Journal - Flat Tire

Last Thursday we were off to Omaha again for my next visit to the eye doctor. It had been a week since our last trip so we were feeling fairly rested and hopeful for a good report.

The day started off very, very foggy. We left at about 7:15am and had thick fog but it only lasted until around Grand Island, thirty minutes into our trip. Then it began to lift and the rest of the day was cloudy and cool.

We got to the doctor’s at about 10:45, just in time for my appointment. They took us in pretty fast so we didn’t have to wait around. The doctor took a look and said that the infection appears to be healing a little but it’s obviously not responding as quickly as he or I would like. He decided to take some more cultures. He’s already treating my eye for just about every possible problem, something that is called “throwing the kitchen sink at it” in medical jargon, but he just wanted to make sure we hadn’t missed anything. Unfortunately, one of the culture kits wasn’t present in the office at the time and someone had to go get one from one of the other offices he keeps hours in. That meant a wait of about an hour.

We had already eaten breakfast on the way there so we waited at the office, watching tv in the waiting area. I’m a little ashamed to say it but I started getting kind of grumpy as soon as Doc said we would have to wait. And as the hour passed my mood grew worse and worse. It really wasn’t that big of a deal, I just kept thinking how our long trip just got an hour longer.

Anyway, at 12:30 they called us back in and Doc took the cultures. If you’re unfamiliar with this process, as many of you are I suppose, this involves a numbing drop on the eye and then a physical rubbing or scraping over the infected spot with a tool called a spatula. Picture someone scraping your eye with a hamburger flipper. No, it’s not that bad, the spatula is small, about the size of an artist’s small paintbrush. He repeats the process four or five times to get multiple samples to send to the lab, then an iodine drop goes in to make sure the eye is disinfected. I don’t feel it at all, but after the numbing drop wears off my eye is pretty sore and irritated the rest of the day. That didn’t take very long and then we were on our way home.

The trip home was fine up until about 20 miles east of York when we got a flat. We heard a loud noise coming from the rear of the car and Joni got us pulled over right away but of course the tire was already completely shredded. Not much you can do about that at 70 miles per hour. We got out and I put the spare on, about another 30 minutes of delay. Friendly reminder here folks, if you see a car in the break-down lane changing a tire, please pull over into the passing lane. The spare felt a little low and that caused me a few moments of disquiet, but it got us the remaining 20 miles into York where we stopped and filled it up proper. Another friendly note, the Shell station at York has free air, something you hardly ever see these days. Tire taken care of, we filled up the gas tank and grabbed a bite to eat. Then we crossed our fingers that the spare would get us the remaining hour of our journey home, which it did with no problem at all.

So our long day ended. With the day behind me I finally had time to stop and reflect on things a little bit; put things in perspective. I can think of about a hundred different things that could have made that day so much worse. A flat spare, no spare, a broken jack, an accident during the tire change, I could go on and on. God delivered us from all of that. As I thought about that I started feeling pretty bad about my sour mood over the hour wait at the doctor. God is always pretty good about helping us keep things in perspective. What an awesome God He is!

Isaiah 64:8 "But now, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter;
we are all the work of your hand." ESV

Isaiah 40:28 "Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable." ESV