The Secret of the Frying Pan, by Nanette Bailey, August 1961
I lay propped up on the sofa, pain keeping me from enjoying the autumn color outside my window. The house was cold, and I had asked the new practical nurse - one of a long series of nurses, to build a fire. Mrs. Harmon was silent as she brought in the logs, holding each one at arm's length from her stiff white uniform. Without a word she held a match to the fire and disappeared into the kitchem with my untouched lunch tray.
Mrs. Harmon's silence matched my mood. There is a kind of honesty in silence, an honesty I reflected bitterly, that you seldom see anymore. I was a real estate agent. Not a very sucessful one, but I had learned to promote, hustle, and maneuver. The world, I had long ago concluded, was run by the dishonest, and the rest of us had to defend ourselves. Each year I had strengthened my own defenses, adding a little more cynicism and indifference to my personality.
Sometimes I was a little horrified at the hard, worldly-wise face that looked back at me in the mirror, but I saw little prospect that it would change. And now, to top things off, this crippling arthritis attack! For weeks I hadn't been out of the house, hadn't been free of pain. I could see no point to it; the lost sales, the enforced idleness, the suffering.
Then Mrs. Harmon brought in the frying pan.
In the hours that follwed, I wathced a little drama that cast a sudden new light on my illness - that lit my whole life with hope. For that fall afternoon, I glimpsed one of the uses God can make of suffering.
Mrs. Harmon gingerly held the frying pan far away from her, as she had the logs. Here comes a complaint, I thought. And to make it worse, a complaint was justified. The pan was a really ugly old thing, made of heavy cast iron and thick with the baked-on crust of many years. I should have thrown it out long ago, but it had been my Mother's. It reminded me of simpler, happier days. And I really had tried to clean it. I scourered, scrubbed and scraped. Hardly a day had gone by that I didn't worry away at it, but without making a dent in that stubborn crust.
And now, I thought, I'm going to get a lecture on kitchen hygiene. Mrs. Harmon, however, said not a word. She carried the offending frying pan to the fire and, as I stared, stopped and laid it across the logs.Only at the door to the kitchen did she speak. "Ever watch fire clean a frying pan?" she asked.
The rest of the short October afternoon I watched, hypnotized, as the fire went to work. First the old pan sputtered and smoked, as if complaining at this ill-treatment. But after a while it grew silent. A faint glow, red first, then almost white, spread through its body.
As I watched, transfixed, there was a tiny "ping." A piece of the ancient crust popped off and dropped in to the fire. In a few minutes another piece came loose, and then another. All afternoon the cleaning process went on until finally, as the fire died, the pan turned from white, to dull red and to black again. It was a glowing, lustrous black, like a new pan. No, more beautiful than that. Like an old pan shined in fire.
As the room grew dusky, Mrs. Harmon came in armed with a great stack of hot pads. She reached in to the fire place and lifted the gleaming pan from the coals. For a moment she inspected it in silence. When she spoke, it was in a low voice.
"People go through fire, too" she said thougtfully, "a nurse sees it all the time." She looked down at the pan. "I've seen men and women come out of it as shiny and clean as this pan."
And now my words: Today marks 90 days of sobriety. A lot could be said of my journey thus far, but let me sum it up simply by saying this: If you, gentle reader, do not believe in miracles, then I hope to see you face to face one day. Why? Because I am living proof that God does work miracles. Shake my hand, look in to my eyes and see that I am indeed, alive and well.
As close as I came to death, God never waivered in His love for me and He gave me the strength to overcome this awful addiction, one day at a time. Like the frying pan, sometimes it takes a fire to cleanse us from our fears and tradgedies, our shortcomings and despaires. What is left in its place is a new creation, one that is even stronger that ever before.
Yours truly,
The Reverend
PS: Why a tattoo of a phoenix? Because from the ashes of defeat, a new creation now soars above in a new light, a light that brings promises of a new day, a new life, where once all that was held was the dying crust of a life foregone to the very abyss of existence. I truly am alive again, and I plan on greeting each day as it is, a most wonderful existence that cannot be explained adequitely by mere words. A life that truly is a miracle...
I lay propped up on the sofa, pain keeping me from enjoying the autumn color outside my window. The house was cold, and I had asked the new practical nurse - one of a long series of nurses, to build a fire. Mrs. Harmon was silent as she brought in the logs, holding each one at arm's length from her stiff white uniform. Without a word she held a match to the fire and disappeared into the kitchem with my untouched lunch tray.
Mrs. Harmon's silence matched my mood. There is a kind of honesty in silence, an honesty I reflected bitterly, that you seldom see anymore. I was a real estate agent. Not a very sucessful one, but I had learned to promote, hustle, and maneuver. The world, I had long ago concluded, was run by the dishonest, and the rest of us had to defend ourselves. Each year I had strengthened my own defenses, adding a little more cynicism and indifference to my personality.
Sometimes I was a little horrified at the hard, worldly-wise face that looked back at me in the mirror, but I saw little prospect that it would change. And now, to top things off, this crippling arthritis attack! For weeks I hadn't been out of the house, hadn't been free of pain. I could see no point to it; the lost sales, the enforced idleness, the suffering.
Then Mrs. Harmon brought in the frying pan.
In the hours that follwed, I wathced a little drama that cast a sudden new light on my illness - that lit my whole life with hope. For that fall afternoon, I glimpsed one of the uses God can make of suffering.
Mrs. Harmon gingerly held the frying pan far away from her, as she had the logs. Here comes a complaint, I thought. And to make it worse, a complaint was justified. The pan was a really ugly old thing, made of heavy cast iron and thick with the baked-on crust of many years. I should have thrown it out long ago, but it had been my Mother's. It reminded me of simpler, happier days. And I really had tried to clean it. I scourered, scrubbed and scraped. Hardly a day had gone by that I didn't worry away at it, but without making a dent in that stubborn crust.
And now, I thought, I'm going to get a lecture on kitchen hygiene. Mrs. Harmon, however, said not a word. She carried the offending frying pan to the fire and, as I stared, stopped and laid it across the logs.Only at the door to the kitchen did she speak. "Ever watch fire clean a frying pan?" she asked.
The rest of the short October afternoon I watched, hypnotized, as the fire went to work. First the old pan sputtered and smoked, as if complaining at this ill-treatment. But after a while it grew silent. A faint glow, red first, then almost white, spread through its body.
As I watched, transfixed, there was a tiny "ping." A piece of the ancient crust popped off and dropped in to the fire. In a few minutes another piece came loose, and then another. All afternoon the cleaning process went on until finally, as the fire died, the pan turned from white, to dull red and to black again. It was a glowing, lustrous black, like a new pan. No, more beautiful than that. Like an old pan shined in fire.
As the room grew dusky, Mrs. Harmon came in armed with a great stack of hot pads. She reached in to the fire place and lifted the gleaming pan from the coals. For a moment she inspected it in silence. When she spoke, it was in a low voice.
"People go through fire, too" she said thougtfully, "a nurse sees it all the time." She looked down at the pan. "I've seen men and women come out of it as shiny and clean as this pan."
And now my words: Today marks 90 days of sobriety. A lot could be said of my journey thus far, but let me sum it up simply by saying this: If you, gentle reader, do not believe in miracles, then I hope to see you face to face one day. Why? Because I am living proof that God does work miracles. Shake my hand, look in to my eyes and see that I am indeed, alive and well.
As close as I came to death, God never waivered in His love for me and He gave me the strength to overcome this awful addiction, one day at a time. Like the frying pan, sometimes it takes a fire to cleanse us from our fears and tradgedies, our shortcomings and despaires. What is left in its place is a new creation, one that is even stronger that ever before.
Yours truly,
The Reverend
PS: Why a tattoo of a phoenix? Because from the ashes of defeat, a new creation now soars above in a new light, a light that brings promises of a new day, a new life, where once all that was held was the dying crust of a life foregone to the very abyss of existence. I truly am alive again, and I plan on greeting each day as it is, a most wonderful existence that cannot be explained adequitely by mere words. A life that truly is a miracle...
