God. Loves. Irony.

He’s pulling out all the stops.  I think the Lord must have something big He needs my attention for, because it’s just too ironic that everything could get this way without there being some cosmic plan involved.

In the midst of all the new stressors that have been introduced into my life this year, somehow there seems to always remain a little bit of room left for some new problem to pop up.  It’s like those silly teen slasher films.  You think it can’t possibly get any worse, and then, wait.. yes.. there’s always room for more ketchup wounds and screaming adolescents.  The nation-wide power and water outages, for instance, I’ve gotten used to.  But now, it seems like everything at our house is breaking: our instant shower heater, our washing machine, our break lights on the car, etc.  The power kept surging this morning in my room and downstairs, and I seriously thought to myself that something was going to explode.  Our house helper does everyone’s laundry except for mine, but I think that’s probably because she’s nervous to do mine anymore because on her first try, she ruined seven or eight items of clothing (they’re permanently dyed a splotchy purple/gray).  Everyone’s sick at school- this nasty cold/flu where everyone’s nose is runny and they’re coughing and sneezing and losing their voices.  I haven’t gotten it yet, but I’m sure it’s coming.  Like I’ve mentioned before, I’m teaching more courses than I had last year because one of the newly hired teachers and her family are still support-raising back in the States and the new word out is that she’s probably not going to make it at all.  I’ve roped myself into directing two plays second semester instead of one, we’ve increased the size of the yearbook by 30% from last year, and I’ve got a batch of smarties in my AP English class who really deserve to do well on their test in May.  

It’s been one doozy of a quarter.

But all of that came to a climax this past Friday night.  My roommate had had some of her senior French girls over to the house for a sleepover.  I’d stayed up in my room for a while reading a book, but joined them after an hour or so.  They’re great girls and it was fun to spend some time outside of the academic school environment.  We were talking about their post-graduation plans (turns out one of them is even looking at my alma mater, Miami University, which was a fun surprise) and how their senior year is going so far, just kind of catching up.  Each of the girls who had come was also on my yearbook staff, and our director had just given me a copy of the yearbook from the NICS school in Bangdung, Indonesia, and so I went back upstairs to bring it back for the girls to look at to get some inspiration for their section staff.  As I came back down, I missed the step before the landing and did this little human-accordion stunt as I rolled over the outside of my right foot.  I imagine it looked pretty funny to the girls down in the living room, and I popped right back up and was laughing, too.  

But a little later on, I realized that it hurt pretty badly, even with ice on it, so when the doctor dad of one of the girls came to pick her up, the girls asked that he come and check it out.  I’m a terrible wuss when it comes to doctors, and so even though the pain wasn’t too bad, I ended up in this crazy crying/laughing fit with a whole circle of students and a parent around to witness the tragedy.  He recommended that I get an x-ray in the morning and told me to lay low until the next day.  So at 9:30 am Saturday morning, Jennifer P drove me over to a clinic to get the x-ray with one of our sophomore students, sister to one of the senior girls and daughter to the doctor, as a tag-along.  She seemed really excited to find out whether her teacher had broken a bone and was making predictions that I’d need a cast and asked if she could sign it.  Silly girl.  Turns out, though, after an hour and a half at this junky little clinic, I got my x-ray and report that I had indeed broken my foot.  Spiral fracture to my 5th metatarsal.  Awesome.

So Dr. Joe had my other roomie, Becca, and his older daughter head out to the chemist to pick up the stuff to make a plaster cast and the whole family helped out in the process of plastering me up in our back yard.  It was pretty comical, really.  The senior daughter held an umbrella over me so that the plaster wouldn’t set too quickly in the sun while the dad was sarcastically teasing me the whole time and the sophomore daughter drew smiley faces on my toes with wet plaster and made a big ol’ mess, delighting that she was finally not the one who’d broken something and needed a cast.  

The crazy part was that the whole process ended up costing me 2000 ksh (1000 for the x-ray, 1000 for the cast supplies)- about $27.  And I never once even pulled out my insurance card.  Wild.  So the rest of the weekend, I pretty much sat around telling this same story, eating chocolate and working on school stuff.  The doctor’s wife, Sue, who coincidentally works at WNS as our middle school English teacher sent over a borrowed copy of some British made-for-TV film about a woman who loves the Austen novel Pride and Prejudice and finds Elizabeth Bennet in her bathroom one day and switches lives with her.  Wildly entertaining, but a little shocking as well.  My discipler, Kara, came over with soup and a Betty Crocker brownie box mix Sunday afternoon, too.  I guess there are some perks that come along with the whole being an invalid thing.

But I’ve got to admit that this whole thing has just got me mad right now.  I’m ticked.  I’ve never broken anything before in my life, I’ve never been all that sick, and I only just had my first cavity ever a year ago.  I kind of can’t believe that it’s now of all times and here of all places that I have to go and break my foot.  I feel so inconvenienced and helpless and pathetic.  I’ve got to hop around with this huge thing on my foot and hobble around on crutches for six weeks.  Our campus is really hilly, and there are stairs everywhere, so I know that’ll prove to be pretty challenging.  We’d planned on a trip to Mombasa in a month, but it would be just silly to try to go to the beach with a cast.  No more driving lessons, either.  I’m a lump.  So frustrating.

And yet, I can’t help thinking that this is just way too much happening at the same time for it to be purely accidental.  I mean.. seriously?  On top of everything else already making life complicated, I’ve got to gimp around for a month and a half just because I missed a step on a staircase I’ve run up and down in the dark before without hurting myself at all?  I think I must be one of God’s priority targets for training in patience without whining, because He’s giving me way too many opportunities for practice to have it be mere coincidence.  I’m either going to become the most annoying person on the planet for the poor people around me, or the next time you see me you’ll encounter a saint.  Boy, I hope it’s the latter.  

I’m hoping this is the last trial He’s got planned for me for a while, though.  Did you hear that, Jesus?  Hold off for a little while until I figure out how to take a shower with a plaster cast up to my knee without getting it wet.  Then you can throw me something else.  Promise.  In the meantime, I suppose there’s humor to be found in it all.  I’m trying my darndest not to get all cranky and sorry for myself, and I’m sure that a week of students gaping and giggling at their teacher poking around campus on crutches should help me not to take myself too seriously.  So here goes.