Bathing in kindness and grace

Didn't Cleopatra have baths of asses' milk? Well, I've found something better. It's the milk of human kindness and the grace of God - both of which we've experienced in buckets these past few days. It began on Tuesday...

I was dozing in my chair before our annual mulled wine and mince pies party, when all our end of the close get together. Jane was busy preparing canapés, sausage rolls, mince pies, drinks and glasses - and things for the kids to do. Suddenly, I was roused by a tumbling crashing followed by a heavy thump - and silence! On the other side of the door. Unable to move, I shouted. It wasn't long before Jane said, "I'm all right." Somehow, I didn't believe her. She didn't sound all right. Amazingly, she staggered in to the sitting room and sat on the sofa next to me. Her face was a pale shade of putty. She'd been on the loft ladder bringing down some games, and had fallen halfway down the stairs. Her first self-diagnosis was severe bruising; then something worse... like a dislocated collar-bone. It didn't take a genius to tell it was serious. There was nothing I could do, confined to my chair, except gibberingly ring Rachel who drove seven miles in not many more minutes (the road was unusually clear), and then a bit later our next door neighbour who also came round pronto.

Rachel is fantastically clear-thinking in an emergency. She contacted a first responder friend of ours, who told us we had to have an ambulance as it was a left-shoulder injury. So she did that, rang round those who needed to know, took instructions for the party, while our neighbour did a round of the houses to postpone the gathering till the ambulance had taken Jane away. Well, it would have been a shame to have wasted all her creative hard work.

The ambulance was here in no time, and the paramedics were excellent. Jane had gone by the time the neighbours poured in. And we didn't remember everything - like the canapés - but people didn't mind. They helped Rachel with mulling the wine and washing up (thanks - Astrid and Naomi) and at the end, when the news came in that it was a serious fracture and that she would stay in hospital until an operation, possibly on the Thursday, everyone offered any help we could use. Rachel rang her brothers who began to change their schedules to come and help. By Wednesday afternoon Stephen (on holiday) and Bryan (his boss having said, "Go!") were here. On Facebook next morning I wrote that Jane had fallen and we were in for an interesting Christmas, and was flooded by offers of help and prayer. My overwhelming feeling was how full of kindness people are, which shows when they have an opportunity. I love that.

Later that evening I emailed a few of our close praying friends, briefly. As I wrote to one of them today: "We visited Jane yesterday afternoon, and she's counting her blessings. The way things happened after she'd fallen was amazing, like the ambulance was already in the area and was diverted here as a priority, her friend from Stanford got here just in time to go with her, leaving Rachel with me; the driver was INCREDIBLY gentle going from here to Oxford; because it was a suspected dislocation she went to the front of the queue which became five hours long behind her; the xray revealed this severely fractured collar-bone, which needed to be seen by a consultant, who just happened to be walking past at that moment. There was a possibility of an operation before the weekend, otherwise she'd have been sent home with a 3-4 week wait. There was a bed in the Trauma unit - in her own room - available. 
   "The fall was steep and twisty and long enough, and she could easily have broken her neck, or concussed herself - neither happened. In fact she was able to get to where I was sitting and could see we needed help. We've been in touch this morning. The main man (who used to patch people up in Afghanistan) hopes to operate and put a plate in this afternoon, and to get her home for Christmas. We're praying for no emergencies before then...

   "Rachel, Stephen and Bryan have moved in and the three of them are looking after me and getting ready for Christmas - it will carry on as normal, we trust, with Jane's parents coming on Saturday and our friend Margaret for Christmas lunch. :) They're a super-competent team.

   "Meanwhile I'm going to have to arrange some care cover for when they're all back at work." I reckon that's all God's grace.

So now I'm writing this as Jane's in theatre or the recovery room and the sounds and smells of cooking emerge from the kitchen, and I'm reflecting that if even stubborn donkeys like me can be in receipt of God's grace and the kindness of friends and family, it's good news for everyone. Maybe the traditional presence of the ass in the Christmas stable means a bit more than it happened to have carried Mary there. I think it means that rather than squeezing our juice out until our pips squeak God wants us to enjoy his love which, if we look out for it, appears in the most unlikely of places and improbable of circumstances:

In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him, whom cherubim, worship night and day,
A breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, whom angels fall before,
The ox and ass and camel which adore.