Sheila Sims Iding
Sometimes connections work. Sometimes they don’t. We’ve all experienced this with Christmas tree lights. You hook them up, you connect them and plug them in and nothing. It doesn’t work how you had hoped.
We’ve all put batteries in a flashlight, screwed the top back on and hoped for a connection. Sometimes the flashlight works…sometimes it doesn’t.
It’s the same with computers. The same with skype. We are getting used to clicking on skype and hearing a friendly voice and seeing a familiar face appear on our screen. Sometimes it is disrupted or distorted, but usually the connection works. (I am still amazed by how and why it does…especially half way around the world.)
Having said that, there are times when a connection does not work. The skype may come on but then it quickly malfunctions and disconnects. This happened recently when I was connecting with Tim and his travels in Asia. The skype was there…then it wasn’t. It was a tease that was almost worse than no connection at all.
The skype connections have been important lately as Tim has been traveling through Asia to make the most of this time off of classes. In China, their January and February compares to our June and July of the school year. It is still winter there but it is the months they are off of school…it is their big academic break. To take advantage of his newly formed classmates and students, Tim accepted several offers to visit with them on break. He is traveling to parts of China, Vietnam, Singapore and the Philippines. Some of the visits are to the remote parts of the countries.
He has been in a couple of places where they don’t have heat. The temperature is 30 degrees but no one has heat in their houses or hotels or hostels. There are no fireplaces, no space heaters, no heat. Apparently it is commonplace there. The people wear their coats and hats and warm clothes inside like we would wear them standing in the cold for a winter soccer game. I have stood in 30-degree weather for a couple of hours but I have never had to live in 30-degree weather…or colder.
I was always relieved…very relieved…to leave the cold of a soccer game or even go to my car during halftime, so it is foreign to me (pardon the pun) how someone could LIVE in 30-degree weather day after day with no break.
Apparently it is foreign to Tim and his body as he fights to stay warm, stay stay healthy and stay positive while enjoying the beauty of the country sides he has visited. The food has not been his friend and the heat (or lack there of) has been his enemy. He has struggled to eat, to sleep, to warm, to relax. He has struggled to find ways to cope and ways to manage and ways to make the most of these special opportunities to enjoy the beautiful sights these countries have to offer. How has he done it?
In part he has done it exactly how you would have guessed…with the power of prayer. He is praying for strength, praying for mental toughness, praying the Rosary for comfort. And he has done it with the connection we set up on his first trip to China in 2005. We made a pact to pray for each other every hour on the hour. So every hour on the hour we pray a Hail, Mary. My morning Hail, Mary’s are connected to his night Hail, Mary’s. My Hail, Mary’s at lunchtime, are his Hail, Mary’s near midnight. Every hour on the hour…for most of the time. I am sure there are hours I forget. I am sure there are hours he forgets. But for the most part every hour on the hour our Hail Mary prayers connect us.
I wrote about it several weeks ago in a previous blog and I realized the power of the prayer pact but I didn’t fully realize the power of the comfort it brings. One night when he was sick from the food, freezing from the temperature and alone in an obscure hotel room in a foreign land, I asked him how he got through the night. He told me he prayed and the greatest comfort came, every hour on the hour when our Hail Mary prayers connected us.
So as Christmas lights work and don’t work depending on the connection, as the connection of skype is sometimes distorted, as I watch the MSU game on ESPN and the signal is not fully connecting, I am reminded that connections don’t always work. But, more importantly, I am reminded that there is a connection that does work. It is a connection that worked on a cold, lonely, foreign night in a very powerful way. Mostly, I am comforted in knowing that, although all connections can be broken and disrupted at some point, this connection can never be disrupted or broken or lost. And soon, at 8:00 p.m. on this Saturday night in Michigan and 8:00 a.m. Sunday morning in Vietnam a mother’s heart and a son wrapped in blankets will be connected by prayer. Hail, Mary, full of grace.