Beautiful Things

On the radio, the song played, "All is pain, I wonder if I'll ever find my way. I wonder if my life could really change...at all.
All this earth; all that is lost ever be found? Could a garden come up from this ground...at all? You make beautiful things, you ma-ake beautiFUL things out of the dust
You make beautiful things, you ma-ake beautiFUL things out of us..."

And I watched the sun set.

I was trapped in an elevator yesterday. The thought flits across my mind every time I step into an elevator...'please don't let me get stuck'. Then, yesterday, it happened. The door closed and, instantly, a horrible, loud buzzer went off and kept going off continuously. Very glad that I had stopped at the restroom..yes I was. None of the buttons I pushed responded. The doors wouldn't open, there was no 'ding' sound indicating I was reaching another floor, and the LED readout said "5" with a down arrow....no change, no matter what I did.

In an instant, I began preparing myself for however many hours it took to get the thing unstuck. I quickly decided I would sit down only when I felt truly tired so that I would have a change to look forward to. Then it hit me. That buzzer isn't stopping. I can't hear myself think. I can't stand that buzzer. Then the feeling of panic started to swell. I took a slow deep breath and closed my eyes and decided I would have to befriend that horrible sound. I began to imagine that it was the sound of a great waterfall.

As soon as the calm rose up in my rattled self, I looked for the 'call for help' button and pushed it. I heard the sound of a speaker phone in the midst of the buzzer that really didn't sound like a waterfall at all. The phone rang while an automated woman's voice began repeating, "north elevator". Someone answered, "Security, are you stuck in the elevator?" "can you hear me". While I said, 'yes, I can hear you'...then said it again and again, because, no doubt, the only thing he could hear was a very loud buzzer. At first it occurred to me that if they couldn't hear me, they may not be able to figure out where I was, but I decided that was ridiculous because there were only a couple elevators on the whole campus and it wouldn't take very long to check all of them.

Then, all at once, the buzzer stopped and the door opened. Quickly, I put my hands out to hold the door open and began to step through. The voice kept trying to talk to me and I felt a duty to be polite and respond, but REALLY wanted to step out. At the same time, the door started to close again and a man approached the elevator from outside and asked if there was a problem with the elevator. Feeling torn between the voice inside the elevator and the man outside the elevator, I stood between the doors holding them open and just kept repeating, I'd like to take the stairs now...

The whole thing probably only lasted 5 minutes or so, but it felt much longer than that! I am so SO grateful that the buzzer quit and the door opened. SO grateful not to have spent the night in the elevator.