Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Not anything of mine

I set the iPod down, changed the phone from my right ear to my left so that my neck wouldn't be cramped, and pulled out my boarding pass.
Position 39-B on Southwest. Not bad.
I walked up to my place, waited in line, handed the ticketing agent my pass and boarded the plane.
Just short of two hours later I walked up to the Baggage Supervisor's office and put in my description of the iPod and informed them exactly where I'd left it in the Phoenix airport. The Denver personnel were more than courteous and apologetic for my loss. I got in the van, and hadn't yet reached home when I received a call from a Phoenix Southwest employee informing me they'd found my iPod, and were ready with instructions as to how I'd be able to have it Fedexed to my home.

...

It was 4:15am on the Sunday morning of my monthly duty weekend in Colorado Springs. The small Canadian man I ride with down to base each time was all smiles. "Are you ready? Let's get this day over with!" I always knew that I could count on Sergeant Budding. Good or bad, whether it was a beautiful bright shiny summer morning or cold blizzarding wintery one, he would find a way to bash it relentlessly. That and the traffic.
86 miles. From my front doorstep to the clinic we worked at, it was 86 miles.
Sergeant Budding was almost out of gas, didn't have his wallet, and I'd left my card in my lab coat pocket the day before while covering for one of phlebotomists. Between the two of us, eighty-five cents.
The math didn't work, there was no way we should've made it. I prayed much of the way while Sergeant Budding cursed hills, stoplights, slow vehicles and the slowly fading bars on his gas gauge. Eighty-six miles on little more than fumes, and we made it.

Psalm 139:1-3
"O Lord, you have searched me and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise;
You perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down;
You are familiar with all my ways."

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