When God Gives a Pink Flamingo Nod

A Series on God With Us in the Midst of Trials

Photo Credit—purchase flamingos here!

It was the fifth day that I woke up on the hospital couch/bed. My hips were screaming at me as I stared at the technician who had come for the early morning blood draw. Scott was chatty with the technician which was a good sign. When she left, I got up and made my morning cup of instant coffee and tried to get my exhausted brain to figure out the morning’s Wordle puzzle.

I couldn’t get motivated. I got a second cup of coffee and was still sitting on the unmade couch/bed when the liver transplant Physician Assistant arrived. I am not sure why I felt the need to apologize for still being in my pajamas, but I did. “We are being lazy this morning,” I said. She smiled and said, “That is not a problem, you need to take it slow.” In hindsight, I lived most of my life apologizing for being lazy when I was actually anything but lazy.

At that point, Scott’s hospital room became a revolving door as teams of doctors, nurses, physical therapists, housekeeping staff, and technicians came and went in a continuous stream. At three o’clock, I was still in my pajamas and decided to give up on getting dressed. I was desperately missing my quiet mornings in the cottage, when I happened to look out the window at the the next building at a right angle to the one we were in.

And saw a large pink plastic flamingo in one of the windows.

I knew, just like hundreds of other times in my life, that God was nodding at me while I drowned in impossible situations. I was not alone.

Scott stared at me as I sobbed, “It’s a pink flamingo!” I am quite certain he thought his health crisis had tipped me over the proverbial edge at that point.

Seeing Scott’s confusion, I said, “No really, it is a pink flamingo in the window across from us. God is nodding at me and telling me that I will return to the cottage one day.”

Scott acknowledged the truth of the flamingo without being able to see it himself. He was accustomed to the bizarre ways God nodded to me.

The backstory to the pink flamingo is that it was inherited along with other more useful things when me moved into the cottage. I had placed it under the apple tree and Weber—and a random squirrel—seemed to appreciate posing beside it.

When I return to the cottage, I may need to buy more flamingos to line the rock wall.

My tears over the flamingo in the window seemed to open a dam of emotion that had been building up inside of me. When a nurse walked in, she found me crying. I sobbed about not being able to get dressed and told her that my supply of food was gone and I wasn’t going to the café in my pajamas. The nurse hugged me and went to retrieve cheese and crackers. “This is from the nurse’s station charcuterie board,” she said.

I shared about the pink flamingo and the nurse said, “I have never seen that in the window!” That did not surprise me.

It was Nurse’s Appreciation Week and the names of those who cared for me and Scott are on this sign. What a noble profession! I will never forget the care shown to me the day God nodded with a pink flamingo.