My Grumbling Experience


It was a long two days. At 7am on Wednesday morning Emily and I rushed to the hospital to admit her for the delivery of our baby. It was a long 12 and half hour labour and after a lot of pain (all of which she went through) we had our gorgeous little Lana. A day later when they wanted to discharge us we had all the paperwork done and all the sign offs from the doctors that were needed. I went to make the payment and was really eager to get home and back to our son as well.

That’s when it happened! The first ICICI card I gave didn’t work. So I gave a second one and that didn’t work either. I was getting quite exasperated by now and as a last effort I  gave Emily’s UK card, and that was rejected as well. They tried a few other machines and nothing seemed to work. I was so annoyed and found out where the nearest ATM was and proceeded to drive there. All the while in my mind I will admit I was grumbling to God… something about a last hurdle before finally heading home. When I reached the ATM as life would have it – it was not working. There were a few people in there trying to get it working and so I had to just sit and wait. When about 20 minutes had passed I finally went in and managed to get the money out. As I drove back I remember asking God in my head “Really?? What was the point of any of that?? We could have been home by now God.”

As I reached the hospital counter to finally pay off the bill, a guy next to me picked up my bill and started to walk away. I stopped him and he very sheepishly apologised and said he was just really tense as his mother was in surgery. The billing procedure took a while, so I got to talking with this young man who said he’d appreciate prayers for his mum as he was getting married the following week and this was an unexpected and unfortunate turn of events. After a long conversation (the billing really took some time as they wanted to scrutinize every 500 note that I gave) he asked for my number and said he really would love to come to church with me in the month of December after he got married. He said he would ask his mum if she would like to come for our Christmas service.

As I went up the stairs to get my wife and go home I remembered that the night before I had prayed in my heart “Lord there are so many people here, give me a chance to have a meaningful conversation with at least one.” However,with all the excitement of being a daddy for the second time  I had forgotten that prayer… but Jesus didn’t. And so I just had to look up and sheepishly say “Ok Lord, You are a genius and your timing is always perfect… am sorry I forgot and grumbled.”

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