Revelation on a Stick

I'm going back in time...

Living here in Hot Springs, you can't avoid driving on Central and you wouldn't want to because just about everything you need is on it. Along this stretch of road, is a lighted sign with flashing messages that belongs to one of the local hospitals. What makes the messages so special is that it will cycle through each child born at that hospital for the last two weeks, first and middle name with the day they were born and their weight. I couldn't wait to have a baby in Hot Springs so when people from the church drove by they'd see MY baby's name flash up there! I played these scenarios out in my head for the last two years over and over. I imagined that someone would be in the car with someone else and go, "Oh, I know that baby! That's our Children's Minister's and his wife's baby." Or in the middle of a busy day, look up and smile when they'd see my child's name. Well-meaning idea but I was completely self-absorbed with this thought. When I was pregnant, I knew that I needed a picture of her name when they cycled through so I could put it in little Birdie's scrapbook (you know, the one that I'll do in my golden years that I don't have time to do now).

So, after I had her (and was released to drive), I loaded her up and went to go look. We had so much going on that I was afraid that I had waited too long and had missed it. I grabbed a corndog from Sonic and sat in my car in the O'Reilly's parking lot, window down in February and camera ready. I was thrilled when I saw that her birthday was the starting date of the cycle! So, I waited and held my breath and waited...went right past it! Aww...I was totally bummed. I picked my corndog up and forlornly mustarded it up, glancing back at the sign. Wait! Some are out of order. Sat the corndog down. Camera back up. Went through the whole thing, no Birdie! I watched it closely go through the whole thing again. Nothing! My first reaction was, "After all I went through to have her, the least the hospital could have done was post her blasted name, dob and weight--after all, they practically killed me!" I thought about calling them and demand/persuade them to get her name up there. I'm sure they would have; it was a simple oversight. But by the time I finished my corndog, a deeper lesson of self-centeredness was not lost on me. Everyone who knew us and loved us in this town and beyond had already recognized our wonderful, new addition in touching and affectionate ways. Who cares if no one saw her name on Central? Hopefully they already think of my family and smile because of Christ that's in and working through us. I did peel out of the parking lot to make myself feel better. Haha! I kid!