On The Verge Of...

Have you ever found yourself in the course of the day or maybe over a week or so in an emotional and physiological state where believe you are on the verge of some inappropriately extreme reaction? What I mean is, do you sometimes feel like you are just one teeny tiny step away from screaming, collapsing, exploding (metaphorically), punching someone (actually), quitting, or crying? I have. In fact, I have lately found myself in that state a little too often. Of course, being a man, I'm not specifically admitting that I have ever cried or think I'm on the verge of it. Come on, really.

Something happened several weeks back that awakened me to something about myself. Something that is not so good. I was at the early service at our church. I sat in my normal spot. Just as the service was about to begin, a married couple and their two friends rushed in and squeezed into the pew with me. By "squeeze" I mean I had to scoot to my right until I was just about three inches from the woman next to me, and that only left about three inches to the woman on my left who had just arrived. So, I'm no longer perfectly aligned with the center of the pulpit area, and have people to either side of me about 24 inches inside my personal space. I got tense. I got a little irritated. How am I supposed to worship my creator under these conditions?! So I sat there, elbows tightly tucked in, legs perfectly aligned in front of me, compressing myself into as small a space as possible, ready to worship my Lord and Savior. Yeah, I know.

As the service began I became aware that the woman to my left was giggling at almost everything, and outright guffawing at actual humor. I thought, "come on, its not all that funny." This continued for some time, and I realized that I was actually irritated by this person being so darned happy and giggly. It was not that she was being too loud, or distracting people in the service, I just found it irritating. Irritating, irritable. Hmmm, I started to detect a trend.

I am all too often on the verge of some kind of negative behavior. I have to restrain myself, then I commend myself for my restraint. It is good to have restraint. It is not so good to have to exercise it too often. This woman was obviously on the verge of uproarious laughter. She was filled to the point of overflowing with joy, happiness, contentment. Wow!, it hit me, she was not on the verge of despair or crying, she was at the opposite end of the spectrum. She was on the good end of the spectrum.

I suddenly felt ashamed, then a little jealous. Why was she so darned happy? She obviously lives here on earth like the rest of us, where bad things happen. Oh, maybe she is truly exercising the things I have been recently learning and trying to practice. Yes, that is it. She has become proficient in keeping her thoughts focused on all the good (and there really is plenty of good) rather than focusing on the bad. So, in the course of this service I went through the following phases: inconvenienced, irritated, perplexed, ashamed, jealous, humbled, enlightened, encouraged, then grateful. I was grateful that God had arranged another situation to help me. I've read "Learned Optimism" and "Every Day a Friday" and have been making progress in moving from pessimism to optimism, and I realize how critically important it is. But on that day, in that service, I saw the lightness and happiness and vitality that results from truly trusting the Lord and knowing that He has blessed us and truly works out even the bad things for good. She actually believes this stuff! Which, by the way, is the truth.

To put icing on the cake, and to provide me with another slice of humble pie (baked goods metaphors) at the end of the service this wonderfully cheerful woman turned to me and said something that both humbled and complimented me at the same time. She looked at my name tag, said my complete name, and said "have you ever considered being on the praise team." The praise team is the group of people standing on stage with the microphones, leading the singing. They have very, very good singing voices. She completed her statement with "...because standing here next to you, hearing you sing, was so good, such a blessing to me. I think others deserve to hear you too." So, there I stood trying to respond; the obessive-compulsive wound-too-tight idiot who was irritated by sitting too close to a wonderfully kind and considerate person with a cheerful and encouraging spirit. All I could say was "Thank you, I very much appreciate it, I may consider that." That was all I could come up with, because at that time I was on the verge of...well, you figure it out.

The photo at the top of the post is one taken by my daughter, Megan. She covered her school play last Friday, she is quite skilled at photography.