Doorbells

When we built our house four years ago it never occurred to us to have a doorbell on the front door. I guess part of the reason is that we have never lived in a house overseas with a doorbell. After we moved in we realized that even though our driveway is nearly a half mile long, someone could be at our front door without us knowing it. We made a wise decision and added a driveway alert way down below our house that lets us know when someone is coming up our drive. It has helped in several situations—for example the night a pickup pulled up our drive without the lights on. They stopped at the barn below the house and when they got out of the pickup I pointed my heavy duty spot light at them and turned it on. They yelled, “Don’t shoot. We are looking for our dogs.” Two coon hunters thought they were slipping around looking for their dogs and did not know they had activated our driveway alert.

I am thinking a lot about doorbells over the last few weeks as there is one in the gantry where I am being treated. While I am lying there I cannot see anything except the top of the big gantry. I can’t see the therapists, but I can hear them moving about. So I listen for sounds to get me an idea of how much longer I have to hold it. There’s the sound of the X-ray machines going back into the back of the gantry. There is the sound of the therapists placing he two huge brass lenses into the zapper (custom made lenses for the shape of my prostate). Then there are the soft sounds that you really have to concentrate to hear such as their quiet footsteps in the direction of a particular computer where they are aligning my body with the machine. When the therapists have completed their tasks for preparing me for the treatment, they push a doorbell as a signal that they are exiting the gantry and will be observing me via cameras. I have to really strain to hear that faint sound, but I love the sound of that doorbell as it signals the halfway point in the treatment. The beautiful sound of that doorbell means that I only have 10 more minutes before I can visit the little boy’s room.

We close our eyes when we pray. Why? One reason is to drown out distractions that keep us from concentrating on talking with God. Do you think another reason is that when we close our eyes we can concentrate more on listening to God? Much of my prayer time is telling God what I need for Him to hear and not enough is straining to listen to what He wants to say to me.