Life has taken a sudden wrong turn off the road to building our cabin, resulting in the past week being very much like going on that bear hunt I mentioned a few posts ago.
Ever play that game at Girl Scout Camp? It's more or less a lap-clapping group activity best experienced in the dark, in the forest, around a campfire. The story unfolds at a leisurely pace...you know...just going on a bear hunt. Nothing special. When suddenly, you reach an obstacle, such as a stream. "You can't go around it," the group say-and-clap-along goes, "you can't go over it, you can't go under it."
You have to go through it.
Life is like that. And our family is going through it right now.
About a week ago my husband's 83-year-old mother fell down 3 steps and shattered her ribs: 13 breaks in all, not including her collar bone and a vertebrae. Since it happened in North Carolina, she was sent to Wilmington for treatment.
The hospital is top-notch, and she is getting the care she needs. But it's in Wilmington, and her family is not. In Wilmington. So PW and I have been trading off with his sister and her husband, each spending a few days with Mom and a few days back at home.
It's kind of exhausting, and not just because of all the driving. The most exhausting part is actually all the sitting.
There's a lot of sitting in a hospital. Sitting in a waiting room. Sitting in the hospital room. Sitting down to talk with the physician. Sitting in the car when you just can't sit in those other places any longer.
Apparently when you're on a bear hunt, and you can't go around it or over it or under it, you do have another option other than going through it.
You can just sit your butt in a chair and wait.
No one tells you that at Girl Scouts, and as soon as I'm done sitting, I'm going to write a strongly worded letter to National Headquarters.
Tomorrow it's our turn to sit again, and my sister-in-law and her husband can go home and stand up for a few days.
The campfire Bear Hunt version of the game encounters many obstacles on the way to finding that bear. Life is like that: full of grassy savannas to snake through, rushing rivers to cross, oozing mud to get stuck in, and dark, dank caves to scare the poo-poo out of you. And when you reach your destination your only option sometimes is to re-trace your footsteps, over and through and around and under all those obstacles you encountered on the way there. Back to health, and safety, and normalcy.
The Hospital Bear Hunt version sometimes seems just as scary and daunting. Both versions of the "game" require courage and strength and determination. Yes, the Hospital Bear Hunt does require plenty of seating for those who are tracking that elusive bear, but the moral of the story is the same, whether you're hunting bears over a campfire or over ANOTHER cup of bad hospital coffee:
"Let's not go bear-hunting any more."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_ShP3fiEhU
