mused with mary

Drip drop, drip drop.

I’ve heard it a million times from a million people before.

“Oh, there it is again, the stupid sink dripping water all night long, waking me up in the middle of the night, keeping me where I can’t sleep. I’ll ask him to fix it but he’ll probably forget, or when he does fix it the next thing will pop up, probably on my way to work–it’ll be the engine, but when I get to work it’ll be my phone or when I get home from work it will be the big, loud fat drops of water dripping from the ceiling onto the kitchen table–or is it the sink again?”

Drip drop, drip drop.

Every day something new pops up–a new inconvenience to my ordinarily smooth-sailing life, a new form of drip drop, drip drop, drip drop like the incessant noise all night long from the sink, slowly letting one drop hit the bottom before the next one crashes out, staying with me all night long, echoing in the back of my mind.

I think about how that little inconvenience feels so huge–how that little inconvenience, all those little inconveniences daily, add up to a life riddled with inconveniences of the smallest scale. The person who doesn’t go immediately at a green light. The 30 seconds too long I popped the popcorn. The glass bottle I dropped and shattered and now have to clean up. I’m constantly inconvenienced.

But then, I think of what I could be hearing: that barely-there whisper of the drip drop, drip drop, drip drop, except this time it isn’t the sink slowly letting out water on to the drain, but the IV bag slowly, carefully, measurably dripping poison into my veins. It’s the IV bag keeping me alive, resisting desiccation, or tumor growth, or infection. An inconvenience so large that I must rely on it to live–suddenly, I think of all those other inconveniences–the broken phone, broken engine, broken roof, broken glass, broken house, and suddenly they all become overwhelmingly insignificant compared to the prospect of a broken body, a broken soul.

I’ll be thankful for my little inconveniences every day.