Aching Backs and Cedar Waxwings


As I posted earlier in the month, after meeting some big writing deadlines, I’ve been doing household chores, which are long overdue for attention.

After I finished the middle attic, I set off to change a few closets around. Everything in this house is like dominoes. If you move one thing, three other items also have to change their geographic location. After emptying a couple of closets, painting them, and taking loads to Goodwill, the Sparrows Nest and the dump, we now have several closets perhaps worthy of “CLOSETS” magazine, the official publication of the Association of Closet and Storage Professionals (Yes, there really is a magazine like this!). Well, maybe not, but the closets are a lot better than they were, and I don’t have to dig in a plastic storage bin to get dressed anymore.

The only thing is, in all that lifting, shoving, and juggling, I hurt my back. After a few days, I felt some better, so then, I get the bright idea to strip the wallpaper in the downstairs bathroom. I’d loved that toile when it was first installed, but that was in the last century. I’ve stripped wallpaper before, so I had no delusions about what I was in for. I also knew there was two layers of wallpaper not one. But it was a small room, so how hard would it be?

It would be very hard, because whoever put the first layer of paper up did not prep the wall, and upon removal, it stuck to the wallboard and decimated it.

And I hurt my back again.

So, I have about three feet of partially removed wallpaper, an aching back, and no idea how I’m going to finish.

“Why didn’t you leave well enough alone?” Jerry asked.

That man sure likes to live dangerously.

So, I’m sitting here at the computer, because I’ve had to suspend my long list of projects, and I happen to look out at the birdbath and see a bunch, and I mean a bunch of Cedar Waxwings, a Bluebird, a Robin, and several Cardinals queuing up to bathe and drink. The Cedar Waxwings are newly arrived from points north, and I don’t ever remember seeing this many in my yard before. The cats and I are glued to the window, because we can’t take our eyes off these incredible creatures, though I think the cats’ motives may be slightly different from mine.

And I’m reminded, even as the aromatic scent of the medicated patch on my back  reaches my nostrils, that if it weren’t for my injury, I probably wouldn’t be still enough to even notice my new guests.

I wonder how often God tries to give us a gift, and we’re too busy to notice. Maybe sometimes, he has to allow circumstances, which slow us down so we can receive the beauty and grace he’s extending.

I’d share a photo with you, but I was so smitten with the Waxwings I didn’t have the presence of mind to grab my camera. And even if I had, I wouldn’t have been able to move fast enough with my creaky back to capture them.

Maybe soon.

“Be cheerful no matter what; pray all the time; thank God no matter what happens. This is the way God wants you who belong to Christ Jesus to live” (IThessalonians 5:18 The Message).