By Ricky Swindle

Muffler Shop Musings

Howdy, friends!

I am visiting a doctor in Oxford Thursday. There is nothing major going on with me, just a small procedure to take care of an issue that I should have had taken care of when it first started years ago. I figured it would magically go away, but again I was proven incorrect with that line of thinking.

Normally, I would not discuss mine or anyone else’s medical issues in  my column, but something amazing happened that directly relates to my forthcoming procedure that I feel obligated to give you all the details or the story might not make sense.

This past Wednesday after arriving at work I discovered I had left my shop uniforms at home and Wednesday is the day the uniform man comes to change them out.

After taking care of a couple of things at the shop, I knew if I did not go home to retrieve the uniforms while it was on my old gourd on my shoulders then the chance of it slipping my mind was highly probable.

The Boss Lady at home does not care to wash clothes that have already been paid to be washed, and I did not care for another conversation starting with “Well, you are getting older and older people sometimes forget.”

I’ll never understand women. Why must they tell us five or six times to do something? We heard them the first time. It just takes us time to plan out a chore to do it correctly, and constantly telling us the same thing over and over tends to break our concentration. Then we have to start over at square one. Now that’s a joke, no need roughing up your old man over this column.

So, back to the story.

I was in my Hemi Ram crossing the overhead bridge on 6 West to turn on Hwy 35 South heading to God’s Country to snag my forgotten uniforms and my phone rang.

It was the lady at the surgery center office calling to verify all my information. A very sweet sounding lady I might add and she was just going down the line asking me question after question of questions I had previously answered on a sheet provided by the doctors office.

They have to do their job and their job is to make 100 percent sure that they have all of your correct pertinent medical information.

My cruise control was set, and I was simply listening, answering  and heading south on my uniform retrieval mission.

At the end of the questionnaire, she asked, “May I pray for you?”

I replied “Of course you can. I never turn down a prayer.”

I am thinking this sweet lady is putting me on her prayer list for church or what have you. What a special thing to do.

Folks, she did not put me on a list. All at once with me driving down the road she started praying. “Dear Lord in Heaven, please bless Ricky through this procedure. Lord bless the doctor, nurses and hospital staff and watch over them all in Jesus Name, Amen.”

I was stunned. People may tell you all the time they will pray for you but to just break out and go for it over the phone, to pray for a complete stranger that she has never met was nothing short of extraordinary in my mind.

This has never happened to me before.

I believe in The Lord with all my heart, and I truly believe in the power of prayer. I believe that The Lord intervened so that this lady and I could cross paths.

I have never witnessed anything more Christian like than what this lady did for me as I was driving down the road.

Folks, take care of yourself. Pray for your friends and neighbors. Call someone up and pray for them over the phone. Prayer definitely changes things.

Write to Ricky Swindle at rickyswindle@bellsouth.net