A few days ago, I mentioned being ill. Most of the symptoms have passed by now, but I'm still holding on to some congestion and persistent coughs. To mitigate this, I've been using Halls cough drops. I like Halls, not for their flavor (I'm sure I could get equally good flavor elsewhere) or for their effectiveness (ditto), but for their trademarked "PEP TALK IN EVERY DROP."
The wrapper of each Halls cough drop has encouraging phrases like "You got this!" and "Go get it!" One that I've gotten frequently recently, the last three times in a row, in fact, is "Hi-five yourself." I kind of figure that, when the universe gives you such advice three times in a row, it's time to start taking a hint. So I did it.
Giving myself a high-five wasn't just clapping. When I clap, I bring the palm of my left hand together with the fingers of my right hand. I get some pretty good sound that way. But when I high-five someone, I try to make my palm hit theirs, so that's what I did.
I brought my palms together.
And it turned out that just high-fiving myself was not the hint that "the universe" wanted me to take.
Too often, when I have a problem, I just deal with it as well as I can. I endure it, I muscle through it, or I may make some small effort to solve it, but I almost never ask for anyone's help with it, not even God's. Bringing my palms together reminded me that I haven't really been praying for help overcoming my illness or any of my other problems for that matter, even though I could really use it. I've been to stubborn and proud to ask for help, and I assumed that my problems and I were unworthy of God's attention.
But I was wrong. God, somehow, bent the laws of probability to arrange for a "random" phrase to come to me three times, knowing that doing so would lead me to the message He really wanted me to hear.
I should pray more often. And I'm impressed that God found a way to use the wrappers of a handful of cough drops to tell me that.
No comments:
Post a Comment