The gift of hearing

Not everyone can hear.  It's something we take for granted, but we shouldn't.

For a while, my mom thought she had lost hearing in one of her ears.  There were all sorts of tests done, an interesting edge of tension around the house... but the doctors found nothing wrong; her hearing was pretty much perfect.  In the end, it turned out to be a slight delay in the processing of the input from that ear.  She would see our mouths moving, but not be able to understand what we were saying, because she would get a garbled message until 30 seconds later or so when it processed.  That seems so awful to me.  It was frustrating enough being on the outside of it, but being on the inside seems even worse.  (Personally, I think she has a brand of Sensory Integration Dysfunction, but I'm no doctor.)

I say all this, because the thought of hearing has come up a lot in my life this week.

First, someone posted a recording of the voicemail message of a girl I knew in high school who died in 2009.  It was unreal hearing her voice again, and made me desperate to hear Kyle's.  Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge, no similar such recording exists for him.  Then, today, I listened to a sermon of Nate Kerr's from later that year.  Hearing Nate's voice again made me realize just how much I miss him and his classes.  Granted, that's also something that's been slowly building this week, but now it's painful.

In a way, I found Nate's classes to be my small group in college, especially the ones that I had a free hour after.  There were those of us who would hang around and discuss religion, philosophy, life, etc., and he would guide us and speak truth into our lives.  It was those classes that made me feel okay working the nursery on Saturdays at Yeshuat Yisrael.  I fully considered him a pastor of mine, and had him fill out several letters of recommendation as such.  Now, I'm finding it harder to be fed, and there are no Nate Kerr classes to make up for it.  My heart aches.

And yet, I can still hear his voice.  I can still hear MK's voice.  It's amazing what technology does for us.

Don't wait until people are gone from your life; soak them up as much as you can while you have them.


Yes, I fully realize that I'm not posting a photo.  I have the perfect photo to put up, but I forgot to take it today.  It will be here tomorrow.