TWO EYES; TWO HANDS

Packing paper boxes - “There are people who put their dreams in a little box and say, "Yes, I've got dreams, of course I've got dreams." Then they put the box away and bring it out once in awhile to look in it, and yep, they're still there.”

An older couple lay in bed one morning, having just awakened from a good night's sleep. He tenderly took her hand, but she pulled back responding, "Don't touch me."

"Why not?" he asked.

"Because I'm dead."

Her confused husband said, "What are you talking about? We're both lying here in bed together and talking to one another."

"No," she said, "I'm definitely dead."

He insisted, "You're not dead. What in the world makes you think you're dead?"

"Because I woke up this morning and nothing hurts."

It is good to be able to laugh when we can, and especially about daily aches and pains or normal problems. But sometimes our difficulties and losses are so staggering we wonder how long we can cope. Lingering and chronic illness, loss of someone we love and overwhelming worry can devastate us. All of us have known almost unbearable pain and hardships. Heart-breaking times. We might think we will never again wake up feeling good.

A wise obstetrician at a university teaching hospital once made a comment about suffering. Someone asked the doctor what advice he offered to his students, future doctors and nurses, when caring for mothers who gave birth to stillborn infants.

The doctor paused for a moment in thought. Then he said this: "I tell them that they need two eyes. One eye is not enough; they need two eyes. With one eye they have to check the I.V.; and with the other eye they have to weep. That's what I tell them," he said. "I tell them that they need two eyes."

He knows the secret of hard times: we need two eyes. One for seeing, the other for weeping. And we need two hands. One for holding on, the other for reaching out.

I don't know all there is to know about suffering. But I do know the way to survive it. Two eyes; two hands. That's how we get through this life best.

From Lifesupport.