Adversity

How do you cope with adversity?

This has been a terrible couple of weeks. First my father-in-law died. I know he was very old, but we had hoped that he would have been able to get out of hospital to celebrate his 94th birthday.

Then traveling up the M3 motorway last Tuesday we were scared by a regular banging coming from the front of the car. I pulled over and inspected the wheels. The tread was shearing off the tire. Fortunately, my nephew was able to leave work early and transport my wife to keep her appointments to arrange the funeral while the Automobile Association transported me to the nearest garage where I was able to replace all four tires at enormous expense. Still, I knew they needed replacing and I would have got round to it by now had I not been so busy. No permanent damage done.

Then I got a notice through the post that I had been caught speeding by a hidden camera. I consoled myself with the knowledge of the number of times I had broken the speed limit and not got caught.

Then on the evening of the funeral my daughter had a serious accident on the same M3 motorway. Approaching a traffic diversion, a car in the inside lane, finding himself in the wrong lane, suddenly swung into her lane without signaling. She braked hard and swerved to avoid him, crashed into the central crash barrier, did a 360 degree spin and finally came to rest behind a row of cones in a safe position on the hard shoulder. The car is a write off, but all she had was a small bruise on her forehead. It could have been very much worse. We had a 150 mile midnight drive to rescue her, but all was well.

Yesterday, my wife had a cateract operation. After a run like that we were expecting the worst. Would it get infected? Would she lose her sight? How about MRSA?

Today we took the bandage off. The improvement was wonderful; there were colors she never knew existed; everything was ten times brighter. No scars to show, no blood shot eyes, no pain; we could rejoice at last.