This summer has been a little bit like a scene from Dante’s walk through the Inferno. In excruciating pain at 3 a.m. in the emergency room, I could feel those words as the poet enters the netherworld: “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.” I’ve never felt that much pain, and I’ve been in bad car accidents and suffered a pretty severe football injury many, many years ago. But this injury to my back took the cake.
When I was in high school, I can remember being asked to care for my neighbor’s plants, giving them water while they were on vacation. At other times, I remember being asked to care for the neighbor’s dog, giving it food and water and taking it walking each day. When I was a senior in high school, I remember being asked to watch the two young children of a different neighboring family while the parents went to work for the day. In all these instances, I knew I was being entrusted with a responsibility – watching over the children being the greatest of the three examples. The greater the value of what was entrusted to me, the more I was focused and attentive. If I did not recognize the value of what others had entrusted to me, it is likely that I could have been negligent and uncaring.