"A Two Part Riddle" Lesson 171

I am a miserable excuse for a person! I do not like myself and no one likes me! I do not care! I do not like them either! I dress with little or no care and make up and new hairdos are foreign words to me. I clean house and cook like a programmed robot. Putting things in place, hoping they are right, not caring if they are, wishing I could care. I want to go some place but I have no place to go. Wanting to talk but I have no one to talk to. Who would understand? Why should I burden a friend with all my troubles? A friend? My friends? Who are they? Maybe I have none! I am sure I have none and really do not want any to add to my problems. The phone rings and I hesitate to answer. Who in the world could this be calling me? What do they want? I cannot do what they ask and I don’t want to see anyone. What if they know about my life? I cannot answer their questions since I do not understand myself. I answer the call and it is the wrong number! Boy! Am I curt! The nerve of someone breaking into my self pity by ringing my number by mistake. However, what else could it have been but the wrong number? No one calls me by choice! This is golf day, so I am told, and everyone is playing. They do not have the problems that I have or they would not be so “gameful”. Besides, I have to go into the hospital! I will not tell anyone. I am really frightened! I will suffer alone! No one cares anyway so why ask for sympathy. I will get a private room so there will not be another person there to make small talk and try to be friendly. Why can’t everyone understand that I want to be left alone? People in a semi-private room don’t even need to be there. Hospitals are for sick people like me! Where is the doctor? Sitting with someone not half as bad off as I am? Really! I pay him a tremendous fee to take care of me and where is he? Here he comes; I can tell by the way the lazy, inefficient nurses are beginning to scuttle about. “Hello! I am your doctor’s associate and I will check on you today”. Can you beat that? I wait all day and store up all my complaints only to have to swallow them. I certainly do not intend to waste my breath telling this inexperienced young man any of my symptoms. He would never understand. Besides, I chose my doctor and highly resent a fill-in. I turn to the wall and explain I am weary from the day’s activities (test, x-rays, and etc.) and would like only to rest. Then I request a no visitors sign to be put on my door and cry my self slowly to sleep. I have no flowers, no cards and no one comes. My doctor practically dismissed me without one word of how to cure me. I am alone! I am sad! I am resentful! I have no life to look forward to! WHO AM I? I AM THE WIFE OF AN ALCOHOLIC!

I am a well rounded, happy, considerate wife and mother of three. I live in a lovely home and my days are filled to the brim with wedding and baby showers, golf lessons, are and yard work. I have more friends than I can visit in a day but I am still trying to make more. I love people and people are beginning to trust and love me. It feels good to go to work every day and I look forward to going home to my family. Now the phone rings and I am anxious to answer, kind to the wrong number caller, and proud to be of service when someone calls for a need. I will pray with you and for you, laugh when you are happy and cry when you are sad. I will sit with the sick or run with the fit. I am especially proud of my new friends in Christ because without you my falls would hurt and my steps would be too far apart for me to reach alone. You have befriended me, accepted my problems as your own and released me from the empty loneliness. You have taught me or rather reminded me that there is a higher power, Jesus Christ, who is with me always, to the very end of the age (Matt. 28:20). He is my shield and the lifter of my head and answers me from His holy hill (Ps. 3:3-4). I can sleep in peace, take refuge in Him and sing with joy while He spreads His protection over me (Ps. 4:8, 5:11). He reached down and drew me out of the deep (Ps. 18:16) and once again has become my Shepherd (Ps. 23:1-6). WHO AM I? I AM A BORN AGAIN CHRISTIAN AND A GRATEFUL ALANON!