covering the sun and the brilliant hues of the rainbow quickly faded as if they had never existed.
You know, life is a lot like that! How many times have we missed out on fleeting, yet life changing glimpses of God’s creation, because we were too caught up in the man made cares of this world to look up from our computers, blackberry’s, TV.s and Ipods to notice? If I have learned nothing else from our little time traveler, Maely Bonita Sarai Hernnandez, I have learned that memories fade and the future is uncertain….but the present is ours…but only for a moment….to seize, or to squander. Life is short, MAKE IT COUNT!
Next entry – A letter for Maely and our hope and our prayer for her future
No comments:
Post a Comment