Frosted views

So for the first 2 days in city2, it was grey, chilly, and raining off and on.

When we went to the evening services at a new church, you couldn’t help but notice huge windows at the front, facing the east.

I remember distinctly thinking three things.

1. The designers were smart, because the windows didn’t start until about as high as the pastor’s head, so no low objects would be in view outside to distract short attention spans

2. This was probably set up originally for early morning services, when the still rising sun would be shining in on the front and the alter area, and would be very beautiful.

3. There must be another parking lot behind the church, because with all of the trees everywhere here, and showing through the side windows even, its odd that no trees were visible, so the parking lot seemed like the most logical reason.

 

You see, I assumed that since I was seeing light, I was seeing the actual view outside… namely, the grey sky. 

It wasn’t until darkness set… and the light inside the room got brighter.. almost the end of the service… that i realized the windows were frosted. The glaze on the surface could clearly be seen, where I had assumed what I was seeing was clear and accurate.

 

I have to wonder how often my views on things are really just glazes, faking me out  with a false gloomy view to block the beautiful reality and filter out some of the light.

The left turn has never existed.

Once upon a time, I made a list of the biggest wrong decisions I’ve made in my life. 

It was long. 

It ran from career decisions, to school decisions, to a few billion relationship and friendship decisions, to just random life decisions.

I messed around with it a bit… narrowed it down to some of the more critical ones… labeled them… figured out that I was roughly on plan xyz by now, plans a and b and every other single letter label being long forgotten memories.

I can’t even remember now exactly what my point was in making the list.

 

It was some time later when I was thinking back with loneliness and regret over a past relationship, and the time gone by. I found myself realizing that had things gone according to the original plans, we’d have been married for so many years already. And wondering of the kids we would have had. And where we would have been by now.

And then it goes, as it often does, into the guilt and what ifs. The realization in hindsight that the major issues came unraveled about a year after the end… and would have been long gone by now had we only made it work a bit longer. If only I had done this. If only I hadn’t done that. 

Then I get even harder on myself, and wonder what would have happened by now in the ministry involved. How many more people might have been helped if only I’d made better choices. How many people might be in problems now that might have been helped if things hadn’t fallen apart. 

How many people might have been cured of cancer as a result of the brilliant doctor that was never born because we gave up too soon? 

 

The logic in me knows that this isn’t being realistic, it isn’t being fair, it isn’t even being helpful. And yet, the emotional side still mourns over the losses, and wallows in sorrow over things that never could have been predicted from where I stood at the time decisions were made. Beating myself up may not be productive, but at least it feels like appropriate punishment to somehow try to prevent future occurrences.

But it was during one of these times… about the time I was asking forgiveness for the dead orphans who never got a home (of course completely because of my failure on something only very very distantly related), that I got a nudge.

“The orphans never existed” it said. 

 

This was weird. Of course orphans existed. Millions of them exist all over the place. Lots of them die. And of course maybe had I made certain decisions something might have somehow been related to helping a few. And so I tried to argue.

But still was the clear nudge…. they never existed.

This actually took me a bit to really get it. 

Embarrassingly long actually. And I’m still not sure how well I can really explain it. 

 

But really… they never exist. They never would have existed.

Neither do the supposed children that would have been born. The people who would be helped. Even the husband that would have been. The jobs that would have been. They only exist in my own imagination.

The entire path and life had I followed that path? None of it would have ever existed in any form.

 

Part of this is simply because it’s just dreaming. Reality never matches up to plans and hopes. 

But I realized… it goes a lot deeper than that.

 

I have a God that knows all, and I have a loving God. 

He knew what choices I would face, and he knew the choices I would make, long before I even had the capacity to know what a choice even was.

 

When I looked on from the point of decision, I saw two (or more) paths… and sometimes a short ways ahead on each. 

I’ve seen the road I took, and all it held, so its tempting to think back and wonder what I missed on the other path. 

But the other path wasn’t there. At all. Even the short bit I thought I saw was an illusion.

Why? Because it was already known that I wasn’t going to take that choice, even if it was the better road to take. 

Why would there be plans depending on something it was already known I would never do? Why would God have orphans dependent on something that He knew was never going to come through for them? Why would he have the lives of people waiting particularly on a help that he knew would get off track and never make it to them? 

 

I do believe there are certain things in life that are planned out for certain people to accomplish. But I don’t think I’ve been as good at realizing that things that were not to be, would have never been anyway.

It doesn’t make my bad choices any less bad. I wish that I would have taken lots of the other paths…. that those paths would have existed rather than my actual path.

 

But it helps greatly to realize that this is plan a. Always was, and still is. It’s not the greatest plan, and its far from the easiest plan… but it’s where I am, and where He knew I would be, and its where the future roads will come from.

Why would he have put them on an imaginary road He knew I would never take?

When it leads me through the desert, even if its a surprise and disappointment to me, it was already known and planned into the scheme of things long before I ever got to the turn. The things I’m supposed to do and the things I’m supposed to see and the people I’m supposed to meet and the dreams I’m supposed to fulfill were all planted in their places knowing where I would be. 

 

It’s easy to grieve over the things I imagine were lost on the untaken path… especially when feeling a bit lost on the current path. But I grieve over shadows and mirages, figments of my imagination and guilt.

The reality that does exist, and will exist, is waiting for me to get over it.

Armadillos don’t fly

I want to be a duck, I decided. I’m kinda duck shaped anyway, so add on some nice water repellant feathers so that all this junk that keeps flying at me just drips off and doesn’t soak me.

But wait… some of its both pretty sticky, and rather sharp. I don’t think feathers are enough cushioning… and the junk might just make a mess of my feathers by staying there. I want to be an armor plated duck. That was I just get minor dents if anything instead of bruises and broken spots that sometimes take forever to heal back over, and may always leave a bit of a scar.

An armadillo! That’s sort of like an armored duck! I want to be an armadillo!

Then came the gentle nudge… armadillos don’t fly.

I tried for the argument that wounded ducks don’t either… but it didn’t take.

I couldn’t help but notice how few live armadillos I’ve seen, out of the billions of dead ones by the side of the road. They may be well armored against smaller harms, but their protection over the little stuff makes them too heavy and slow and makes them easy targets for the huge stuff.

Ok… so not an armadillo, not an armored duck… but a normal duck maybe. But then I still have the sticky feather issue when the junk is too gunky to drip off on its own.

New nudge… you are washable. 

I suppose that’s a good point too… junk washes off skin better than it does all of the little feathers of protection. But that still leaves me wet and uncomfortable, and sore.

But sores heal. Dents do not. Sore spots give you feedback to where injury is being caused to deal with it… feathers may pad an initial small bump, but what if in padding the small bump they allow it to be ignored until it becomes a much more damaging wound, where the precautions taken after the small sore spot might have prevented it. 

Ok. So no feathers. 

But the junk is still sticking… even with the regular washing I try to seek to prevent it.

Then I suppose I need to look for stronger pressure from my water source. Got a power sprayer?

But I couldn’t handle a power sprayer. I just read a random thing about them a while back and how used wrong they can take off skin. Too much of what I’m made of is too similar to the junk I want removed to be removed by massive force.

Ok… so I don’t need a new source… I just need more flow of the current one.

And a towel. Can I at least get a towel? It’s still wet… even if it mostly washes off. 

Another nudge… wet isn’t uncomfortable when you move yourself into the warm sun instead of the air conditioning. 

Sigh.

Growing up to different songs

My daughter has a thing for ice cream trucks. 

What am I saying? Every kid seems to have a radar on those things. 

However, my kiddo has an over-indulgent grandma who lives two doors down who supplies cash for what seems like unending ice cream truck purchases. So literally, the lady knows her name and sits and chats with her daily… and slows down to almost a stop and looks for her when my car is here but the kid isn’t at the curb of one of the two houses. 

 

But that’s her favorite ice cream lady. We live in a semi-large city, in an almost entirely residential neighborhood, near a junior high… which means we have at least 2 but normally 3 ice cream trucks go by on any given day that it’s abobe 60 degrees, even if its an odd warm spell in February or if it’s raining. And sometimes even a mexican food truck. It’s really very odd… but you kinda get used to it after a while. They come for the same reason the guys go door to door here selling meat and frozen goods… it’s a concentrated audience.

So of these 3 regular ice cream trucks, the truck driven by her favorite plays the song turkey in the straw. My mom’s favorite plays la cucaracha (sp?) and sells an entirely different type of popsicle from the others that are all fruit flavored and have chunks of fruit in them.

The third one usually comes early enough in the day that she is still at daycare, so she doesn’t hear it much. But she was home the other day when it came by, and made a comment about that being the truck playing the wrong song. 

 

This really struck me as interesting… because when I was a kid, there was only one truck that came by our area, and only when school was out… and that was the song it played. It was the song I grew up associating with ice cream truck. (I have no clue what the name of it is.)

I even remember the first time I heard a truck playing a different song… the one by my grandma’s house played the entertainer (actually, it still does), and it was totally weird to me.

Just as this one is now weird to her. 

 

It made me reflect a bit… about the things that are part of my past that won’t be part of hers.

School districts that will never be anything but an opposing sports team.

Cars my parents owned that will never be anything but another car on the road or a story her mom tells her about her grandparents. 

Restaurants that will have no deep loyalty associated with memories more than the food.

Churches, for that matter denominations, that will never be “hers” unless she chooses them herself someday, but never be her childhood home.

 

And it made me think about the loyalties we have built and are currently building.

About how a different suburb will be the one she remembers living in before moving into town.

About how she will have associations with our vineyard church songs similar to the ones I hold about some baptist hymns.

How red, navy and white will be the combination that instantly triggers school colors thoughts rather than my royal blue and white for one and red and white for another, and eagles instead of lions or titans. 

 

And it really made me pause a bit, and wonder if some of them are things I want her to have. 

Do I want that awful but really cheap pizza place we visit to be what she remembers as special, when I was making it as a quick solution to too frequent time crunches? 

Do I want those packaged cookies to be what she associates with childhood and makes a comfort food?

Do I want that halloween costume to be what she remembers sentimentally that she wore in first grade?

 

The song I grew up to is not the song she will, and is a song she will only even hear softly as a distant sound through me. 

But I think sometimes I need to stop and remember that the song she will hear is the song that’s currently playing. And to remember that I’m frequently the one choosing it, and put a bit more focus sometimes into the decisions that form it.

If God were a math professor…

If God were a math professor… imagine for a moment the final exam. 

 

You have had all of the material given to you clearly.

Have you studied it and learned it? Um… well, some of it. It’s a difficult class sometimes.

 

However… everyone else is in the same boat.

The professor knows this. And yet, he still has to give the test as was written before you were even enrolled in the class, knowing none of you will do well.

The information has been taught, so the test is fair. You did not accomplish what you were supposed to. You have earned the “F” you will be getting. He would be justified in failing the entire class. 

 

With the one exception. That one smart guy who had offered to tutor anyone interested, but nobody ever took him up on it. The teacher’s pet who already knew this stuff before he ever enrolled. 

But, the professor does care about your academic future, whether or not you have learned all that you were supposed to. And he does want you to pass. 

And so… he declares the test to be a group project. You may form your own groups. And the smart kid, who happens to own a very large pile of erasers, is welcoming all joiners to the group forming around his desk. 

 

Do you go? 

Or do you sit with your friends, hang out, vent about how much you hate the teacher, and miss the opportunity to get the passing grade you don’t deserve. 

You already earned the failing grade for yourself. But the choice of whether or not you passed the class depended not on your math, but on your ability to admit you were failing and ask for help.

 

The smart kid had to leave before the test was over. His test was finished anyway. But there are still lots of kids from his group left who know what answers he gave them, so they can share them with you if you want them. 

Oh… and we can’t forget…. as he left he asked the teacher to send someone to write the needed formulas on the board for you. It isn’t much help if you aren’t ready to admit you don’t know what you are doing, but when you are… these will guide you through the problems.

Oh.. and that textbook. Did we mention it was written by former students in this class, with supervision from the teacher? 

 

I think I’m glad the final is worth the entire grade in the class. I don’t even want to know how low my assignment score is.

Fishnets and bait

Nets work best to catch fish while they are going nowhere.

A fish on the move is hard to catch with a net, but a fish just hanging out is easily scooped up. It’s even easier to catch a fish hanging out in a school of comfortable fish not going anywhere together.

No one of the strands of the net could trap a fish by itself, but when they all weave together, it seems impossible to escape. If one string doesn’t have a fin, the other does.

Bait is unneeded at this point, unless you happen to be amused by watching them struggle. They are caught. They can set their goal on something beyond their current situation and try get somewhere, but they aren’t able to make it happen. The net needs out of the way first.

But, in spite of the overwhelming net of so many strands trapping them, all it really takes for escape is one or two strands. Just a tiny fraction, enough to wiggle, enough to make all the strings which seemed so tightly bound completely unravel.

 

 

But a moving fish… that’s a different story. Nets are harder to use with a fish that’s going someplace.

A moving fish needs bait. It needs a temptation to entice it to hook itself on a line and trap itself for you.

Of course, fish don’t all like the same baits. The worm that looks enticing to one is easily passed up by another. You have to know the fish you are looking for… know the type and what’s going to be the most irresistible, to be the biggest temptation.

Where a still fish require many strings to restrict its movement towards its goal, the active fish requires only one to pull it somewhere it doesn’t want to go and away from where it wants to be.

 

But the method of escape remains the same for both fish.
Break a line, or two, and swim for your life.

Life as frogger

Its not that the alligators (crocodiles?) are intentionally trying to chomp on you. 

Its that they don’t care. 

They have their own rhythm, their own pattern, their own task…. and they really don’t care if you are hurt by it. Or if their giving you just a second of consideration would make the difference between your success and failure. 

Jumping between the sharp teeth and the sinking pits is your own problem. Everything else is absorbed in their doing their own thing. 

The more and more, I’m beginning to feel like the current society we will in is just one big frogger game. One big screen of things going back and forth in their own little worlds, and fragile little frogs trying to jump just right between apathetic obstacles to keep their own world from being smashed without even a notice from the passing log that just sunk their world or the truck that just plowed them down.

 

And unfortunately, most days I feel like a squashable frog. 

 

But the thing that scares me more than being squashed is the wonder in my mind… of how many times I have been a chomping mouth absorbed in my own thing. 

And I wonder…. how many people are left who are still reliable patches of grass on which to catch your breath, get resynced into the patterns, and prepare to make it across while resting on their stable spots.

Far too few. 

Wanting my water wings

Its crossing my mind not to return to the pool area.  (see last entry for the metaphor here)

 

I know that’s not the solution. And I know it won’t help anything long term. But I have to admit the thought is getting a pretty good grip. 

I’ve already pretty much decided on not going to the prayer meeting. 

 

However, this comes a particularly bad timing, as next week is when they have decided to do a visitors day and press from people to bring new people in, cutting the service shorter to serve ice cream.

Have I mentioned enough yet that I’m a introvert? These things are only a bit lower on the nightmare scale anyway. Extra emphasis on being nice to the visitors that always ends up hitting those of us intorverts with well meaning conversations turned awkward involving phrases like “oh, about 2 years now.. joined last fall and we’d been coming for about 9 months at that point…”.  You think the forced handshake conversations with people that don’t really want to know you but are forced to talk to you are bad enough, then you get to try and sustain that for long enough to get through the whole event. The small groups aren’t at one a joining spot right now I don’t think, but there may still be a few random conversations like the ones that occur when you are too early, of this thinly veiled get to know you with shallow polite questions that eventually evaporates abruptly into a sales pitch for their particular group all the while coming off as so christian-mask-ish as to bring thoughts of jehovahs witnesses to mind.

But with the possibility, or even maybe likelihood of the abrupt verbal prayer spell getting tossed in again? 

 

My first plan of strategy here would be to plan a bathroom break to cover the handshake time and then leave when released to ice cream. For that matter, I just about made a run for the bathroom during today’s round… which might have been rather obvious timing given that I’d been sitting right along the main center aisle and only about 3 rows back. However, I have a child. Word of things like ice cream gets around, and no matter how many buckets of the stuff are in grandma’s freezer or purchased from the musical truck, its going to be a decision of which nightmare is worse. 

 

Maybe visitors day should be the day we make a habit of visiting another church it passes over, to return next week to maybe some new additions, but probably the same old pattern of having a few people with whom natural conversations of interest grow, and a whole lot of passing fluff that floats on its substance-free way. 

 

And what strikes me as ironic is that the trauma caused was probably meant to fix exactly that. 

But ice cream socials do not fix fluff-spewing masks. 

The prayer attempt probably is a better step in the right direction… adding in substance to try to weight down the fluff… but the fact remains its still coming out of a mask. 

More ironic, the small groups were probably a good attempt to break masks.. even as the impression I’ve gotten in the name of information about the groups from various people has seemed even more happy friendly christian mask than ever before. (see my leave it to beaver grumblings about some blogs lacking a reality to their life…. these people were probably those authors)

 

Though maybe the most ironic is that the pastor is one that seems to usually have a pretty good grip on reality. 

 

 

Ok… ‘ats enough of the cynic for now.. but unfortunately I’m sure most of you know exactly what I mean. 

 

That foot deep kiddie pool over there… its looking mighty tempting.

Thrown in the deep end

Ok, so it’s not a physical deep end, but it feels that way. 

 

You throw a kid into the water unexpectedly, on the theory that they will figure out how to swim based on the sudden need. And yes, most manage. Very technically, the shock of the abrupt force got them over one hurdle.

But how many of those ever want to willingly be in the water again?

The ones who would supposedly be cured of their timidness, and who were the most timid, are the ones who will probably have much greater timidness to now overcome on their own terms. Larger hurdles than the one you tried to help by throwing them over it in the first place.

 

I don’t think this realization has ever occured to my pastor. 

 

You want people more involved and praying for each other… a good objective. 

But when you have a large majority who aren’t yet, and roughly half the congregation who only barely are pulled into the whole “greet your neighbor” time beyond just a name and handshake… I think its a fair guess that there is some timidness and discomfort. 

Suddenly putting direct pressure on them to pray (out  loud) for another person, right now, replacing the handshake they already weren’t comfortable with, may work for right this moment. 

But how many are dreading even more the next round? Rather than feeling encouraged that we survived this round without drowning, how many are clinging all the more tightly to side and all the more reluctant to repeat? How many are coughing up water of how much they fumbled and messed up rather than feeling like they achieved anything?

 

 

Yes, its a good purpose. Yes, the end goal is needed. And yes, sometimes breaking comfort zones is needed to move forward. 

But shoving people into situations they feel as high pressure, rather than allowing them to approach the goal on their own terms… seems to me like it does a lot more damage than good. 

 

 

My pastor has directly done this twice now… one during the monthly prayer meeting, and one during the sunday service. And today, basically made the statement that it will be happening at the prayer meeting again this Saturday. 

I will not be going. Because of this. 

Last month I wrote it off as just discomfort with changes in leaders… I don’t know exactly why, but the other leader wasn’t there. His old style was very much internal reflection… change to out loud as you felt lead, and without pressure to do so… very much a depth connection. 

The main pastor lead last time, and it was different. Much more directed. Much more objectively guided in the way of specific focus suggestions. And much more pressured. 

You are wanting the group to pray for the world in general… but only a few verbalize their prayers… so you launch into “forgive us for being so callused that we aren’t even in touch enough to be able to pray for the world because we aren’t in touch with any issues”. As if the lack of open sharing as to what the people were praying must mean that they aren’t… or even can’t. 

Then later we got to the pray (again, verbally) for the random person you are paired up with that you have never met before. 

 

I am a very strong introvert. This entire situation falls pretty firmly into worst nightmare territory.

Praying verbally is very something I rarely do… not because of being shy in front of other people, its just not my style, even in personal prayer. Sometimes my prayer is in standard form of being words and even sentences.. sometimes it goes on loops on various words… sometimes it goes to focus on a particular thing without it really having mental words attached to it.. and frequently it turns into a sort of hold tight mode that I’m not sure I can really explain with words if I had to. Most of this does not translate verbally at all, and so when I end up trying to make it verbal, I feel like its shallow.. sort of crippled by having the restrictions put on it. 

So, I’m not a fan of the style in the first place. But then you add in that I’m not at all a people person, and particularly when its some random person you’ve abruptly dropped in front of me and dumped pressure on to pray for in my much less favored manor.. and I’m really not a big fan.

Had you just asked me to talk to the random person to get to know them a bit and then pray for them… more as an information gathering mission to be followed up on my own terms, rather than “pray, verbally, right now, for this”… you might have actually gotten a prayer with some depth and point rather than a jumbled, mixed up, christianese mess making us both feel like idiots.

Its the difference between the teacher calling on someone for an instant answer in class vs allowing them to write a 2 page essay in class. One response is 50% surprise, 40% discomfort, and 10% knowledge…. the other has a chance for the surprise to regroup and turn into something 80% actual reflection of knowledge and 10% lost each to surprise and discomfort. 

 

But I don’t really feel like I can disagree on this without being taken wrong.

I don’t really feel like I can be unhappy about what feels to me like a complete and total change in the monthly gathering without it just sounding like I’m one of those church folk who never want anything to change. Without just seeming like I don’t want to grow.

Rather than agreeing with the objective of getting people praying for each other, while hating the currently chosen method of forcing a particular style of abrupt verbal prayer for strangers on everyone while knowing most aren’t going to be comfortable with it.

Its not discomfort with going into deeper water, its discomfort of being thrown into the deep end rather than being allowed to approach the goal with some freedom to use my own methods of getting there.

Do I need to pray for people more? Yes. Do I need to get to know people’s needs more? Yes. Do I need to work on being better at switching into situations where my prayer needs to be more verbal? Yes.

Does this help that happen?

Yes.

But only for exactly as long as it takes for me to survive the experience and get a nice death grip on the edge of the pool.

the Orchid step

 

I had some really profound idea for this post. 

 

I remember getting out of bed to make the original draft so that I would remember to write it the next day. 

 

Apparently, I didn’t. 

 

I would tell you the exact date, but wordpress’ manage section says I made this entry on 01/01/70, and I wasn’t born for about another decade or so. 

 

I noticed it in my drafts list when I went looking for one I will probably post tomorrow. 

 

And other than the title, it was blank. 

 

Unfortunately, so is my mind!

 

I remember it had something to do with the verse about God caring about the flowers and the birds so how much more does he care about you. 

 

And I remember the point involved a flower getting stepped on.

 

But I’m really not sure where I was going with it!

 

And I’m even less sure about why in the world I capitalized “Orchid”. Caps are not my buddies…. I tend to lose them frequently, so for me to use one, I had a reason. 

 

Was I calling Jesus a smashed flower? 

 

I really don’t know…. but it’s kinda amusing to me… so I’m posting this missing orchid post.