The Bigger Picture Should Make You Feel Pretty Small

Today is just one of those days. You know what I mean? One of “those days” where you wake up at 8:00 (ish) and fall back asleep at 10:30 and sleep till 12:30. Then a couple hours later, you start to feel a headache coming on so you do everything you can think to do to prevent it. But, of course, you fail and end up spending the second half of the day—the only part of the day where you’re awake, I might add—in pain. You’re sweating up a storm, so you check your AC thermostat and even though you have it set to 75, it’s 80 degrees inside your house. It’s 100 degrees outside. There’s no relief. But you deal with it because it’s Sunday evening, and there’s nothing you can do about it today. So you decide to distract yourself on the computer but…oh wait. For some unknown reason, your Internet isn’t working. OK, fine! You go outside to throw the ball for the dogs but…oh wait! Sabre lost (or hid, we’re still working on it) all the balls except one, and he guards that one like it’s his long-lost brother. So now all you want to do is get in a nice air-conditioned car (an air conditioner that works properly, I might add), drive to a hotel with free wireless internet, stay in a nice cool room with free cable television, and never ever leave. But, of course, you don’t. Instead you type up a blog entry that you can’t post till the Internet starts working again, feeling ridiculously pathetic for complaining about such little things.

My parents were in a motorcycle accident on Saturday afternoon. They were on their way to a funeral when the front tire of the motorcycle blew out, and they went over the top. As soon as they fell off, a bunch of people came over to help them, flagged down an angkot (public transportation in Indonesia), and got my parents to the ER. Miraculously, my mom has very few injuries, considering the fall she took. The right side of her body is pretty beat up. Her right foot is very swollen, she can’t walk without being in pain, and she can’t drive. And just in general, she feels pretty sore. My dad, however, broke five ribs. He’s stuck in a hospital bed and is in excruciating pain. They say it will probably take 4 to 8 weeks for complete recovery. It’s hard for him to think that way, because he’s in such terrible pain without much hope for relief anytime soon. I hate being so far away. My mom tells me that there’s really nothing I could do if I were there, but 10,000 miles has never seemed quite this far. On a more positive note though, my parents have been extremely encouraged by all the people that have visited them in the hospital, and all the people praying for them all over the world. I’ve heard people say all sorts of negative things about Facebook, but I have to say, I think they’re all missing the bigger picture here. I posted a Facebook status about my parents’ accident and within a couple of hours, people in Alabama, Minnesota, Arizona, Mississippi, California, Texas, Indiana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Washington, New York, (and many others) and all throughout Indonesia and other countries around the world, were praying for them. What an incredible prayer chain! One status. That’s all it took! I sent an email to my extended family members, who then forwarded it on to more people, and so on and so forth. My mom received my email from a couple that used to live in Indonesia, asking for prayer from all of their contacts. Prayer is such a powerful thing, and to know that there are thousands of people praying for my parents is not only encouraging to them, but encouraging to me as well. And to those people that say they don’t like Facebook and they’re deleting their accounts, I’m not the person to go to for moral support.

So as you can see, complaining about being hot or not having internet (which just came back on, by the way), seems so trivial when you know your own daddy is laying in a hospital bed with five broken ribs. It makes me feel small and petty. And I sincerely hope that from now on, whenever I start to feel sorry for myself and lament about all my “first world problems,” that I’ll change my perspective a bit. Instead of being frustrated with an AC that doesn’t cool all that well, simply be grateful that I have a nice house to live in that has AC at all! Or instead of being irritated with horrible Texas summers, be grateful that summer eventually passes and the other three seasons are quite lovely here.

On a lighter note, my sisters are coming here tomorrow for a visit. They’re bringing me Indomie! Sabre is going to be 11 months old in three days. He’s almost a year old! Crazy! Tatum is handling her recovery quite incorrectly. She’s supposed to rest and take it easy this week. No playing or running or jumping…which is all she’s wanted to do since the drugs wore off on Friday afternoon. She clearly has no idea she had surgery two days ago. Travis made chicken stir-fry tonight. It was delicious! He wants me to donate plasma, but I have a little tiny fear of needles. OK, a big fear. He donated yesterday and thinks I need to give it a shot. But I’m convinced that I’ll look a bit silly going in of my own accord and then bursting into tears when they try to stick me with the needle.

Also… it might rain tonight. Gulp.