Me: I love this view.
Prodigal: Me too, nice place for a story.
Her piercing green eyes and vibrant red hair did not belong in the sterile gray hospital room permeated with breathing machine sounds, a beeping monitor, and the air of gloom. Only my crushed body matched my depressed emotions. Strapped to tubes and traction, unable to go anywhere and knowing they were lying to me about the condition of my new bride, I was sure hopelessness would become my new norm.
The seventy-mile-an-hour head-on collision-caused by a drunk driver-had left my wife and me in pieces. I would survive, but be crippled the rest of my life. My bride? Who knows? I longed to hold her and tell her everything would be fine but I couldn’t even visit her–let alone comfort her.
“The Lord is my shepherd….” the soft comforting voice read.
Who is this red-headed lady? I wondered as I glanced through the side bars of my bed.
“I shall not want….” She continued reading into the wee hours of the night.
Like the regular ticking of a clock, the nurse with red hair came to my room night after night and read the Psalms–then the Gospels–as I would rudely drift off into a deep sleep. I became dependent on her timing, her comforting, her embracing, her encouraging. As I physically healed I knew the nurse with red hair had a big part in my emotional healing also. Though we never carried on a conversation–my heart longed to thank her.
Many weeks passed as I was in and out of surgeries, therapy, and grueling hospital routines. My bride was far worse off than I was, but she was alive. The hospital staff managed to push me in a wheel chair to visit her once in a great while. I told her of the sweet nurse with red hair who visited me on a nightly basis. I wished she had time to visit my wife–the comforting words would have given her the same healing they had brought me. Oh, the faithfulness of that lady with red hair.
Once I became more mobile I was moved to another floor of the hospital–where the nurse with the red hair was unable to visit me. One day I asked permission from the hospital staff to visit the red-haired, green-eyed nurse. Escorted in a wheelchair I went directly to the nurse’s station and asked for the senior nurse. With a firm resolve I asked to see the nurse with red hair. I told her how faithful she had been and I wanted to personally thank her. I told of her consistency in reading the Scriptures to me and how life-giving and encouraging those words had been. My emotions let loose with tears as I shared with the senior nurse how my heart had been healed of all anger and bitterness toward the drunk driver who had caused all this pain in my wife’s and my life–because of the lady with red hair. As my passionate plea grew, the nurse quieted me down and slowly shared these words: “I’m sorry, sir. We have no nurses here with red hair.”
by Morna Gilbert
And he said unto them, Why are ye so fearful? How is it that ye have no faith?
Mark 4:40
Jennifer Van Allen
www.theprodigalpig.com
www.faithincounseling.org
