A Man In Uniform:
Measured Adjustments

In the year after my double eye surgery, I’ve patiently adjusted to changing ambient light sources and the left-right, right-left focus of mono-vision. Sunny days I wear an array of sunglasses. Gloomy days and nights when driving I wear eyeglasses with a single distance lens for my reading eye. As for the computer distance, my knees pull the screen up and forward. Don’t you love the computer’s ease of adjustable font type? I do.

If only life’s shocks came with a drop down menu of easy solution tools. Collection agents call, you find and click on “DEBTS FORGIVEN.” Infidelity goes public, go click on “ERASE PAST ACTS.” If the boss suddenly terminates you, click on “CREATE NEW JOB.”

You can’t wave a wand to minimize the suffering time. How often we dread the wait of suffering along with its weight on our hearts and minds. As a mom I try to wrap the bandages too quickly to fix problems, problems that weigh more on me than on my kids.

Perhaps that was the case as I sent Buddy off as a man in uniform to his first job after a two-year long search. Smartly dressed with a gleaming badge he went to work in an environment he loved, a kitchen. He’d come back every day exhausted. As days went by his job changed. He was taking out trash. Then he was suddenly asked to bus and clear tables.

On the day his SSI and first pay check was electronically deposited, Buddy came home to declare, “I’m rich!” His hand held out in wonder a single George Washington bill. He said he found it on a tray and his boss said he could keep it. All smiles he showed it to his sister and later to his dad. That single greenback find was worth more to him than the wealth of Solomon’s mines or the new figures in Bud's account.

Numbers still confuse Buddy, just as much as his multitasking in a restaurant of 1,500 guests. But I did not know about the latter confusion. I learned it a few weeks back on the last day he wore his uniform. As Bud rested after on the other sofa, I took a phone call. Suddenly, I reeled back to the call my husband made to me, telling what the company did to him. Only this time I had to explain to my son the news he did not know . . . about himself!

My son reacted in that quiet man way. “I feel sad,” was his elicited response that night. His mom, however, verbally vented and wept her eyes swollen before God and to the few we asked to pray.

The search for a new solution will be measured, no hasty bandages needed. Once again I lean on my God, my debt Forgiver, my sin Eraser, the Creator of faith and all things new. Once again the Creator recreates my adult faith to be as simple and wondrous as that of a child.