Furniture was the last thing on my mind. But the store was having a sale, and we needed to replace the dilapidated chair in our living room.
I’d hoped shopping would distract me from dwelling on my upcoming surgery, but as I trailed my husband around the crowded showroom, the surgery was the only thing I could think about.
“You have a fibroid tumor with precancerous cells,” my doctor had told me a few days earlier. “We’re lucky we caught it this early.”
I didn’t feel lucky. Surgery absolutely terrified me.
“How about this one?” Mike asked, sitting down in a brown recliner.
“It’s nice,” I said. What difference did it make? I didn’t even want to think about sitting down. If I stopped moving my worries would overwhelm me.
I wandered toward the back of the store. I barely noticed the furniture around me—until my gaze fell on an oversized chair. It was olive green with camel piping and came with a matching footstool. I dropped right into it. The overstuffed upholstery felt like a loving embrace. I called Mike over to look at it.
He liked the green chair too. We took it home and I tried it out. It worked like magic—for a moment. Then I would start to pace and worry again. Mike saw it on my face.
“You ought to sit down and make a list of the things that scare you about your surgery,” he said. He cut up strips of paper and handed them to me.
On the first I wrote “Anesthesia.” The next paper was “Pain.” The more strips Mike gave me the more fears came out: “Complications.” “Recovery.” “Cancer.”
When I’d written down my fears—36 in all—Mike sat beside me in the big green chair with his arm around me. One by one we prayed over each piece of paper until all 36 strips lay crumpled on the floor. I felt lighter and the big green chair felt even softer.
My surgery went well. I had such a fast recovery, my doctor wondered what my secret was. I told her it was a big green chair where God was always waiting to embrace me.
Written by Peggy Frezon, Rensselaer, New York
