The Parable of the Bee Sting

“Even the smallest person can change the course of the future” -J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

This is it, today is the day!  I am finally going on a run again.  Yeah, you can do it.  I feel great!  This is so exciting.  Woohoo!  Shoes, camelback—no you don’t need the camelback today you won’t be going far enough.  Let’s see, we’ll just go 20 minutes down the road and through the park.  No, let’s drive up to the trail.  Yeah let’s do the trail.  Less people.  I hate people.  I bet you could go for 30 minutes if you tried.  That would be awesome.  Man, it is going to be a great day.

10 minutes later.

Well, this is it.  This is where I am going to die.  We aren’t going to make it.  I don’t know how I ever got this far from home, but we're never going to see it again.  Oh look!  The mental hospital.  I wonder how long it will take for them to find me here, lying in the dust, curled up in the fetal position.  That should be interesting.  Whose idea was this?  Why did you bring me here?  What were you thinking?  I COULD DIE!

Sometimes I really feel for Gollum.  It must have been hard wandering the earth as an emaciated hobbit, searching for a magic ring and talking to himself in third personal all the time.  I mean seriously, what a relatable character. 

When I got up from my rock I wondered if it might not be better to go home after all, instead of dying a quarter mile from civilization.  So being the resilient woman that I am I got up and headed for the car, still doubting whether or not I was really going to survive.  Halfway to the parking lot I stumbled upon my very own Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee.  They weren’t hobbits (sadly), but they were two little girls hiking in the opposite direction, one of them shrieking noisily, the other pacing indecisively.

Maybe I can pretend I didn’t hear? 
More shrieking.  Some crying.
You are ridiculous.  Go help them this instant.
And my better self ran over to investigate.

“It hurts!  It hurts!” the little girl screamed, clutching her arm tightly.
“She got stung by a bee!” said her sister.
I squatted down next to the crying girl and rubbed her back.  “I’m so sorry this happened,” I said.

Their mom was out running ahead, a little too far to hear the screaming by now.  In general, I believe bee stings are not considered fatal, but when you are 8 and your mommy is out of sight, it may as well be.  Looking at the worried girls I said very gallantly, “I think I passed your mom a little while ago.  You wait here and I’ll see if I can catch up with her.”  Then I turned to face the long trail I had just given up on and started running—again.  Stupid, stupid, stupid.

It’s a little hazy now, but I am pretty sure I regretted every minute of that run.  Eventually though I reached the mother and told her about her crying children.  She gave a good eye roll, thanked me kindly, and continued on her way to find them.  That was the end of that.  Except there I was left alone in the dust with Gollum to contemplate the frailty of our existence.  And we were fairly convinced that the girls would have survived just as well without us as they did with us.


Then I thought about how more often than not, I am the girl with the bee sting.  I am the one that falls off the bike, the one that gets lost, the one that gets sick, the one that gets rejected, the one that gets hurt.  I have shriveled up and clutched my sore arm and cried for help many a time and I am thankful for all the people who have turned back.  What a blessing to know there is someone out there that thinks every lost lamb is worth searching for, and how grateful I am when that lamb is me.  The Master Shepherd is teaching me how to hold onto hope, how to let go of resentment, how to keep up a smile, how to live with my sadness, how to move forward, and how to turn around.  Sometimes I go real slow, I trip over rocks, and poke at my blisters, but it’s so nice knowing that He’ll always turn around for Gollum or Gandalf or the girl with a bee sting.

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