A January Kind of Feeling

I take January's bait. . .hook, line, and sinker. She's the first month, the fresh start, the unopened present. I get inspired to do all the things that lagged consistently behind me the year before. The things I thought about a lot, intended to do, wanted to do, but that always got bumped for the necessary, the practical, or the urgent.

This year something really is different though. While 2014 and  2015 were marked by a sleep deficit, I think 2016 is going to have something else: Energy. Back in October, I started sleeping somewhat closer to the patterns of normal people. And you know, I may as well have started taking Prozac because that's about what the difference feels like.

If a mom tells me she's tired and it's hard, I'm going to take her really seriously. Just because she doesn't say it with crocodile tears and large hand gestures as if to REALLY show you what it feels like. . .well that doesn't mean she's okay. She may be in real darkness. And it may be scary. Hear the mamas, mama. Let's all listen to the mamas!

And well anyway part of my new year's ideals were to get over myself more and show some compassion. This was inspired by some resentment toward a situation in which compassion felt lacking. And although I suppose resentment is not a good place to spawn good behavior, it happens to be where it started for me. It's like after you talk to someone who talks about themselves a lot. Like so much that you can't even believe it. Well after that you might walk away and determine to talk about yourself as little as possible. Maybe never at all. Because you just really don't want to make someone else feel how you just felt. And then you kind of go back toward the middle of the road and say, "Okay maybe I'll talk about myself. It's probably inevitable. But I'm at least going to try to be a listener. You know, maybe even find out if I can take a genuine interest in someone else's thoughts. And let's see if I can stay there, in THEIR storyline, without passing the ball back to myself. Hmm let's try that out and see what it's like. Surely only good can come from LESS of me and MORE of others. Right?"

I do believe so.

Listening is hard. So is loving your neighbor in the kind of careful attentive way you love yourself. I guess that's why Loving Thy Neighbor is up there as one of the two greatest commands. It's just too hard to master. There's just no way to do it without flinging yourself onto the resources of Someone Else.

The other thing that's different about this year is now we have a new widow in our lives and for me, the widow is a big deal. James was blunt enough to tell me true religion has to do with the widows. Tim Keller says James is being ironic or something for using the word religion there at all. Because the religious Pharisees would never have visited widows and orphans. And I know I can't do everything for every widow, but I can do something for the two we have in front of us.

We gained one widow which now makes two. Because we lost a widow in 2015 too. She's not in need anymore, Hallelujah. But we miss you like crazy Memaw.

I put a flower on her grave the other day. I thought it would be a simple thing, but I had to sit in my car and swallow a few times. It's just never something you get over -- death. You just don't. You aren't supposed to I guess. Death screams in your ear that the world really is fallen. It's broken and creation is still groaning. Why does Hope have any meaning if you can't look at death and brokenness? Why do parents avoid talking to their kids about death and sadness? How boring is the whole gospel if the need isn't DRAMATIC and SEVERE? Tell kids about the ugly stuff sometimes. Don't shelter them too much. If you do, the gospel sounds ho-hum really.

Something strange is happening to me. I am learning a sort of apathy. A sort of contentment without groping for it. Sometimes I preach to myself about all the stupid things I'm annoyed at or mad about.. . . . but the preaching just can't get through. I just can't seem to snap out of it. There was this apathy about certain stuff that I wanted but I just couldn't find it. I still fixated on all the wrong things. The apathy was that grit your teeth kind that you really, really want, but it's just not making its way at all into your bones. But now it's happening. It starting to become that kind that bubbles up and over and out. It's that kind that comes when you finally catch a glimpse of the fact that God really is who He says He is. And circumstances and people really don't have to rule over your spirit. There's a good side to apathy. . . so long as it knows where to plant itself.