In Georgia, Jere Lipnick and I started a bus route.
It was in Carrollton about 15 miles from the church. We had names for all of the neighborhoods where we picked up riders. One of these neighborhoods we called “animal farm” due to the number of individual animals and different species we spotted roaming about.
In animal farm, we picked up two brothers named Ernest and Joseph. Ernest was in his early 20’s while Joseph was around 18 when they started riding. They were with us a number of years and continued to ride even after I came north.
One Sunday, Ernest came walking out to the bus with a boot velcro’d to his right foot. As he climbed the steps we noticed a cast on the foot with his bare toes sticking out of the front. Worse than that was the presence of five long pins sticking straight out from the end of each of his toes. Just the appearance of this foot made us all cringe.
He stopped to answer all of our questions of which I remember no answers, but the image of that foot is burned into my memory forever. Once our curiosities had been satisfied, he began to make his way back to his seat.
On the way there, he swung his foot a little too fast and a little too far to the right. In so doing, he ended up kicking the seat post with one of the pins stuck in his toe. Yeeeeooooowwww! Just thinking about it again makes me squirm in sympathetic pain.
Poor Ernest. He did stay on the bus. He did make it to church. He did suffer for his haste that day.
When a person is hurting and they are not themselves, it is often best to slow down and lay low. Don’t try to make progress. Don’t try to get anywhere. Just take a little time to slow down. There are times when we need to be more cautious than we ordinarily would.
One man put it this way, “Don’t make any decisions when your decision maker is broken.”
Joel Stiff's Adventure 