Gravity

Hey Everyone,

So…What is smooth sailing? I keep looking at the plan of my life expecting to see the perfect non-storm on the horizon. You know what I’m talking about that day or hour, or minute, or mili-second where everything fits together just like you thought it would. When does the roller coaster of life get to the downhill section? I’m hoping that it’s not already over.

Yesterday was one of those days where I was back in highschool running the 220 low hurdles again. You just get going on the race and then there’s another one of those manmade obstacles in your way that you can’t go around unless of course you want to be disqualified from the race…and they just keep coming.

I started the day off 30 feet in the air in a little aluminum box kissing a wooden beam like it was the blarney stone as I reached out to work on a microphone connection that some brilliant architect made nearly inaccessible to anyone who can’t fly. Four times up and down in less than an hour wore me out for the rest of the day. I was reminded of the longest 5 seconds of my life that occurred some 20 years ago when while painting someone’s second story my extension ladder decided to slide to the ground. I screamed like a girl, briefly, and then rolled over to see a perfect indention of a ladder rung where my kneecap used to be. (A quick lesson in how to spend $10,000 in 10 seconds while trying to make some extra cash).

It took me quite some time to learn to get back on a ladder or a lift.

My day started there and then seemed to come crashing down around me, at least the morning. The afternoon saw all of the morning issues resolved in a positive manner but it was too late for my mental state. I was foul inside. Even stopping to get comics on the way home didn’t help.

Well, maybe it helped a little. The owner of the store was having a deep philosophical discussion about the Joker from the last Batman movie. He was whining about how inconsistent the writers were because the joker kept saying he was chaos personified nothing but pure chance but he kept planning everything he did to the inth degree.

As I was checking out I couldn’t keep my mouth shut (which is rare in such circumstances) and I said something like: “What do you mean inconsistent? Scientists tell us that the world we live in is just one big accident but then they plan the trajectory to the moon.” He was befuddled for a minute and the guy in the green lantern shirt he was talking to smiled and said, “yeah, you’re right.”

But by the time I got back in my car the conversation was gone and I was back in a funk for the next few hours. As I was driving to church with Judy my enduring and longsuffering wife I stuck John Mayer in the cd player and these words began to turn me around:

Gravity is working against me and gravity wants to bring me down
Oh I never know what makes this man with all the love that his heart can stand
Dream of ways to throw it all away.

Gravity is working against me and gravity wants to bring me down
Oh twice as much ain’t twice as good and can’t sustain like one half could
It’s wanting more that’s gonna send me to my knees

Gravity stay the hell away from me oh Gravity has taken better men than me
How can that be?
Just keep me where the light is. Just keep me where the light is.

Keep me where the light is. I have to pray that prayer constantly because there is a part of me that loves the darkness. I don’t mean has a fondness for, I mean LOVES. There is a part of me that would climb into the darkest hole he could find and spend the rest of his days rotting in there. He would throw everything away; all the good, all the love, the friendship, the adventure, the joy – just to be left alone with his numbness, his highness, his oblivion in order to avoid his fears, maturity, responsibility, and risk of life outside the hole.

Gravity stay the hell away from me because I do not want to go back into that hole where I lived for so many years. I do not want to be pain free. I do not want to be risk free. I do not want to be numb again: ever. I wasted too many years there. I lost out on too many relationships. I stayed in diapers too long.

And so in the real world on the outside of the hole of numbness there are days that remind me of the joys of numbness but at the same time there are a hundred million other things that remind me of the emptiness of that so called joy and the fullness of living life straight no chaser. The good, the bad, the ugly (and the beautiful) being revealed as the course laid before me unfolds.

I was reminded of Psalm 37:4 Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart. When I looked that up at bible gateway it was encompassed by two other verses: Ecclesiastes 11:9 Rejoice, young man, during your childhood, and let your heart be pleasant during the days of young manhood. And follow the impulses of your heart and the desires of your eyes : Yet know that God will bring you to judgment for all these things.

I’m thankful for the judgment of God in my life that has caused me to grow up (finally) in recent years and in doing so altered the desires of my heart.

And I also rejoiced in the other verse that sandwiched Psalm 34 and that was Deuteronomy 14: 26 (my favorite book in the bible) which speaks of one aspect of the tithe and says: You may spend the money for whatever your heart desires: for oxen, or sheep, or wine, or strong drink, or whatever your heart desires; and there you shall eat in the presence of the LORD your God and rejoice, you and your household. What a blessing. I don’t have to feel guilty about eating and rejoicing even though there are starving people out there somewhere. I don't have to feel guilty about having things and about spending money that God has blessed me with on WHATEVER I DESIRE.

I am a blessed man because God with his awesome power and might has changed the desires of my heart away from hiding in a hole of numbness to wanting to take the risk to walk on the path of life and learn what it really means to be alive.

By his Grace and with his mercy I shall never climb back in that hole.

Keep me where the light is.

Brad