I was in the Emergency Room Waiting Area, waiting on the arrival of a friend from the church where I was serving as Interim Pastor, when a young mother brought her screaming child in the room. The frightened child was yelling loud enough to be heard three floors up \u2013 \u201cI OK, I OK, No owie! No owie!\u201d Other than being temporarily deafened, I survived the experience with only a ministerial application. How many times have I hurt, yet still screamed to my listening world, \u201cI OK! No owie!\u201d Is it pride that keeps me from admitting pain? Or is it fear that others will think less of me if I share my owie? Perhaps it is the memory of a baseball coach of long ago responding to every injury with, \u201cRub it off and play ball!\u201d What was it, that allowed Paul to admit, \u201cWe are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed\u201d (2 Corinthians 4:8-9)? I really hope the little girl calmed down long enough to admit her pain and get relief. Me? Honestly, some days, I not OK, I owie! I\u2019d like to be more like Paul, and acknowledge my hurts while assuring every one that I\u2019m not yet \u201ccrushed\u201d or \u201cdestroyed.\u201d At the very least, I\u2019d like to make my old coach proud and just \u201crub it off and play ball!\u201d How about you?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was in the Emergency Room Waiting Area, waiting on the arrival of a friend from the church where I was serving as Interim Pastor, when a young mother brought her screaming child in the room. The frightened child was yelling loud enough to be heard three floors up \u2013 \u201cI OK, I OK, No…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1665\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}