Deathly

My wife and I like to play Sudoku, it the puzzle with the box with 9 boxes that each have 9 boxes and a few numbers scattered here and there. The goal of this puzzle is to fill in all the missing numbers. Each row and each column must include the numbers 1 through 9 as well as each of the middle sized boxes. Anyway, we bought a new book of them a while back with over a 1000 puzzles in it. It was a 100% investment in frustration.

My goal, as with just about everything, is to get through the puzzle as quickly as possible. But this book of puzzles was built for comfort not for speed, to steal a phrase from Willie Dixon. I guess we have had this book for about a month. At this point I have started grading my performances. I place a frowny face above the puzzles that I screw up so bad there is not enough white out in the world to repair. I place a smiley face on the once I get correct without help. And I write ‘cheater’s win’ on the ones where I get so frustrated that I have to take a peek in the back of the book to get a number or two.

It wasn’t long after we got to the book that I started the dreaded puzzle 11. I worked through it once and found one missing number that I could put in place. And then progress came to a stand still. On this puzzle for some reason (stubbornness) I decided I was not going to look in the back of the book. But I couldn’t find any numbers that could absolutely go in place. I was sure there weren’t any. I moved on to other puzzles. I came back desperately wanting to master number 11. I went away again with my tail between my legs (repeatedly).

At this point I can’t remember when we bought this book it was either late September or early October. I looked at that puzzle almost every day for over a month. Now maybe you don’t experience the frustration of not being able to do something that you know can be done but you just can’t figure out how to do it. But I do. I can get so frustrated because I know the answer is there. I know it but I can’t see it. I can’t get to it.

I like (most of the time) Sudoku puzzles as opposed to crossword puzzles because you don’t have to know any abstract code like abbreviations, or this means that in the answer. In Sudoku all you have are numbers and you have to find their place in the puzzle. It’s not about vast amounts of NY Times secret knowledge. Sudoku is about perception. It is about being able to see where the numbers go. Well, two days ago after working on number 11 for over a month with only 1 number in place and doing the exact same method of working through rows and columns and boxes the same way I had done in the nearly 100 times I had attempted the puzzle: I saw something that I hadn’t seen before. I saw the same puzzle in a different way and the second number fell into place. There was no guess work. There was no peeking in the back for help. There was only a change in perception. When that clicked into place the rest of the puzzle was done in a day.

That mirrors life for me. I live life just about the same everyday. I know the goal: it is to walk on the path of life: Most of the time I am arrogant enough to think I can do it. But I find myself frustrated beyond measure when the pieces don’t all fall together. I think one of my biggest problems is that I don’t always see that everything in my life fits together perfectly just like a Sudoku puzzle – every number has a specific place where it is supposed to be. I get into trouble when I try to force the numbers to go where they shouldn’t go. I have become a master at doing that in my life over the course of time and therefore the path behind me is strewn with frowny faces and cheater’s wins.

But in the last month or so my perception of things has changed and I saw that I was walking in the path of destruction in one tiny area of life. I was walking there willfully. I was walking there thinking that it was righteousness; that it was wise to be that way and I suddenly realized that it was wrong. I didn’t really want to change but I knew for the first time, yes I think for the first time, that I was wrong in this matter. (I added that so you wouldn’t think I thought I was wrong for the first time ever.) So I put steps in place to change. I took the risk and began to change. I began to see the situation differently.

Now, I want you to understand that I did not have a new attitude about my old behavior. I have come to understand that you don’t have to like walking on the path of life you just have to walk on it. And this may be the first time that I have ever been fully aware that I was walking where I did not want to walk because that was where the path of life was at. That was where the numbers fit together. And I realized that none of the other pieces of life would ever get to where they were supposed to be unless I was willing to humble myself in that one area.
I had to eat my pride, my self sufficiency, my ego and humble myself before God. See sometimes in the midst of the trenches I get stubborn and say I’m not going to change until that person changes. In other words, I use other people’s actions to justify my sin. But being sinned against doesn’t give you the right to sin.

Now, understanding that has taken me full circle. I grew up learning to be a door mat. Being a Christian back then meant letting people walk all over you. I learned that very well and I have the shoe prints on my back to prove it. But then in the middle of my journey I learned that I didn’t have to be a door mat. I could stand up for myself. I didn’t have to take crap from anybody and I didn’t for awhile and there are shoe prints on other people’s backs that will prove it. But on the path of life there is a push pull of knowing when to bow down and when to walk tall. Those things take a lifetime to discern.

In the midst of my repentance I still question whether or not it is the right thing to do. In one sense it feels like I’m doing the wrong thing. I’m not taking care of myself. I’m rolling over and playing dead but I don’t believe that is the case. I believe the numbers are starting to fit in this box now that I have changed the way I perceive the box. My eyes were causing me to be unable to perceive the path of life that has always been in front of me but that I always thought was surely the path to destruction. I have been trying to save myself from destruction by choosing the path of destruction. It probably goes without saying but no wonder I was so frustrated.
Even as I write this I’ve been wondering whether or not to share a piece of the puzzle that greatly encouraged me, mostly because it seems a little juvenile (which of course I still am in many ways) but I guess I will let my guard down a bit more and share it.

I don’t how many of you have been reading these blurbs long enough to have read the one where I was complaining to God one day that he never let me find money on the ground anymore. This has probably been a year or two ago. I don’t even remember what I was praying about when that came out of my mouth but it wasn’t five minutes after I complained that I found three dollars laying on the ground in front of me. I don’t even remember what the point of the blurb was but its connection to where I am today is this:

I remember struggling with the financial risk that my repentance was going to put on me. I was telling God that this didn’t make any sense. That I was supposed to be wise in the use of what he had given me. And I had talked to the air until I was blue in the face when I finally said: OK. OK I’ll do it. I don’t want to do it but I will. I sighed a big sigh and opened the door of my car to let all the hot air out and I started walking across the parking lot and there in front of me was a twenty on the ground.

Sure that could be written off as a fluke but I write it off as God saying: You’re not in charge of your finances. You walk on the path of life and I will provide. Now I want to hedge my bets and say that this is not Tele-evangelist manipulation that says if you send me $100 God will give you a thousand back. No matter how many of those stories I hear and verify I will always be doubtful of those things because God is not about easy money. He is about walking in righteousness. He is about covenant relationship. And the truth of the matter is that I had been living with at least one toe on the path of destruction. Yes, that is better than having both feet on the path of destruction but destruction is not life no matter how you look at it.

The phrase I was blind but now I see comes to mind. That’s really what perception is. Your eyes may be perfectly healthy but if your perception is wrong you will not see reality the way it is. You are technically blind to the situation. You will not be able to find the right number to go in the box. You will be frustrated. You will taste a tiny bit of destruction in everything you put your hand to. The goal in life in time and history is to taste less and less destruction and more and more life.

The twenty is not the only thing that confirms to me that I am seeing the path of life better. Several things seem to be falling into place, things that I had given up on out of frustration. I will keep those to myself for now until they unfold a little more clearly and I can exploit them or bury them out of sight in a future blog.

If I could just see destruction for what it is – death maybe, just maybe I would stay away from it but that’s a long shot. My attitude toward the path of destruction should probably follow that which is revealed in Amiee Mann’s song: Deathly. She writes: Now that I’ve met you would you object to never seeing each other again. ‘Cause I can’t afford to climb aboard you. Know one has that much ego to spend. So don’t work your stuff because I’ve got troubles enough. No don’t pick on me when one act of kindness could be-Deathly.

If I would only remember that no matter how beautiful and wise the path of destruction looks and sounds it leads where it leads: to destruction. Maybe then I would learn to stay on the path of life.

Maybe; that all depends on whether I have eyes to see where the numbers are supposed to go.

Crawling toward the light,

Brad