Quote of the day . . .

"Let's see - Luke was sitting here, and I was there - we'd better switch"

Code Adam

 

I was wandering thru the store . . . looking for a new pair of pants . . . lost in my own thoughts . . . voices come over the intercom.  I’m not listening, trying to decided between sweetened Almond milk or unsweetened Almond milk.  When suddenly she appears in my isle. 

I’ve been scared before.  I’ve felt my throat swell, and my breathing become shallow.  I’ve seen pain in the bloody face of a young man.  I’ve heard hearts in agony.

 

 

This was so different from anything before.

 

 

 

Squeezing her purse in a tight clenched fist, walking fast.  Calling out in an voice that was battling for control.  She was battling for control.  And control was slipping.  Slipping away.  Out of my isle now . . . I her voice becoming shrill with fear.

And I stand there.

 

I STAND THERE.  Like an idiot.  Like a chump.  A code Adam – A CODE ADAM has been called – that’s what went over the intercom.  Looking around I see store employees on radio’s, I see them walking, checking row by row.  I see her – the mother, I see her struggling to keep it together – I see her trying to walk 3 different directions at once.

 

. . . Yellow shirt – that’s what they said – her little girl is wearing a yellow shirt . . .  

 

 

Do I see any yellow shirts?  Have I seen any yellow shirts? 

 

 

Yellow shirts, yellow shirts . . . . . yellow shirts.

 

What kind of twisted freak would take a kid?!!!?!?!

 

 

And as I stand there scanning face’s, looking for yellow shirts – as I stand there I am reminded, just how fragile all of this is.  How in a moment life can change. 

 

A moment.

 

 

 

And how in a moment it can all come back.

They find her – she is safe.  People with radios go back to stocking shelves.  People with carts go back to shopping.  And life goes on. 

 

Disaster came so close.

 

And life goes on . . . . just like that.

Odd.

New Glasses

Thief

 

 

I stole his seat. 

 

Rather I stole his table.   MY table – the one table in the room which gets hit with cold air from the AC.   The cold corner, where red and white walls meet.  It’s a small table, a couples table.   Now if he had been possession, if he had been using this cool oasis, I would have only looked wistfully in his direction – not at him mind you, but in his direction, reminding myself that often the race goes to the swift.  But he was not!  He was playing chess in the middle of the room. 

 

Playing chess in a ostentatious, vulgar manner.

 

 

 

The law cannot touch these seat hogging, chess playing fiends.

 

 

I’ve heard that possession is nine-tenths of the law.  I find this hard to believe, thinking rather that the law is nine-tenths obfuscation, shrouded in obscure verbiage.

 

 

I sit down across from his bag and break all the unwritten laws of coffeehouse seat saving.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maybe my life needs more . . . excitement. 

 

 

This is sounding too much like Walter Mitty.

Bowling for Taco’s

 

 

 

Yakima – the land of the Taco Bus.  Not Taco Truck – not Taco Conversion Van – Taco Bus.  School Bus, Grey Hound Bus – Taco Bus.

 

They did up Mammoths here, just down the road.  Real Mammoths – not mastodons – MAMMOTHS.  I went to a mammoth dig.  I saw people with bamboo skewers, trowels, and tattoo's – lot’s of tattoo’s.  Leading – if their forearms and necks are to be believed – much more varied, and exciting lives than I ever expected for archeology students.  That is assuming, perhaps wrongly, that most people who get exciting and daring tattoos get them because they lead exciting and daring lives.

 

And yet . . . I don’t know – sometimes I feel it’s the people who are to busy living to realize how exiting and daring their lives are, that I find myself drawn too.

 

Not the young hitchhiker I picked up a year ago on my way back from a fishing trip to Oregon who loved traveling the country without a plan.  But a quiet Dad who lives in Pullman, loving his wife and son, taking amazing pictures in his free time, while working hard at his job – too busy being a man to tell you all about it.

 

Picking up that hitchhiker, hearing his story of aimless drifting, time spent here – friends met there.  A sort of solo gypsy is what he modeled himself as – a lone wander, needing no fellow travelers in his life’s journey.  He seemed to me to be a man who was – was trying to find what out what he was looking for. 

You know what I mean, the nagging feeling that you’ve forgotten something – only you’re not sure what it is.  Mentally you back track, you turn around and re-trace your steps, hoping some detail with stand out and remind you.  And the harder you try the more it slips and slithers – a splinter in your mind.  Exhausted you stop trying, hours – even days pass, and suddenly without prompting, without cause, without fanfare – the forgotten something is there.

 

I was given so much to process today.

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our afflictions so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”

- 2nd Corinthians 1:3-4

There are deep wells of grace hidden within affliction.  Deep, and still.  Grace does not quench your pain – grace does not suppress it, it does not satisfy it, grace endures it.

Grace carry’s you through it.  The pain changes you, draws you closer to the Father of mercies and God of all comfort.  It preserves even when you cannot.  Especially when you cannot.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Especially when you cannot . . .