I’m paying attention to the voices swirling around me. Monday evening I spent hours in the brightly lit halls and examining rooms of Egleston Hospital with my daughter-in law, Cat, and my grandson, Keaton, as the medical professionals treated the symptoms of a four year old child who could only say, “Here” to the doctor’s question, “Where does it hurt?” I watched in profound respect as caring nurses, technicians, and pediatricians sifted through the fear, concern, worry, panic, and distress billowing through the emergency room to attune their ears to the still, small voice coming from a sick child. Every professional assumption was double-checked; every test result verified; all previous questions reiterated before the attending pediatrician offered a diagnosis. Listening is hard work!
Blissed out on morphine, a groggy Keaton plied me with questions about yogurt popsicles and power rangers. “Grandma, do you like yogurt popsicles with three gummy spiders in them – one at the top, one at the bottom, and one at the very bottom?” he asked me as he waited for his ultrasound. What? “Grandma, you know you have to be a pink power ranger because you’re a girl, right?” he asserted with much authority. Why? It can be difficult to follow the flow of a stream of consciousness conversation with a sick child, and the temptation was to dismiss his ramblings as drug-induced.
Driving home in the early morning hours, I recalled Jesus scolding his disciples who caved in to the temptation to dismiss the ramblings of children clamoring for his attention, all for good, logical, practical reasons, we adults presume! “Let the children come to me!” he bellowed to his startled followers. And then, squatting to meet them at eye level, Jesus listened, REALLY listened to the stream of consciousness conversations of the sticky-fingered, smudgy-faced, sweaty, young children eagerly pawing his cloak. In the whirlwind of questions about birds of the air and lilies of the field and lost coins and missing lambs and runaway brothers and teaspoons of yeast and loaves of bread and pesky weeds and falling seeds, Jesus heard his Father speak.
Clutching my steering wheel and rubbing my eyes to stay awake, I decided that listening IS hard work, but for faithful people, it is work that offers gifts to those with “ears to hear.” This is what I heard beside the hospital bed of a beloved grandson who obviously has conversations with Jesus:
“Trust that our Divine Confectioner fills our days with unimaginable surprises. Eat yogurt popsicles!”
“Believe that our Divine Creator designs us with a purpose in mind. We CAN be pink (or any other color) power rangers so suit up!”
How grateful I am to have heard the still, small One True Voice who promises the kingdom of heaven in unexpected places!
P.S. Keaton, the red power ranger, is home, exercising his superhero powers, and feeling better!