Jack-in-the-Box Resiliency

Kathy Sporre ♦ November 27, 2012 ♦ Leave a comment

SPIRITUAL WELLNESS – Connect with your spirit! Use ways that are meaningful to you:whether that’s through your place of worship, prayer, or meditation.

Are you old enough to remember the little clown that would pop up out of a box after cranking out a rousing round of “Pop Goes the Weasel”? It was called a Jack-in-the-Box, and I’m not sure they still make them today. He could be pushed down over and over again, yet he’d keep popping up out of his confinement in that little box with a few twists of the crank. That was my first introduction, little to my knowledge at the time, to the concept of resiliency.

As I’ve been refined by age™, the practice of resiliency has become more personal and not as easy as turning a little crank on a box. And the thing that needs to spring back is me – not a clown on a spring.

I’ve had painful physical conditions that have followed me since I was a child and came to a head in mid-life; refusing to be quieted by anything but the surgeon’s scalpel. In the process of being refined by age™, I’ve encountered numerous other experiences that have pushed me down into a box of temporary confinement, yet my resiliency is the crank that pops me back into life again.

Where does this resiliency come from? For me it is a gift of God and my faith in Him.

Recently, I was hospitalized for one of five levels of spinal fusions I have undergone in the last 10 years; not an easy surgery by any means. I was heavily sedated during the surgery and spent much of the subsequent week in the hospital dozing in and out of subconsciousness. Every morning starting on day two someone from physical therapy would visit me to invite me for a walk. One morning a pleasant man came in to escort me on my morning jaunt. I remember I started to silently sing to myself upon his invitation, “Round and round the mulberry bush, the monkey chased the weasel, the weasel laughed to see such a sport,” and when I sat up I sang out loud, “Pop goes the weasel!”

Startled from my sudden and curious response to his request to walk with him, he said, “What did you say?” I don’t think I even tried to explain it.

The funny thing is, I realized after I got home and my mind was clearer, that there was a commercial on television at the time that had the Jack-in-the-Box song on it. Somehow the song on that commercial had entered my subconscious mind in the hospital, and in my medicated state it seemed the proper thing to say upon sitting up under great pain. This is where my concept of resiliency was first visualized by the Jack-in-the-Box.

So, it appears to have been a coincidence, a simple subliminal message, and not some mystical inspiration I needed so badly at the time. Or was it?

“So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” Isaiah 41:10 (NIV)

YouTube Video: Before The Morning by Josh Wilson

YouTube Video: Overcome by Jeremy Camp