Pastoral Ponderings—Stuck
We awoke early this morning to get ready to run away together for a little while—on a pilgrimage to the Magic Kingdom at Disney. Our son was giving us a lift on his way to work, so we spent the night with the newlywed couple, and minutes after we started moving this morning, I heard this awful exclamation—never a good thing—when Darling Wife broke the quiet of the morning calling out “WHAT?!?”
The flight was delayed. Not just a little bit, but from a 9:30 AM flight, to a 7:30 PM flight! Quite the wrench in our plans for an easy, relaxing flight.
But despite the long delay, Kristopher still had to get to work at the same time, so we still arrived early, tried our best to fight the inevitable, but now, waiting. Thank God for the USO!
Ironically, I was just reading up on a resilience author for an opportunity to better connect with the Southeast Schools (Charlestown Church and Ravenna footprint—where they had a student suicide just before Thanksgiving), who was talking about the importance of mental flexibility for resilience. In other words, how flexible can you be when a wrench gets thrown into your plans? And how often does THAT happen? Whether something as relatively inane as a flight delay (annoying though it may be), to major disappointments and losses, life is chock full of wrenches chucked into our plans.
Resilience, or how we bounce back when Bad Things happen, is not just a psychological, but a spiritual skill set as well. I’ve spent a lot of my career dealing with suicide, usually precipitated by what seems to be a major wrench thrown in the middle of a vulnerable life. What might be just a Bad Day to someone with good resilience—being dumped by a girlfriend or something—can be deadly if it shakes your sense of meaning and a place in this world.
If not for our faith, are we anything other than a cosmic accident? So when life gets messy, why bother? Unless there’s something more to life—as our faith boldly asserts, proclaiming that we are treasured children of the God of all creation, also called to make a difference in making God’s love real for those who might feel like the least, the last, the lost. And for whom even difficult times can be filled with spiritual blessings.
We’re still not excited about the wrench thrown into our plans—but I’m getting to overhear Darling Wife being a blessing in conversation with others while I’m being able to catch up on a long to do list, and keeping my eyes open for other God Sightings that will come from this delay. How do you handle the wrenches chucked into your life? Still waiting… Pastor Jim