Yesterday was the day to go over the river and through the woods to the rheumatologist's office. That meant driving over to Kingsport, TN, a drive which takes about an hour and fifteen or twenty minutes. Usually. I allow myself about two hours to make the trip. Just in case. And yesterday that was a good thing.
I was about ten miles from home when I encountered a sign telling me that a bridge was out several miles up the road. I should have taken the only turn available to me at that point, but I didn't. Since there was no orange sign indicating a detour, I continued on, expecting to see a detour sign along the way. Silly me. There was no such sign, and eventually I came to a barricade across the road which allowed me to go no further. I turned my car around in the middle of this narrow mountain road and started back in the direction from which I had come. I eventually came to a road that allowed me to turn in the right direction, or what I thought was the right direction. In the middle of the mountains it's sometimes hard to tell. But I thought I had traveled this particular road before, so I went that way, all the while listening to that annoying GPS voice "recalculating."
It took much longer than I had expected to get back to any place remotely familiar to me. I was very glad I had allowed that extra time since the time now indicated on my GPS as my arrival time was much too close to my scheduled appointment time for my comfort. I was really beginning to stress about this whole experience, and that made me wonder just what my blood pressure reading would be by the time I arrived at the doctor's office. I'm happy to report it was a very calm 120/70!
The good news from this whole adventure is that eventually I got to a familiar road and continued on my journey to Kingsport. I arrived at the doctor's office in plenty of time. And I traveled back home by a different road, avoiding detours altogether.
My detour led me to one of several discoveries yesterday. I traveled along a beautiful mountain road, and the bounty of blackberry blossoms I saw leads me to the conclusion that there will be an abundant blackberry harvest this summer! That makes me very happy, since I love blackberries! I would have loved to stop and get some photos of the beauty I saw along the way, but stopping the car to take pictures in the middle of a narrow, winding mountain road was probably not a particularly safe option, so the picture-taking will have to wait until another day.
I also discovered yesterday that there are some really kind and helpful people in this world. The young man who served me my lunch at the Cracker Barrel. The nurse who took care of me in the doctor's office. The elderly woman I chatted with while we were both waiting our turn to have our blood drawn. These encounters were grace gifts in my day.
But I also discovered that there are a lot of grumpy, unhappy, joy-less people in this world. I encountered a number of them yesterday. At Walmart. At the gas station. Along the highway. People cutting people off on the road. People using interesting hand signals (!!). Frowning people. Unfriendly people. People who seem terribly miserable.
How sad to be going through life with no joy. Never smiling. Just cranky and miserable.
Those people need a smile. Maybe I'll just give them one of mine! And maybe you can do the same for the cranky people you encounter.
"A joyful heart is good medicine." (Proverbs 17:22a ESV)
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