We’ll be dispensing with the “Wow, it’s been like forever since my last post,” and “Oof, what’s up with 2020!?” stuff and get right to it.
Today was a lousy day.
I take it from the bits and pieces I’ve gathered about social media that lousy isn’t exactly an uncommon exclamation these days. 2020 has been a doozy.*
[* For the word nerds only: How do you do it, English? Dispense a sentence about 2020 in the same stroke you nullify the previous commitment to dispense with doing the very same?]
My lousy, however, didn’t happen to be related to the virus. Nor even to the election or social events even as surely anyone who caught the smallest piece of that first presidential debate Tuesday must still be sorting through at least some levels of PTSD.
I started the day feeling anxious. (This isn’t the lousy part, yet.)
I’m not 100% sure why I felt anxious, but I was well aware that I did. Financial reasons, mostly (or at least partly) I guess. Overall silly stuff in the grand-world-stage scheme of things. Kid in college just finding out we unexpectedly still owe a few thousand for his current semester, never mind the next, which he personally doubts can happen, now. Record high tax bill showing up. A few other big bills. Pretty pedestrian stuff viewed from the outside. And another adoption––okay, this is big––and the creeping realization that the current straits are probably mostly being caused by this as expenses inexorably creep (or leap, depending on the Fee of the Day) towards that $30,000 mark. In my head, though, I’m not really worried about this piece. God has provided three times previously; it’ll come from somewhere.
But, c’mon, we all pretty much know (and for sure know if we’ll just turn to the right and judge our neighbor’s anxiety instead) that anxiety ≠ “based on reality.” So the details of why I was anxious are basically irrelevant, wouldn’t you agree? Anxiety is much more a spiritual issue than a logical issue. It’s not in the end actually about math. It’s about trust.
(In other terms, I’ve known times of way less money and been less stressed, and I’ve seen far bigger balances but witnessed them evaporate quicker than thrown water on hot pavement. So enough of my anxiety particulars. They’re about as periphery as yours are.)
Where I went wrong today was ignoring a premonition.
You know, before I start work today, I really should stop and deal with this heart issue. Get to the bottom of this restless, nagging anxiousness.
“Ignore it, Dann, at your peril,” did the Spirit even whisper?
Not sure. I’d already gallantly pushed it all aside.
Nope, I’m getting cracking on this pile of work.
Especially niggling were two nonsense phone calls. Dentist appointments. I’m our family administrator for everything but medical, but Tammy has given up on this one. Somehow we’ve kept up with six kids’ teeth (Read: “make appointments” not “prevent cavities”), but I don’t believe I’ve had a pro cleaning since Bangkok (so that’s at least 5 years). Tammy thinks she went once in New York. Then there was phone call #2. Setting up online account access for my organization with the telecommunications company. Simple. I was in a hurry to get them out of the way.
EIGHT HOURS later… I’d made two dentist appointments.
There were calls to nearly double-digit offices searching for in-network doctors also taking new patients, literally an hour and a half of hold music with Marketplace healthcare, then subsequently eleven––you read that right––different telecom reps correcting me with four different phone numbers, transferring me all over the world, or to dead-ends resulting in at least six start-overs with the asinine computer answering system, his deafness only to be outdone by his chattiness, or to one rep I swear was not even a phone professional or was somehow fielding calls in some sort of nap room (he hung up on me!) and after hundreds (I can dream) of anger-burned calories later… I still don’t have a log-in, and still cannot pay my company’s hotspot bill.
Carnage complete. (Though there’s 100x the detail if you had the stomach for it.)
Fast forward through a few hours’ sacred-space date night with the wife and a repentance session for my unbelief, self-sufficiency, failure to trust, and prayer-less-ness, and you can easily imagine the flip-flopped world of difference from which I now write.
But this query hits hard: In taking a hard pass on dealing with my anxious heart first, had I not only missed “the peace of God, which transcends all understanding,” but possibly chosen to actually forego a different day altogether? How would things have gone if my calls had been made, not just by a better-hearted man, but simply at different times on the clock? Or been fielded by a completely different set of people? I know Aslan far too well to seriously think I’ll be getting an answer on that one, but I can identify the thought, or the pressure (for whatever reasons) that I was too attuned to (there’s three words fun to string together):
Activity is the name of the game, dude. Pray later.
Only to watch hours and hours unbelievably flushed away and away before my eyes with ultimately the entire day––not to mention my attitude––irretrievably wasted.
Why do we so often only present verses 6-7 of Philippians 4 as a memorization pair? And not glorious verse 5, or at least its latter half? It strikes me as indispensable preamble.
(Do you even know what it is?)
“The Lord is near.”
That’s the reason we can “be anxious for nothing.” That’s the starting point from which we can begin to imagine that being anxious about nothing might be possible.
I don’t know what your lousy yuck is today. Let hope in the truth that the Lord is near form your foundation of trust that anxiety can be dispelled and replaced with peace. It’ll pass all understanding.
