Photo and Commentary ©2023 by Shelley Schurch
Sunday, October 22, 2023
We didn’t want to be there. We really wanted to be elsewhere. We had planned to be elsewhere, enjoying our church’s annual retreat near Deception Bay. It’s always a bright and shiny highlight of our year — a weekend of good friends, good speakers, good food, good music, good conversations, the ocean before us and the forests around us. We’d made reservations to arrive a day early, to stretch it into a mini-vacation.
So that’s where we wanted to be. Not in the hospital. But kidney stones don’t solicitously ask you when you’d like them to appear, or else you’d give them a very loud, “Never!” So my husband, after nine overnight hours in ER, was admitted to the hospital awaiting a procedure that would be Step One in dealing with the stone; Step Two down the road a couple of weeks.
We had to wait a few days for the procedure, while my husband was carefully monitored, and then the day of the procedure his time slot was pushed several hours later than first scheduled.
I kept muttering to myself something I’ve read here and there recently, “In the waiting, God is working,” trying to totally trust Him. But waiting was beginning to be downright wearisome.
And then the monotony was broken when my husband said, in tones of wonder, “A horse just walked by! A real horse!”
We hustled out into the hall to see what you see in my photo above. Her name is Honeydews Winning Streak, or Streaker for short. We learned she is a seven-year old miniature pinto horse, one of three miniatures owned by volunteer Brian Hohstadt, the man leading her down the hospital hall.
We had the chance to admire Streaker up close and talk to Brian for a few minutes. He said they offer pet therapy to local hospitals, hospices, 911 call centers, nursing homes, and correctional facilities. They visit “our” hospital every other Friday.
So we were glad, after all, that we were there – there on that particular Friday so we could meet Streaker and Brian, and there where we were getting excellent care, even if it involved a lot of waiting.
Streaker waited patiently while we talked with Brian, then silently pawed the floor a few times, a subtle signal that it was time to move on. And so they did, leaving a lot of smiles behind them.
I still would have preferred not to have needed to be in the hospital, to be enjoying the retreat instead, according to Plan A. But last night as I crawled into my own bed for the first time in four days, I decided to write down the blessings God had poured on us, even as we chafed in Plan B. I wrote down fourteen blessings, then turned out the light and gratefully fell asleep.
As we step into this brand-new week, how good it is to know that we can count on God to be patiently walking beside us, no matter what plan we find ourselves in.
(If you would like to learn more about Brian’s pet therapy experiences, and why he does what he does, you can browse through his website as I did today: www.triplebfoundation.org)