 |
| Light streaming through the clouds. |
Today’s post comes on the heels of my earlier one about Shoulder Taps. Entitled “Has This Happened to You” I delve into the phenomenon of receiving a nudge "a Shoulder tap" by an unseen entity, which causes us to act positively.
This morning, I had a major revelation regarding a long-running string of shoulder taps. Until now, it seems I misunderstood their intent.
For the last five years, I’ve noticed an ever-increasing number of distant trains whistling and the cheery chirps of nearby birds. Associating these sounds with my grandparents was easy — as a young boy, I often felt the tickle of faint train whistles as I dozed. Similarly, the feeder hanging from a backyard tree was always crammed full of singing birds. The gentle blur of sounds made me smile as I drowsily burrowed deeper beneath the pile of warm blankets on my cot.
Today, I had a startling epiphany. My grandparents, once vibrant and active, became sedentary in their later years — eventually succumbing to age-amplified illnesses.
I never thought of my pleasant memories as a shoulder tap from God until a few minutes ago. The epiphany, the enormity, sent a rolling shiver down my spine — I believe my grandparents were trying to alert me to take better care of my health.
This probably seems far-fetched and a convenient connection, but there’s more to the story.
Our previous homes didn’t have train tracks nearby nor many birds carrying on en masse. When we moved into our current home, months passed without hearing either. Of late, trains and flocks of raucous birds are frequent and welcome distractions. Coincidentally, I began hearing the whistles and bird calls at roughly the same time I began smelling that strange odor wafting from me whenever I exercised (see my other post on the subject, “Do You Smell Something Funky?”).
Often thinking about diabetes, I welcomed the train whistles and bird calls as distracting reminders of better, much simpler times. Oddly, though, the happy sounds have taken on an urgency and volume that was puzzling. Yesterday, both the whistles and chirps seemed frantic and so loud as to demand my attention.
In that instant, memories flooded my thoughts as images of working out blended with those associated with the soothing sounds. Always warmed by the softening of distance, I didn’t make a connection until this wall of noisy, shrill, and irritating ... and that’s when I paused.
How is it possible that two pleasurable triggers of my past morphed into something akin to the sound of fingernails scraping across a blackboard
Suddenly, the volume and intensity of the bird calls and train whistles softened once again. This increase in intensity, frequency, and duration was a long-running wake-up call all along. Sure, the pleasant sounds always produced a grin, and I fully understood their tie to my grandparents, it just never dawned on me that the strange sweat odor could ever be associated with the whistles and bird calls.
It may sound silly and far-fetched, but that chill and epiphany brought memories of my grandparents’ poor health, thoughts of sweaty workouts,, and diabetes fears together at the very instant when a train’s whistling and nearby bird calls aggravated me.
As I missed the clue of the slowly increasing glucose-related smell of sweat, I also mistook all those wonderful sounds for soothing triggers. I believe that God, all along, had been sending me subtle signals that something was wrong. It was as if S/He were tapping me on the shoulder all along — lightly at first and growing stronger until the shoulder tap became as significant as a punch to my arm. The message was crystal clear. A sedentary lifestyle would ruin me, as it did during my grandparents’ final years. Instead, I was to improve immediately my outlook on my future, including what I ate and how I exercised.
The second big chill came when I thought about how decades of events and memories can become, or be rationalized, as all the background necessary to make a point today. It was the wake-up call of a lifetime a much-needed and very appreciated shoulder tap.
Please comment on instances when an invisible shoulder tap woke you from some destructive behavior. Usually, shoulder taps seem to occur to help other people, but who’s to say that God can’t use the same tool to deliver a message that affects us directly? Please share your thoughts and examples in the comments section below.
Have a nice day.
~RJ
Tags:
God, shoulder tap, wake-up call, fond memory, grandparent, diabetes, sweat, odor, workout, exercise, train, whistle, bird, epiphany
Comments
Post a Comment