MRI Moments

So today has been one of those blah days.  Ever been there?  You know, the type of day where the weather kind of mirrors your mood?  Soggy, wet, and dreary, tossed in with a sprinkling of stress and emotions.  It's been the kind of day where I really had to force myself to get in front of the computer and write a blog about joy, kicking and screaming the whole way.

In the midst of everything already going on, I needed to get an MRI done on my shoulder.  It's been bothering for me a long while but something just kicked me in the pants a few weeks ago to get it checked.  It wasn't anything I was looking forward to though, as I suffer from a mild case of claustrophobia.  Ok, in some instances it's more than mild. 

At any rate, I was giving myself a pep talk the whole ride over that this was really mind over matter and I could get through it.  (I guess the one small positive when you've been through as much as I have it really puts some things in perspective!)  This little machine would not get the best of me.  I am stronger than that tiny hole they were going to cram me into.  I think I can.  I think I can.

My first blessing came in the form of the tech who was more than sweet to me.  Once she learned about my "mild claustrophobia," she really went out of her way to make me feel comfortable.  We opted not to go for the box-like jail contraption they wanted me to put over my head BEFORE going in the tiny little hole but instead using the older standard pillow.  I breathed a sigh of relief and nervously joked that I didn't really want to look like Anthony Hopkins in "Silence of the Lambs" anyway.

She planned to only put me in the hole as far as necessary but a slip of the button shot me through more than either of us had hoped.  Already in prayer and meditation, pretending I was cocooned in a spa treatment, I dove deeper with a request for God to keep me calm.  Just when I didn't think I could take another moment in there, my headphones started to play a song. 

Now this was an added comfort and surprise in that she'd been having trouble getting the music to work at all with the storms we've had.  Although she put them on my ears before going in, they really didn't play because the station kept fading in and out.  But just as I sent up a little prayer for help to get through this minor bump in my rocky road today...it came.  And it was a song that shouldn't have been on that station as they were different genres.  On a rock station, comes a song by the Jackson 5.  In between my pauses for a deep breath and prayers, I hear the lyrics "Just call my name...and I'll be there"

The whole thing was just a big ole' sign in my little bitty hole that, as always, He was there.  Even in moments when he may feel far away, or that he doesn't hear me, he reassures me, He is there.  ...to comfort me...to be my strength..to fill my heart with joy and laughter...whenever I need him, he'll be there.