Best Laid Plans

For at least three months we’ve been planning a trip to the Nixon Museum with a favorite couple. Today was the day we were supposed to meet them there, but yesterday, Marc called and said there was a tiny problem: Carol had fallen during her usual morning walk and had broken her hip!  Oh my poor, super-active teacher friend, was laid up in the hospital with only two weeks until her classroom must be ready to go. Since we were planning to make the long drive to Yorba Linda anyway, we drove instead to Ontario to visit her after the surgery to put in three pins.

            We found her resting and looking quite lovely, and as still as I’d ever seen her. After discussing how she had somehow tripped on the tiny lip of a driveway in her neighborhood, her prognosis, and how long she would be using a walker (heaven forbid, but necessary), I asked, “How long did you lay on the driveway until you got help?”

She looked sheepish for some reason, and answered, “You’re going to be mad at me… After I found my phone, keys, and walking stick, I…”

            “Yes?” I asked. “That’s when you called 911, right?”

            “Well, I knew I was hurt, but I had a nail appointment to go to, so I hobbled home and asked Marc to take me.”

            “You walked home on a broken hip!!!?? Then you got your nails done, and finally went to the ER?” I was incredulous but not mad. Awed at her strength was more like it. When I had my hip surgery, it was all I could do, during the days just before it, to barely get around!  However, although there was no doubt it didn’t help the break to walk on it,  she was safe and sound, all stitched up, and had even started therapy. She really wants out of the hospital, and I’m sure she’ll make a break, no pun intended, from there as soon as possible. The hardest part now for her is to be calm about not being able to start her own classroom.

          Sometimes, it takes an extraordinary change in our best laid plans to slow us down enough to smell the flowers, appreciate our life, make us contemplate God’s plans for us, or all of the above.