Barking Frog and Mountain Climbing

I find myself these days having to purposefully look for daily encouragements. There are some days where at the end of the day I literally have to pray for my eyes to be opened in order to see the day’s encouragement. It’s not that I have regret getting the implant. On the contrary, I am slowly seeing the possibilities of this implant.

The possibilities are thrilling as well as maddening, for patience is not one of my stronger virtues.

It isn’t enough that I have been able to chat with Mama on the phone everyday without much of a problem. Or that I am discovering new environmental sounds weekly. Its just that there is a need for me to pipe down. Take it down a couple of notches. Start drinking on a daily basis. More specifically, to restrain myself from rushing ahead with inflated expectations.

On Saturday night, my Hous performed the dedication ceremony for our godchild which was held at the parents’ home. It was a lovely and intimate candlelight service by followed by a dinner that lasted several hours. Because of my recent successes with the phone, I had high expectations that I would be able to follow dinner conversations better. There were 10 of us around the table and while I knew I would miss some things, I was pretty jazzed about how well I was going to do.

Let’s just say that by the end of the night I learned two things:

I have quite an extensive fantasy life.
Barking Frog is a red wine, not a misunderstanding on my part.

I was pretty frustrated by the time we got home and through the lens of disappointment, I could not see the daily encouragement. We built a fire and settled in to our movie. Halfway through the movie I got up to stoke the fire and my implant started hissing. As I moved upstairs to get the remote control to troubleshoot the problem, the hissing stopped. I came back downstairs and it started again. Seeing the confused look on my face, Hous informed me that the hissing I was hearing was not the implant but the fire.

Come again? Fire hisses?!?! I thought it just popped and crackled but apparently it also hisses when wood has not been well seasoned or if there is water on wood. Who knew?

I had never heard the fire hiss before. With disappointment, I duly noted this was my today’s daily encouragement. Hous subtly made the point that although I’d hoped that today’s encouragement would be something with conversation, I don’t get to choose my daily encouragement. A fire hiss is no less of a celebration than a conversation.

He’s right.

And I finally understood why: In the same way that a mountaineer savors his conquest of the peak more abundantly after a hard climb punctuated with small victories and setbacks, how much more would I delight in the mastery of speech discrimination if I lived each moment of the journey?