Direct Connection by Emily Owen

 

Photo by Kate Mishchankova on Unsplash

On occasion, I am a gingerbread man. 

It's an annual experience.

I wrote, about the first time I ever had a MRI scan:

Like a gingerbread man on a baking tray being pushed into an oven, I was pushed into the scanner.

Each year I have these scans, lying in a tunnel to assess what is going on inside my body.

During the most recent one, I had a mirror attached to my head brace, enabling me to see out of the tunnel, into the room beyond.

There wasn’t much to see. The wall (white), and the window (darkened), and my toes (occasionally they waved to me).

It must have been getting on for an hour into the scan before I realised there was more. There were some words on the head brace. I could see them in the edge of the mirror. I metaphorically jumped for joy; something to read is cause for celebration indeed.

Except, I couldn’t read it. I strained to see and puzzle out the writing in the mirror.

Scan over, head brace and mirror were removed, and I climbed off the baking tray. As I was about to leave the room, I turned back, and said to the radiographer,

“Can I just ask what the words on the head brace say? I think I worked them out, but I’d like to check.”

“What words?”

“Um, there are a couple of words on the head brace. I think there are, anyway. But it doesn’t matter….” I trailed off, feeling a bit silly, and assuming I’d imagined the whole thing (my imagination often gets going in the scan).

“No, hang on,” and he reached for the head brace, holding it up for me to read.

'Direct Connection.'

The words I’d eventually figured out.

During the end of my time in the scan, I mused on those words. 

Direct Connection.

The scanner is not my favourite place to be. 

Maybe some of us are in places we wouldn’t choose; in our writing, in our circumstances, in our lives. And maybe some of us are in exactly the places we’d choose; in our writing, in our circumstance, in our lives.

Wherever we are, God is there, too. We have a Direct Connection to Him (eg Deut 31:6).

For a while, the words ‘Direct Connection’ went unseen by me, pushed aside by walls and windows and toes. But they were there all the time.

As we sit down to write, as we live our lives, may we remember to recognise that we are all-the-time Directly Connected to the One who is the Author of our days, and our thoughts, and our words.

Before a word is on my tongue - or pen, or keyboard - you, LORD, know it completely.

Psalm 139:4

Last weekend, in a video call, my nephew took his mum’s phone so he could show me his new bedroom.

He expertly whizzed the camera at blurry breakneck speed around the entire room, but thankfully he remembered to slow it down when he showed me every inch of the racing track he’s built on the floor.

Before doing either of those things, though, he treated me to a lengthy close-up view of the light switch by the door.

First things first.

Check the Light-switch.

Is it on?

Yes.

Jesus said, "I AM the Light of [your] World." (John 8:12)

Direct Connection.

https://www.emily-owen.com/