Dear Friends,
I shower and dress after my Friday morning physical training session.
My arthritic lower back was tweaked a bit while doing squats.
The ache reminds me to put my wallet into the right front pocket of my comfortable slacks where it won’t make my sitting posture uneven, aggravating the inflammation. Because it is the first cool day of fall here, I wear a turtleneck and sweater. The lack of jacket pockets means I cram my cell phone, keys, and pens into the same pocket.
The rest of my day will be spent in important, hard-to-schedule meetings with the leadership of the Medical Center and University. I stop by my office on the way and pick up two large files of hand-outs. Then I’m on my way, on task and on target. But when I lift my right leg high to climb back in to my SUV, the strained cloth of my stuffed pocket shreds without warning leaving a lattice-work exposure of my bare right leg from just below my belt almost to my knee.
This is no seam-split repairable with safety pins. It is a failure of fabric like a blown mainsail on a schooner leaving me adrift and helpless to the wind and the waves.
What do I do now? Replacement pants are at my home 26 congested freeway miles to the west. For a moment, I contemplate calling into the meetings while driving home. But these are meetings that I have requested and the subject matter and the exhibits are best handled face to face. I pray a favorite prayer: “Please, God, rescue me! Come quickly, Lord, and help me” (Ps 70:1).
The Scripture is fresh in mind since I delivered a devotional on it to the financial leadership at their retreat yesterday. I hate to waste it on the trivial, but what is “trivial” is relative to time, place and circumstance.
Can I get by meeting with the CEO, COO, CFO, another CFO and an Executive Director in this condition? Sometimes one has no choice but to hide in plain sight and brazen it out. My sweater is long and there are things I can carry to cover me up. Maybe I can make it inside, but I doubt I can get through three hours of appointments, standing and sitting in greeting, and moving from office to conference room and back plus the the long trek down the long corridors and sidewalks out to the busy administrative parking lot.
Try I must, so I make a desperate call to my long-suffering wife, Patricia. She can’t drive to me, but she can call the intrepid Neva, the office manager at my law firm who can pick up a pair of pants and bring them to me. That is the plan we agree upon as soon as Patricia finishes laughing.
I find a parking place and carefully step out. Extricating the endangered contents of my pocket, I hitch up my pants, tighten my belt and pull my sweater down. The two big files are cradled under my left arm. In my right hand, I hold my leather brief case in front of me like the proverbial fig leaf. Turning my body to the right in a feeble attempt to shelter my shame from view, I scuttle to the left.
Imagine a disoriented, broken-legged hermit crab straying far way from the water at low tide.
My smile is big and my greetings loud and cheerful as I make an extra effort to look in the eyes of every person I encounter on the long walk in to distract them from my torn dark slacks barely covering my gleaming white leg. The cool fall air on my exposed flesh keeps me focused on task.
Blessedly, the first seat at the corner of the CEO’s conference table is open. I greet the others heartily and slip into the chair with my legs secreted under the table.
Unfortunately, nothing is easy this day. The mild exertion of sitting further stresses the rent fabric. I can feel it give way strand by strand down below my knee. No possible pretense will allow me to return safely the way I came in. Either rescue finds me here, or I face a gauntlet of humiliation or worse since the consequences of such an unexpected exposure in the public areas of a major hospital are unknown.
It occurs to me that today is Halloween. I may have to find a garbage bag, make additional disarrangements and claim the costume of an impoverished, street person to make it out semi-intact.
Patricia pages me that Neva left five minutes ago with the pants.
Neva pages me that she is stopped in traffic on the freeway.
The clock is inexorably moving on. I ask questions, and tell anecdotes to prolong the meeting, even as the other participants look at their watches and consider their lunch options as noon approaches.
My colleague Chris pages me and asks if he can pick me up for lunch.
I feverishly reply with my story and Neva’s delayed relief expedition. He texts back and says, “I can pick you up at any time, but I would prefer that you have pants.”
Neva pages me that traffic is opening up and she should be making speed very soon. I forward her text to Chris. He says, “On my way over. Should arrive at same time as pants. Will meet you in administrative lot.” That rendezvous point is half the world away in my current condition.
The meeting is winding up. Neva pages that she’s made it to the front of the hospital and is awaiting instructions to find me. I text Chris to let him know how to find her. “Please get the pants from her and bring them to me,” is my plea.
As the meeting closes, Chris comes in with a bag containing the pants and discretely sets it on the floor beside me. With a quick change in a borrowed office, my ordeal is over except for the laughter of the CEO and COO with whom Chris and I now share my plight. It is the laughter of brothers and there is no balm like it for times like this.
On her way back to the office, a dump truck tosses up a rock through Neva’s windshield and she has to stop and have it replaced. The effort to save me from my predicament is not without casualties.
What possible point can I make from this silly, but true story? Why would I share it with you? I am well aware that some of you are facing circumstances of real trial, pain and desperate need. Even as I squirm and maneuver at that conference table, on all eight floors above me, patients at all stages of life are in the fight of their lives and some of them will lose it.
And that is the point, isn’t it? Despite the care with which we assemble our outfits and our schedules, despite the responsibilities and authority embedded in our job descriptions, and despite our images we so painstakingly groom and manicure, stresses can suddenly reveal our inadequacy. Absurdities lying close beneath the surface can break through our thin veneer of dignity to shred our pride and send us on a frantic hunt for fig leaves.
It is a blessing to be reminded of our fragile humanity when the stakes are low and the circumstances humorous. Because in the day when cancer emerges and metastasizes, our hearts fail us for real, and unbearable pressure tears the fabric of our lives, we need to know that there is a Father of grace who does not snap, “This is your problem, not mine, so deal with it.” We need the assurance of a Savior who never once says, “Look at you. You’re pathetic! Do you really think I would waste my life for a bumbling idiot like you?!?
We bear the image of our Creator no matter how much we try to disguise and efface it. He programs our tears and our laughter because he knew long before this we need both responses so we can get through the weepy nights and chuckling days. Our tears and our laughter convey the compassion and the joy for us that fill his heart and sent him on a journey to save us from our follies and mistakes before we even knew that we needed saving.
I throw away my torn pants in the COOs trash can. I walk away thankful for my Father in heaven and the people who he sends to help me out because he stirs them to love and care for me even when I feel naked, ashamed, fearful and unlovable. Grace has energized my faith to keep me moving on.
“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him” (Ps 34:8).
Under the mercy of Christ,
Kent
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Please note that the content and viewpoints of Mr. Hansen are his own and are not necessarily those of the C.S. Lewis Foundation. We have not edited his writing in any substantial way and have permission from him to post his content.
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Kent Hansen is a Christian attorney, author and speaker. He practices corporate law and is the managing attorney of the firm of Clayson, Mann, Yaeger & Hansen in Corona, California. Kent also serves as the general counsel of Loma Linda University and Medical Center in Loma Linda, California.
Finding God’s grace revealed in the ordinary experiences of life, spiritual renewal in Christ and prayer are Kent’s passions. He has written two books, Grace at 30,000 Feet and Other Unexpected Placespublished by Review & Herald in 2002 and Cleansing Fire, Healing Streams: Experiencing God’s Love Through Prayer, published by Pacific Press in spring 2007. Many of his stories and essays about God’s encompassing love have been published in magazines and journals. Kent is often found on the hiking trails of the southern California mountains, following major league baseball, playing the piano or writing his weekly email devotional, “A Word of Grace for Your Monday” that is read by men and women from Alaska to Zimbabwe.
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