Dirty Rocks and Grub Worms
As soon as they burst through the emergency room doors, I knew something was wrong. The parents, still in damp bathing suits, almost threw their limp two-year-old daughter at us and screamed something about a swimming pool.
Within moments, physicians, nurses and technicians swooped into Trauma Room One. In what can only be described as a coordinated frenzy, the resuscitation team slapped wires from the heart monitor onto the child's chest. They inserted a plastic tube into her throat and forced air into her lungs. They pierced her veins with intravenous catheters and pushed emergency medications into her blood stream. In the corner of my eye I spotted the hospital chaplain standing quietly with the child's parents in the hallway, his arm around the dad's sagging shoulders.
But nothing we did -- no amount of drugs or machines or prayers brought her
back. Ten years later, I can still see the dad draped across his daughter's body as it lay on the hospital gurney. I can still hear her mom's convulsive sobs echo across the caverns of my memories.
During the three years I worked as a nurse in that emergency department, hundreds of desperate people tore through those same doors. They arrived in rusted-out Chevy pick-ups and high-gloss sedans. In ambulances, taxis and on foot, they came. The young and the old, rich and poor, educated and not-so-educated, blue-collars and executives -- I learned no one is guaranteed safe passage through human experience. Heartache slips in and out of life's shadows, and when it chooses its victim, neither power, money, prestige . . . nothing can restrain its hand.
I think it is because I've seen the tragedies rip so often into others, as I move past my fifty-fourth birthday, I find myself re-examining my own priorities. That's why the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip caught my attention.
Calvin is shoulders deep, busy shoveling dirt from a hole, while Hobbes, his
stuffed tiger watches.
"What have you found?" Hobbes asks.
Calvin's eyes sparkle. "A few dirty rocks, a weird root, and some disgusting grubs. There's treasure everywhere!"
At first, I smiled. Children find treasure in the most unlikely places and no one is surprised when they showcase rocks and worms. But, when I recognized another message in Calvin's treasure, my smile faded.
As a child, I also showcased things like rocks and roots. But now I am more sophisticated. Instead of grub worms, I showcase "real" treasure -- financial investments, university degrees, job prestige and a continuing litany of "bigger-better-more."
I could be quite content with those adult treasures -- if it were not for the gnawing memories of emergency rooms where bigger-better-more never comforts those who convulse with grief at the bedside of their dead. I learned long ago that a hospital room is where everything we hold dear to ourselves washes out: money, popularity, passions, careers -- like charred timbers after a house fire, a death-bed places so many things in clear perspective. Perhaps that's one reason the Psalmist prayed, "So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom" (Psalm 90:12).
I don't believe it coincidental that the day I read Calvin, I was also studying my way through Ecclesiastes. King Solomon had it all -- money, power, prestige. And he used them all to satisfy every whim that tantalized his flesh and thoughts. "All that my eyes desired I did not refuse them," he wrote in chapter 2. "I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure." For years, possibly decades, he fed his lust for bigger-better-more. Not until he neared the end of his life did he recognize the true worth of his treasures.
"Vanity of vanities," he called them. He could have just as easily called
them dirty rocks, weird roots and grub worms.
To his credit, Solomon accepted the truth about his treasures before it was
too late to make things right. Before his body returned to dust (Ecclesiastes 12:7) he discovered the bankruptcy of bigger-better-more. At last, he understood true treasure. "The conclusion, when all has been heard, is: fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person. For God will bring every act to judgement . . . whether it is good or evil" (v. 13-14).
I taped the Calvin cartoon to my refrigerator door. It will remain there a long time, a reminder to check my spiritual bank account day by day. It will remind me to ensure my real treasure -- my relationship with Christ -- matures with every deposit of personal Bible study, prayer and fellowship with other believers.
Someday I might be on the other end of the emergency room doors. I don't want to discover, at that moment, my treasures were nothing more than dirty rocks and grub worms.
rich
rmaffeo@comcast.net
Within moments, physicians, nurses and technicians swooped into Trauma Room One. In what can only be described as a coordinated frenzy, the resuscitation team slapped wires from the heart monitor onto the child's chest. They inserted a plastic tube into her throat and forced air into her lungs. They pierced her veins with intravenous catheters and pushed emergency medications into her blood stream. In the corner of my eye I spotted the hospital chaplain standing quietly with the child's parents in the hallway, his arm around the dad's sagging shoulders.
But nothing we did -- no amount of drugs or machines or prayers brought her
back. Ten years later, I can still see the dad draped across his daughter's body as it lay on the hospital gurney. I can still hear her mom's convulsive sobs echo across the caverns of my memories.
During the three years I worked as a nurse in that emergency department, hundreds of desperate people tore through those same doors. They arrived in rusted-out Chevy pick-ups and high-gloss sedans. In ambulances, taxis and on foot, they came. The young and the old, rich and poor, educated and not-so-educated, blue-collars and executives -- I learned no one is guaranteed safe passage through human experience. Heartache slips in and out of life's shadows, and when it chooses its victim, neither power, money, prestige . . . nothing can restrain its hand.
I think it is because I've seen the tragedies rip so often into others, as I move past my fifty-fourth birthday, I find myself re-examining my own priorities. That's why the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip caught my attention.
Calvin is shoulders deep, busy shoveling dirt from a hole, while Hobbes, his
stuffed tiger watches.
"What have you found?" Hobbes asks.
Calvin's eyes sparkle. "A few dirty rocks, a weird root, and some disgusting grubs. There's treasure everywhere!"
At first, I smiled. Children find treasure in the most unlikely places and no one is surprised when they showcase rocks and worms. But, when I recognized another message in Calvin's treasure, my smile faded.
As a child, I also showcased things like rocks and roots. But now I am more sophisticated. Instead of grub worms, I showcase "real" treasure -- financial investments, university degrees, job prestige and a continuing litany of "bigger-better-more."
I could be quite content with those adult treasures -- if it were not for the gnawing memories of emergency rooms where bigger-better-more never comforts those who convulse with grief at the bedside of their dead. I learned long ago that a hospital room is where everything we hold dear to ourselves washes out: money, popularity, passions, careers -- like charred timbers after a house fire, a death-bed places so many things in clear perspective. Perhaps that's one reason the Psalmist prayed, "So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom" (Psalm 90:12).
I don't believe it coincidental that the day I read Calvin, I was also studying my way through Ecclesiastes. King Solomon had it all -- money, power, prestige. And he used them all to satisfy every whim that tantalized his flesh and thoughts. "All that my eyes desired I did not refuse them," he wrote in chapter 2. "I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure." For years, possibly decades, he fed his lust for bigger-better-more. Not until he neared the end of his life did he recognize the true worth of his treasures.
"Vanity of vanities," he called them. He could have just as easily called
them dirty rocks, weird roots and grub worms.
To his credit, Solomon accepted the truth about his treasures before it was
too late to make things right. Before his body returned to dust (Ecclesiastes 12:7) he discovered the bankruptcy of bigger-better-more. At last, he understood true treasure. "The conclusion, when all has been heard, is: fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person. For God will bring every act to judgement . . . whether it is good or evil" (v. 13-14).
I taped the Calvin cartoon to my refrigerator door. It will remain there a long time, a reminder to check my spiritual bank account day by day. It will remind me to ensure my real treasure -- my relationship with Christ -- matures with every deposit of personal Bible study, prayer and fellowship with other believers.
Someday I might be on the other end of the emergency room doors. I don't want to discover, at that moment, my treasures were nothing more than dirty rocks and grub worms.
rich
rmaffeo@comcast.net
posted by rich at
12:38 AM
1 Comments:
Well said! And thanks for saying so. It is all true! But someday death will be no more...and it may come sooner than we think! All sorrow will be over and all will be joy and peace and love. The partings of this life over and no more separations...oh sometimes I can hardly wait! But not all we hope for are in the fold yet...so we wait with hope and expectation.
Elizabeth
By
Anonymous, at 12:39 AM
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