I love summer, I do—but I also love fall, winter (to a point), and spring. The changing of each season is meaningful to me, and I appreciate being witness to the cycle of life.
For many, this time of year means students head back to school—and millions of parents rejoice. Continue reading “A Season of Re-Calibration”
Do you ever think you have THE answer about some aspect of life? A bright idea that will solve whatever issue is at hand? Where the metaphorical light bulb goes off and your mind’s eye sees everything falling into place?
I haven’t had a lot of light bulbs going off lately, and that’s left me feeling a little in the dark. Too bad there is no switch to flip and easily see with clarity.
But my ideas aren’t always THE answer, anyway, as I learn time and again.
Continue reading “Interrupted By God”
Do you remember learning your multiplication tables in elementary school? We were expected to go over them until we could rattle them off like we were wielding a numeric machine gun. It wasn’t my favorite assignment, for sure, and I remember my mom drilling me on them until they finally sunk in. The theory, in part, is that once they are embedded in our brains, we will then be able to use them with little effort to solve bigger problems.
So many times it is practice that enables us to progress or gives us the tools to move forward. Continue reading “Practicing Life”
I took my mom to the bank drive thru the other day. I think these mainly still exist for people in my mom’s generation—though having the little canister get sucked up into the tube is pretty cool. The transaction turned out to be very frustrating because the tellers didn’t see something they should have and ended up treating us rather poorly.
My mom was…ticked. She wanted me to get the teller’s name and complain. I told her to take a breath and let it go. We have bigger fish to fry. But it took her a while to get past it. (Actually, I think given the chance, she’d still give the teller an earful.)
I know I can be guilty of the very same kind of misspent energy, and I bet you can admit to the same. While forgiving little slights isn’t too hard, there are times where it’s just easier to steam at the injustice.
And then there are the bigger fish that do indeed need frying. The kinds of hurts that make it even harder to let go and offer forgiveness.
But no matter how big or small the “fish,” we should always strive to forgive, and here are my ten great reasons why…
Of course, this by far isn’t a definitive discourse on the merits of forgiveness, but I hope that you have found a little something here to remind you how key forgiveness is to a healthy life. And if you didn’t and instead feel like this has been a waste of your time, I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me!
According to Matthew McConaughey—or maybe Einstein—time is relative. Having seen Interstellar over the weekend, I am again challenged to wrap my brain around what this means. (I think I need a brain yoga class—with so many things requiring me to stretch my brain, I’m in serious jeopardy of pulling a muscle.) (Also, in a completely unrelated parenthetical comment, I must admit that while McConaughey was piloting that spacecraft, I couldn’t help but wonder if he’d rather be driving a Lincoln.)
So…the relativity of time. While the academic version of it puts time in a fourth dimension, I just want to deal with the relativity of good old linear time today.
If you’ve ever seen the movie City Slickers, perhaps you’ll remember Mitch, Billy Crystal’s character, giving a brief summary of life:
In classic Crystal style, he is a huge Doug Downer for those innocent middle schoolers. It’s a funny bit, but at the same time—depending on how old you are—you can’t help but wince at the kernels of truth in his rant. For the 40s—my decade—he states, “you grow a little pot belly, you grow another chin. The music starts to get too loud; one of your old girlfriends from high school becomes a grandmother.”
Sigh. Thankfully, while the others already apply, the music hasn’t grown too loud for me. Just ask my son who occasionally needs to tell me to turn down the music. Mama still likes it loud. (And, no—I am not yet hard of hearing!)
There is another part of the movie that resonates with me, though, and that’s the desire to have a “do over.”
In the movie, Phil (Daniel Stern) is at a crossroads in his life and states, “My life is over! I’m almost 40 years old, and I’m at the end of my life!” Doug Downer, meet your brother.
If you happen to be someone who is exactly where you thought you would be at this point in your life, I commend you. God bless. I have a feeling you are in the minority, though.
Many of us, like Phil, aren’t exactly where we envisioned ourselves.
To cheer up his friend, Mitch offers this hope: “You remember when we were kids, and we were playing ball, and we hit the ball over the fence out of bounds, and we yelled, DO OVER?…Your life is a do over. You’ve got a clean slate.”
Of course, it’s not as simple as that, we all know, but the idea of second (or third, or fourth, or more) chances to create yourself anew is powerful—and scary. While it shines hope, it doesn’t necessarily come easy.
I’m in “do over” phase right now. And this is where the whole linear time issue fires up. Some days I feel like it’s simply too late for me to start over. How much time do I have left? (Doug Downer, meet your sister.) But other days I am well aware that all I have—and all anyone else has—is…today. Just today. So whether I’m in my 40s and trying to carve out a new life or I’m in my 20s, the one thing I know I have in the spectrum of my life is…today.
There is no difference.
True, if you create a timeline of my life, this new life chapter will be shorter than if I had started writing it earlier, but all I have is today’s page. There is no going back and editing. There’s only today’s blank page.
Every day is a mini do-over of its own.
If today was a piece of poop on a stick, tomorrow doesn’t have to be—and if it is, well then the next day offers the same fresh chance for change.
So if you, like me, find yourself struggling at times, wondering whether your life choices screwed things up or possibly made things better, remember that time is relative.
Within Mitch’s rant from the clip above, he says, “Value this time in your life, kids, cause this is the time in your life when you still have your choices.”
Sorry, Mitch, but I disagree. Yes, things get way more complicated with responsibilities and commitments as you get older, but…we still have our choices. The impact may be farther reaching, but…we still have our choices.
Hindsight may have us kicking ourselves that we didn’t make certain choices sooner (or at all), but that does nothing to help write today’s page.
This is something I need to constantly remind myself about. I am not too old for a do over. And if I make it to 80 and I want yet another do over, I won’t be too old then, either.
What matters is the DO in do over. Otherwise…it’s just…over.
So fill up today’s page as best you can. And remember, if you don’t like what you wrote for today, tomorrow offers a brand new page.
On January 1, I did not leave the house and stayed out of trouble. On January 2, I was pulled over by a police officer. On January 3, my van had a brief relationship with a cement wall.
This is my story.
For those of you who follow me (thank you!), you know that I have been looking forward to the proverbial leaf turning of 2015. The years 2013-14 have kind of been jagwads to me and my family, and…I’m looking for a new start.
But…does this sound like a new beginning to you? Or does it seem like more of the same crappola?
Well, of course, it’s not as simple as that, now is it? Let me tell you my story…
Just a week or so ago my son and I were driving and talking. He noticed someone on their phone and said, “I thought that was against the law?” to which I replied, “Yeah, well it looks like one of those laws that aren’t enforced because I see people on their phones all the time.”
Flash forward to January 2. I am running very late to get my son from a friend’s house. I decide that I should call the mom who is hosting and ask her to please have my guy ready to walk out the door because I’m only two minutes away. Though I have a Bluetooth, I rarely have it in because I’m not the greatest fan of talking on the phone, so when I make the call, I am not hands free. Cue sirens. So much for the law not being enforced…
I drop the phone as I tell the mom with a colorful word or two “I think I’m getting pulled over for being on the phone!” I can hear her saying, “What?…What??” but I realize that now is probably not the time to finish the call, so I hang up.
The officer approaches, tells me I was driving while using a handheld device, and asks for license and insurance. I tell him I am sorry, that I’m running late, yada, yada, and he simply holds his hand out for the information he asked for. He then disappears into his vehicle.
Now, if you’re like me and let’s say, maybe have a little experience getting pulled over now and then for maybe speeding…you know that the longer the cop sits in his car, the stronger the reality that he is writing you a ticket. I hoped that maybe my sobless sob story might be tugging at him, but…tick…tock…he’s not coming back quickly.
Doing an amazingly effortless job of mentally kicking myself, I decide instead to say a prayer. I pray that if there is any way I could have this end without my having to pay for a ticket, I would super appreciate it. We so do not have money right now to be throwing after stupid.
Another moment of waiting passes, and then the officer walks up to me and asks, “Do you know any cops in this town?” I look at him a little confused and say that I do. He asks me who, and I give him the name of an old friend. “Ha! Just give me a couple minutes.” And then he walks back to his vehicle.
I sit there wondering…what just happened??
Another two minutes later, he walks up and hands me a warning. He explains that while he was calling in my name on the radio, my friend heard it and said, “Wait! Hold up!” and I was then graced with a warning. My officer friend then drives up beside me and smiles. I am profuse in my gratitude, and he is gracious in his response.
It was only then that I couldn’t hold back my emotion…because it sure felt to me that my prayer was answered in an extremely serendipitous way. What are the odds that this man would be on duty? That he would catch my name being called in? As we who watch Downton Abbey would say, I was gobsmacked.
While driving the next day, I couldn’t help but think that maybe that episode was a little message from God that though things can and will be hard, sometimes a tiny miraculous ray of light shines through. I felt like this was 2015 turning the corner for me.
And then I kissed a cement wall with the rear corner of my van.
It’s a long story that involves backing down a ramp, but I won’t bore you with it because this post is already near 800 words, and I haven’t gotten to my main point yet.
It was easy to fall right back into feeling the tug of the negative. It pulled hard on me. Lots of self-disgust bubbled up. It’s the same crappy karma of 2014 after all, isn’t it?
Or…is it?
I am really striving to see even this “holey van” incident as a message that things will most definitely continue to be messy…but…I’m okay. We’ll be okay. The van has many battle scars, and this is yet another one. But…it’s okay. The incident happened while I was on my way to something new and exciting that I’ve begun…and that didn’t stop just because I ran into a cement wall.
In fact, I’ve thought about making the hole a day brightener in its own crazy way…
It is so easy to get sucked into the negative—especially when I too often feel surrounded by it. But I’m not giving up that easy.
As I shared last week, my word for 2015 is journey, and I find it ironic that these two crazy incidents from the first three days of the year involve me traveling.
It appears I’ve already hit a couple of minor speed bumps on my journey!
But I’m still moving forward. And my little prayer answered resonates deeply within me that I am not journeying alone.
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