July 19, 2010

• The Whiner

  I can't sleep.   I feel like I'm in one of those too-cold, too-warm, too-antsy stages that can mean that I'm too tired to know the difference between wakefulness and exhaustion.  

  I had my first teachermare of the summer.  I didn't have one last summer.  They used to be a trend.  They're back.  I'm kind of comforted, because they're the same routine I'm used to: there's a crazy, out-of-control situation looming, and me, just chilling, and taking it in stride.  The thought that I can handle it is always in my mind.  

  Except this time, nothing I was doing was working.  The chalk I was using (I have a whiteboard, so I don't know why I would suddenly have a chalkboard) wasn't working.  It was pink, or orange, or yellow, or whatever color my board was morphing in to, and I couldn't get the writing to show.  There were too many students, and there were no desks.  (Literally; the Vice Principal apparently folded them all up the previous day while she was using my room.  Yes, they were folding desks.)  The kids were not the right age (definitely younger than High School!)  But I still wasn't really freaking out.  I can handle this.  Except the whole having-trouble-opening-my-eyes thing.  That happens a lot in my dreams.  I think if I can harness this, I can start lucid dreaming which would be awesome.  But I don't think I'm that desperate for lucid dreaming.  I like my sleep just fine.  

  You think I'm anxious about going back to school?  Maybe.  

  Anxiety is a strange thing.  I think for someone who's chill about just about everything, I tend towards a lot of anxiety.  I am anxious of whether or not I'll be on time (I make exceptions for situations that require late shows.)  I am anxious about doing a good job (up to personal standards, as well as the standards of those who matter.)  I am anxious about the unknown, the great vastness of the future...  (ok, mainly when I'm on someone else's agenda.  I hate surprises.)  I'm anxious when going to new places (and I don't know how long it'll take to get there; mostly because of the being on time thing, which I'm pretty sure can be a diagnosable disorder at the rate I'm obsessive over it.)  And then I am also altogether laid back.  Because it all works out, whether or not it works out the way you want it to.  I've learned to roll with the punches, and punches they are.  Sometimes.

  Sometimes I think we have these odd ideas about Jesus.  Sometimes I think these odd ideas have some truth in them, because they're fashioned from our personal experiences, and these human experiences are...  well, just that: human.  We are made in the image of God, and thus, maybe our experiences are for a reason.  God knew what He was doing, right?  But sometimes these ideas need to be corrected.  (Who needs transitions?  I'm tired, remember?)

  Like sometimes I think God is like a whiny boyfriend.  (He certainly is not.)  I think that whenever I haven't spent a lot of time with Him, suddenly He is pouty, and asking me why I don't call anymore, or why I don't write, or spend time, or seem "distant."  I don't actually think this, but I know I act like it.  I guilt like it.  

  God is not a whiny boyfriend.  

  What He is is a "jealous God"  (Ex 20, somewhere.)  Not jealous as in whiny.  Jealous as in desiring all of us.  The difference is our response...  God is not whiny in that He is not waiting around...  He put in all His chips already.  He has given everything.  In His might, He has conquered all.  That whiny voice is our own.  Our own insistence in hiding while the voice of God calls.  The whiny, "why do you keep calling me?" and, "what do you want this time?"  The whine that comes from a person so pursued and yet so reluctant to put in all the chips as well.  

  No, God is not a whiny boyfriend.  This is not a mutual relationship in a sense that God needs pleasing.  

  He owns the cattle on a thousand hills.  He owns the devotion of thousands upon thousands of millions of angels.  He does not whine if you don't call.  He waits.  Calm and steady, eternal and consistent, everlasting and steadfast...  He has not changed, even while the moods of the world and of ourselves have shifted like eversomany pieces of sand on a desert wracked by the wind. 

  Lately, quite a number of my students have been calling/writing/texting to let me know that they are making commitments to become closer to God.  I am blown away.  God is good.  I'm learning a lot this summer...  about me, and about what I want.  

  Right now, though, I want to sleep. 

  Is there a concept of God that you act like you have that you want to correct?

   

  • 11:25 pm
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