Back in August of 2017 I dislocated my finger. I was holding onto my dog’s collar while he tried to take off after our neighbor’s giant pig that had escaped from their yard, and my finger got caught as he twisted out of my grasp.
It was actually a pretty comical scene although I failed to appreciate it at the time.
I spent the next several hours at the local urgent care office where I was told to put some ice on it and come back if it still hurt in a few days. I thought that was strange since it was obviously out of joint and no amount of ice was going to change that, but due to having my kids with me and wanting to avoid an all-day trip to the ER, I took the doctor’s advice and went home.
A few days later it had swollen to more than twice it’s normal size so I went back and asked for an x-ray. After several days of waiting for results that were supposed to have taken a few hours, I was finally told to go to the ER. By this time I was feeling pretty sorry for myself, but as I sat in the waiting room I began to gain some much needed perspective.
If you’ve ever spent any time in an ER waiting room, you know it’s not a very pleasant place to hang out. I’m a pretty sensitive person, especially when it comes to people in pain, so being in that kind of environment is particularly hard for me to stomach.
Still, as I sat there and began to actually notice the people around me, I was hit with the realization that the pain in my finger was nothing compared to what many of these people were going through. I wasn’t worried about a loved one never waking up from surgery, or my child having an incurable disease. I was worried about my finger looking weird.
It would have been easy to shut my eyes to the suffering around me, to get out a book to pass the time and do my best to ignore everyone else. But as I sat there, I was reminded that beauty really can be found everywhere–even an ER waiting room–if we would only make the effort to look for it.
So I started to look. And I found it–in the face of the father reassuring his son, and in the couple sitting hand in hand, silently supporting each other as tears streamed down their faces.
I saw it in the woman patiently helping her mother into a wheelchair, and in the doctor treating with incredible dignity a homeless man that no one else could look in the eye. The more I searched the more I found, and pretty soon I had almost forgotten why I was there in the first place.
When it was finally my turn to be seen, the doctors weren’t really able to help me. Too much time had passed since the injury occurred and there was a tendon out of place that was preventing the bone from being able to be put back into joint. I ended up having surgery, but unfortunately it wasn’t very successful. It’s now been about a year and my finger still looks pretty weird, and the doctor said it will likely never be like it was before.
Accepting that was hard, and I still get frustrated with it sometimes. But then I remember that in the grand scheme of things it’s really not that important. I might be self-conscious about it but it doesn’t really prevent me from doing the things I love, and for that I’m incredibly grateful.
I’m also grateful for that day in the ER, as weird as that sounds. It reminded me once again that painful circumstances, both personal and experienced second hand, are often the most effective catalyst for growth. We just have to choose to not close ourselves off to it.