Coming Around In Full Circle
Yesterday was one of those odd days where running errands meant ging from store to store to purchase the items that I needed to fill my list, and I still forgot one item, but that’s just an aside. My first stop was at Busy Beaver hardware to buy some replacement tiles for my drop ceiling that recently developed some mose nibbles. While I was there annd I was paying for my purchases, the young lady cashier asked me if I knew Alan Bottomly. I said I did and was the best man at his wedding, the very same wedding where I met my future wife Cindy Morrison Beck.
The cashier said, “I thought that I recognized you. I’m Alan’s daughter.”
I was so surprised that I forgot to ask her name, to look for her name on her manetag, or to even see if she was wearing a name tag.
While we were talking a man walked up to the couunter and I said, “How are you sir”
His gruff reply was, “Not so well.”
I turned to go to my car. I thought I’d fetch a Gospel tract that I’d left in my car and perhaps might help him.
He said, “Just like everyone else, when you don’t get the answer you want, you walk away.”
I told him I wanted to share a Gospel tract with hime and was going to my car to fetch one.”
He began to speak to me in a foreign language. He eventualy said it was Koine Greek and I was able to share with him that I’d taken two years of Koine Greek, but that was many years ago. I learned to parse and to read Greek, but not to speak it. He shared that he still taught Greek and was teaching teo students. He also warned to be sure of what was in the tracts and how it compared what was being said in the translations.
It was odd meeting a young lady that I’d possibly met only once as a child and she recognized me and to bump into another elderly person who knew Koine Greek. I’m not sure how much Greek I’ve retained and how much I’ve lost after nearly fifteen years.
After I finished my errands, I made my way to the bank for cash, to the gas station to pump fuel for my car and my mower, and finally to “the place of extreme confusion” called Wal-Mart before I headed for home.

 When Elephants Roamed the Hospital
I was supervising one afternoon shift when I heard an overhead page for a “Blue alert” on the obstetric unit. It made the hair stand up on my arms. That was an occurrence that had never happened to me before. I hurried to see what was happening.
The patient was a middle aged woman who delivered an infant girl earlier in the day. The woman’s heart had stopped. When I arrived, CPR was already in progress and I took over doing chest compressions to relieve the nurse who was tiring. The closed chest compressions were necessary to keep the woman alive. Apparently the stress of labor and delivery was too much for her and she had a heart attack.
The support of her breathing functions, chest compressions, and medications, we were able to get her heart going again. She was transferred to our coronary care unit for monitoring and recovery.
When I checked on her the next evening I introduced myself as one of the hospital’s nursing supervisors. She’d been told that I had done compressions on her chest when she arrested the day before.
She said, “So, you’re the elephant who sat on my chest.”
I laughed at her description and we talked a bit more before I left her room.
Her nurse came over to me when I walked into the nursing station and said, “I heard what she said to you and just wanted to show you something.” She opened the chart and pointed to what she had written while charting earlier. “Patient states ‘It feels as though an elephant sat on my chest.’”
I chuckled and left the unit feeling good that the woman was alive because "the elephant” had done its job.
Many years later a woman stopped me in the hospital’’s hallway. She was with a beautiful teen-aged girl. The woman turned to the girl and introduced me as “the elephant who sat on my chest when you were born.” Then she turned to me and said, “She’s graduating high school this year.”
I was awestruck. I am sure that my mouth was hanging open. This young lady was graduating this year and her mom was going to be around to see her. That was a great feeling to know that I’d had a part in keeping her mother alive for this milestone in the young girl’s life.
But the story doesn’t end there. A few years later I heard my name being called. I turned and there was the same lady and her daughter.
“We’re here for blood tests.” She said. “My daughter is getting married this month.” She broke into a wide smile.
I didn’t know what to say other than “Congratulations!” Such a feeling of wonderment and accomplishment flowed over me. Standing in front of me was this beautiful young woman about to be married and her mother was still living and able to see her walk down the awasle. What a rush of good feelings engulfed me.

 Adding Insult to Injury
In my last post I shared that I lost my balance and fell taking a tumble in my bathtub while showering. I was trying to do two things at once and wasn’t concentrating well on either one. I was able to clean the soap ring under my shampoo bottle before I fell and pulled down the shower curtain bar and shower curtain. The curtain bar missed my head and bounced off my shoulder. I’m thankful for that. I didn’t need to get a goose egg on my noggin nor did I want to be found naked and unconscious on the bottom of my tub by my kids or an ambulance crew.
After exanining my self and rehanging the shower curtain, I slowly collected my thoughts. Finding no broken bones, I finished my shower. Later that day, I found sore areas that caused me to do my chores a bit more slowly over the past few days.
Now to share the event that caused me to title this post adding insult to injury. Early Sunday morning about 2:15 am I had a dream. I didn’t recognize where I was, but for some reason I was walking near the bottom of a staircase along a fancy metal railing. When I came to the end of the railing, I turned to climb the wide staircase, and…
In bed, I sleep on my side. I find I can breathe easier for me without relying on a machine to help me breathe. I’ve always slept to one half of the bed, even after my wife Cindy Morrison Beck died of ovarian cancer twenty years ago. I still sleep to one side of the mattress. It’s been my habit of sleeping on the very edge of the mattress. In my dream, I turned to climb the staircase and must have also done so in real life and fell out of bed.
One fall in the tub was enough, but this second one only added to my previous injuries. I was startled awake by the fall brushing my right shoulder against a dresser and my knee against the carpet. Once again I examined myself and found no significant injury, but in the morning I found brush-burns on my right shoulder and knee. Since then I discovered some swelling to my left hand and soreness to the joints. No broken bones, but still I managed to multiply more injuries to my list.
I may have to buy some bubble-wrap to wear around my house instead of pajama bottoms.

Hitting the Bottom OUCH
I’m sure that I’ll be getting harassing messages from my kids because I lost my balancce while showering in my bathtub. Yes, I fell. I pulled down the shower curtain and bounced on my butt Wednesday morning. I have a sore butt where the bottom of my pelvis pinched my butt cheek. Nothing broken, it’s just tender and sore when I sit. I can walk without limping, there’s no crepitous, and no shortening of my left leg. I don’t really want to look for bruises. I took a muscle relaxant, Tylenol, and turned in early and gave it a chance to recover and rest.
My fall happened because I changed the order of my shower. As I washed my hair, I saw a soap ring under the shampoo bottle and tried to clean it. I turned while still leaning over, my feet slipped to the side. As my dad would say, “Down went the meathouse.” The shower curtain also collapsed bouncing off my shoulder. I paused the shower long enough to rehang the curtain then I finished my spit and polish routine. I was a bit shaky and off kilter, but no more interruptions.
The longer the day went on, the more aches and pains other than my fanny hurting appeared. The joints in the fingers and thumb of my left hand began to complain, letting me know that they were involved as well. The muscles across my shoulders and at the nape of my neck deel tight and stressed..
My kids always complain when I climb onto my roof. At least I didn’t fall from climbing onto the roof and playing Santa to clean out my chimney. That fall would be a little more painful. It would have been a two story fall. I have no desire to try that. After coming home from the Chestnut Ridge Historical Society I finished mowing my lawn that I didn’t finish on Tuesday. The higher growth of grass in the wetter area of my lawn wasn’t mowed, so I just lopped the tops of it off Tuesday because it was so high, then finished cutting it on Wednesday afternoon before the rain could come.

 Aborting
I saw a misguided post asking why the people who want to defend their position for abortions of the unborn child being ripped from its mother’s womb by trying to compare the act of abortion with children “being ripped from their mother’s arms at the southern border and placed in cages.” First let me say they are illegal. These children are still alive after being removed from the person entering our country illegally.
Those children are still alive. No one is killing them like the aboortion industry. The abortion industry kills children for only one reason, money. The separation is permanent. There is no chance of reconnecting the child with its parents. There is no opportunity for this percious infant of growing iinto an adult. The sborted child isn’t being housed in safe places of a barracks until the parenthood can be established and the child reconnected. The housed illegal children are fed, clothed, and taken care of unlike the aborted babies who are tossed out like garbage after being killed. It is even worse when the body parts of the aborted child are sold to companies for various profit-making reasons.
The separation of illegal children is more humane than allowing them to be housed with other possible criminals, sex traffickers, and allowing them to be mules for drugs traffickers. This precedent was set in place long before President Trump came into office, but because it was instituted and now continued by liberal leaders, it is no longer in the news and is ignored right now. The caged children photographs that shared during the last presidency were laid at Trump’s feet, but were taken while President Obama was still in office.
Again, when someone tries to compare apples and oranges it only manages to create an unpalatable and indigestible fruit salad that makes absolutely no sense. But then in our present world, common sense often takes a backseat to political expediency.

 Are You Paying Attention
I just started to read a book titled Crowded in the Middle of Nowhere by Dr. Bo Breck. It’s an amalgamation of stories of his life as a veterinarian in the West Texas town of Lamesa. His stories are gathered from his lif experiences. He began by sharing with others by writing a column for the local newspaper. Dr. Bo talked of his youth while living with his granddad (Papaw.)  A phrase that resonnated with me was “I quickly realized that I was not paying enough attention to every day life, and it set me on a lifelong mission to discover how he perceived the world. I will be forever grateful to Papaw for loving me and teaching me to see the special moments that happen right in front of us every day.”
How many days do we struggle to get through the chores and tasks that are expected of us? How many times do we slog through the hours of each day looking forward to the gosl of finishing the shift? How many times do we wade through each day looking toward the weekend? We often forget to look at what is happening around us right now. We often pay little attention to the small miracles that slide by us every day. We miss so much when we lose the ability to enjoy what we are doing or lose the ability to recognize the small things that brighten our lives, or when we look inward at ourselves instead of actually noticing the world as it spins by. I try to share recollections that have happened in my past or that are happening now in my life. Sometimes thinking of what to share on my BlogSpot is difficult.
Our church has an intern spending eleven weeks as he learns the duties of a Pastor. He’s from Ambassador Bible College in Lattimer, North Carolina and arrived last Monday. He has been getting settled into our guest trailer that we cleaned and stocked some foodstuffs until he learns the layout of the area. He’s learning the names of the congregation, and what happened Sunday morning surprised me. When I met him, I only gave him my first name. Bur at the beginning of the service, he said, “Brother Beck, would you open the service with prayer?”
I had no idea how he learned my last name. I was flabberghasted. My daughter Anna learned how he made the connection. He met Anna Wednesday evening. She mentioned that I was her father and my name. It was just a small incident, but makes a good story to share, almost as good as the Popeye the Sailor Man ring tone and the misionaries to Greenland.

 Looking at the Bloomers
More and more flowers are starting to rise from the weed patches at my house. Some plants were long lasting plants that were given to me many years ago and are faithful to claim their corner of what was once a flower garden. Some have spread their claim to more of the flower bed. The flags or irises have multiplied their swordlike leaves, emerging from seams in the rock piles. White, purple, and a chocolate brown blossoms have crowned several of the slender stocks.
More than thirty years ago I was given a coral bells plant by Beverly Cunningham a switchboard operator at Frick Hospital, Mt. Pleasant, Pennsylvania. Several years back, for some reason, it didn’t bloom and I thought it had died out. Beverly had passed away and I thought I’d never get another, but the next year, it grew back strong as ever. Their small pink bell shaped flowers dangle on ong graceful stems that nod in the breeze.
In a corner of one of my flower bed are miniature irises. I’m not sure where I got them, but my Mom Sybil Miner Beck always called them “a poor man’s orchid.” The small creamy-white blooms rise on stems from a jumble of thin reed like leaves. The flowers do look very much like tiny white orchids.
Two years ago, I was given several packets of flower seeds. I scattered them in the flower bed next to my walkway to see if they would grow. One packet held seeds of Bells-of-Ireland and another packet contained forget-me-nots. Last year I didn’t see anything growing and thought, “Oh well, nothing lost.” But much to my surprise this year they have spread throughout and are blooming beautifully. The green balls of the Bells-of-Ireland almost blend into the other green plants, but there are several clusters of the pale blue forget-me-nots blossoming brightly like patches of a summer blue sky.
The columbine that I planted several years ago didn’t need any encouragement to take over territory and I have a section of purple-red columbine. They start to bloom after the jonquils and dafodils have finished their display of bright and pale yellows and the lilies-of-the-valley have almost folded all of their delicate white bells into the forest of their dark green leaves.
In mt back yard the snow ball bush is filled with their snowy white “puff balls.” The wind and rain has been plucking the blooms to spread thin drifts of blossoms across the grass beneath. The blooms disappear when I mow, but I loosen more to drift down on me as I brush past on my mower.