2nd Direction Point: Meditate
Once as a young boy, I had an important paper to write for a class. It was an English paper due the next morning. It was also a point in time when we had just learned cursive writing with all of its fancy scroll-work and curlicue flourishes that began and ended many of the letters. This was also well before adulthood, a time when I have since let go my childhood attention to such detail and have since learned to live with scrawl! As well, it was in the dark, Neanderthal days before computers and more advanced word processors. Primitive typewriters were the apex of writing technology but in this case, it didn’t matter anyway—my family didn’t own one and besides, this paper was to showcase our newly acquired cursive skills.
I sat down at our dining room table with a pen and a brand new sheaf of clean, gleaming white, blue-ruled paper, cracked open the package, stopped to smell the crisp newness of the paper (ahhh!), picked up my pen and took out a sheet of paper and began to write. Oops. Before I had even written one letter I had accidentally dragged the point across the paper and made a line. So much for that first piece. I balled it up and threw it on the floor. Picking up my pen again (a bit more carefully this time), I began to write. Darn. I had not made the proper curlicue flourish on my capitol M. I balled that one up too and it joined its predecessor on the floor. With the next sheet I actually made it to the second sentence before I messed up: I had misspelled a word. Proper spelling was just as important as good penmanship. Dang. I balled that one up too. And the next sheet ended up having my left hand (for I am left-handed) ddrrrraaaagggg across some wet ink and smear the entire first paragraph. Oh no! Start over again, and again, and again, and again, and now precious seconds are ticking away, it’s getting close to my bedtime and my supply of what was once brand-spanking new paper is running low. Our dining room floor is a sea of white balls; clean paper that had once shown such promise of achievement and was now dirty and unclean and imperfect and damaged and worthless in my eyes.
And still my English paper remained undone. At some point in my childish despondency (Why couldn’t I get it right? Why was there some mistake made every time?), I realized on some level I was running out of time and material. In fact, I was down to my last two sheets of paper. I had blown through an entire sheaf of paper in my attempt to produce perfection. It finally struck me I would have to abandon the drive to produce something without flaw of any kind and work with what I had left. Whatever came out, it would have to do. I picked up my pen, set it to the second to last piece of paper, held my breath and tried again.
Journaling questions –
1. How do you handle bitter disappointment in your life? Do you have a tendency to blame yourself or others?
2. When it comes to such disappointment, do you tend to lash out in anger? Or do you see it as something from which a lesson can be learned?
3. What does this story have to say about your relationship with God? How about your relationships with others, especially with those for whom you care most about and from whom the most is expected?