A Great Big Giant Cosmic Hammer

Please read my "Seven Songs" post before this.

Not too long ago I hailed the arrival of 2006. I saw it as a new beginning, a chance to start over. So far, it’s not been pretty. In the six short weeks since then, the girls have gotten sick, Danny has come down with the stomach flu, Allison had a febrile seizure, the antibiotics prescribed to deal with the cause of Allison’s fever gave her blood-tinged diarrhea that required Mommy to collect a stool sample and I came down with a brutal case of tendonitis in my right knee. 2006 is not going to get a Christmas card from me.

When bad or uncomfortable things snowball on you, you can’t help but wonder what you might have done to deserve this. Why is that giant cosmic hammer in the sky always targeting you? People have been asking questions like that since the beginning of time. An entire book of the Bible is dedicated to “When Bad Things Happen to Good People”. If I had an answer to that question, I could charge admittance to my blog. (If you do, however, think that I have answered this question, please feel free to send some cash my way!)

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been trying to write a blog entry. It was about how I’ve been daydreaming about escaping my life and starting over. These daydreams kicked in not too long after we brought Allison home from the hospital. Actually, the first one happened as a way to escape one of her first colicky episodes. It’s no wonder that I’d be daydreaming – wishing – for a different life at that particular time. They just haven’t stopped. On top of that, I keep hearing a song from my college days (see my Seven Songs post) that reminds me of when I was most carefree and (somewhat) happier. I feel guilty preferring that to my current life. I finally got about half way finished with the entry yesterday afternoon. I couldn’t finish it. I didn’t know where to go with it to give it any sort of positive spin. It was like an open, honest letter you’d write to someone to get your feelings out and then burn immediately so that it can never be read.

Life was great pre-2005 when Erin gifted Danny and me with beautiful Emma, when losing weight was easier for me than breathing, when God breathed Allison into my womb and when work was a fun and comfortable place to go Monday through Friday. Everyone needs times like that. In some ways, you need to earn those times and know that you’ve earned them. Otherwise, the danger is taking those times for granted. I certainly have. I’ve become bitter and angry that I have to work at things.

I traveled to another worksite for a meeting yesterday afternoon with my VP. His earlier meeting ran long so I sat myself down in an empty conference room. I’m not looking forward to some meetings at work. While I was waiting for the meeting, I jotted down a few things in an attempt to help me deal with work situation. My immediate reaction is to jump ship (there’s that escaping again) and find another job. The first thing that I wrote down was that I would only be hurting myself if I left my current position without deliberate planning and consideration. My thoughts flowed from there. Over the course of those twenty minutes trying to write down coping strategies for myself it occurred to me that I have a lot of learning to do right now. There is no giant cosmic hammer. An unjust god is not allowing my life to ruin. It’s just that I need to grow as a person. You can’t grow unless you’re challenged. Hence, challenges are being presented at every turn. Escaping challenges seems like an immediate breath of fresh air. It just doesn’t say much about you as a person. If you constantly ran away from any challenges that you didn’t hand pick for yourself, your life is all but wasted. That rusty red truck might as well have crashed into a tree and killed you. Your life never really would have amounted to more than the feelings you had from that two minute song anyway.

So, I’m back to being a student again. I don’t like homework, but I am always looking for an excuse to buy new clothes… ;)