May 2, 2012
-
Wednesday
“Eat your vegetables, Rachel!”
It is almost 1pm and I sigh. Because I love mornings and mornings always leave me so quickly. Wednesdays are my mini-Sabbaths, because I have figured out that those involved in ministry will never really rest on Sunday. So you need another day to supplement your Sabbath. Another day you tell yourself that it is ok to stop and rest a bit. Wednesdays I stop to breathe and figure out where I am. Because I’ve forgotten already.
And today I’ve fallen asleep while reading the Bible again, and made lasagna but don’t feel hungry. Important choices surround me and squeeze my stomach. They remind me that life is so much more important than watching the latest show or catching up on the news. I never really want to know what I read in the news anyway.
The hallway outside my apartment is full of people. I wonder who they are and where they are going, and when they will go, because they are loud. There is a new couch sitting in my living room. My living room that has been taken over by fresh paint and a fury of cleaning because I will be getting roommates one of these days. Two Polyglots from Europe. But no one knows for sure when they will arrive. So a clean house it is.
Tameries called me during class. Her family just moved, and they don’t have any food. Mine is the only number they have to call, and I have no idea how to get to them. And I don’t know if I am supposed to. I felt lead to give them some money for the new baby that is coming. But, once money is seen, it seems to take over everything else. Now I am the money solution to everything in her mind. And that is ugly to me, but it is life-fact. When you have nothing you pull every string you can think of to gather something.
And I understand, but it pulls me down, it makes me stoop a little lower, even though I try so hard to better my posture. Just like when I pass the mother, standing in the middle of the street with no shoes and an umbrella. Tears in her eyes, baby in one hand, and the other hand out to me. Keep walking, keep walking. Manage a weak smile and a shake of the head.
“This is not how it is supposed to be!” I want to scream. No, what should really happen, if I care for you and stare at you and remember that God loves you just as much as he loves me and you are just as important as I am—what should happen is I invite you to come into my house, sit down, offer you some water, and listen to your story. Pray with you and then do everything in my power to help you. That is what is supposed to happen. Not this struggle to pass by without feeling.
I don’t feel right pressing coins into your hands either. That isn’t the solution. Money repulses me at these moments, because it has become everything—the goal, the objective, the focus…and what a little life that is, whether it is from the woman begging on the street or the man yelling on Wall street. But I quickly forget you, because life doesn’t stop.
No, life is filled with other beautiful and scary things. Things like imagining a future, and who is with me in that future. Looking into someone’s eyes and being scared by the depth of feeling you see reflected back at you. Cowering beneath their gaze because I realize the next words they say could cut me to pieces. I don’t like giving people that power over me. Realizing at the end of a discussion that I still lack the assurance that I am worth it, no matter how many times you say that I am.
Can I look you in the face and say “I need you to be a better person in this situation?” I can hear all day that God has only the best for me, but when it comes down to it, I still don’t feel like I can ask for it. Because asking is putting my desire out there, vulnerable. And when you ask, you give the other person the power to respond. To deny or ignore. To look at you and say your fear: “No, you don’t deserve that—you are not enough.” And I know what that looks like: it looks very lonely.
And we danced “Thriller” in class today, claws up-2,3,4. My students laugh when I say a joke and I feel like the big man in the house. This is my kingdom. Page 23 is almost done and the bell rings, and perhaps they can write the negative form of the verb to be in a sentence. I take a sip of water and fall in love with my new Camelbak again. Well, new to me. Don’t tell my lost Nalgene water bottle that I am cheating on him.
There are articles to be written and plans to be made and it is May already, and shouldn’t be. And I figure, if I can make it through the month with no regrets and some kind of outline of what is supposed to happen, that even if it doesn’t, it will be ok.
