• Adding another mole hill to the mountain.

    There is another state agency that recently started working closely with my department. From our perspective, there have been severe problems with the transition. With that very brief set up, let me tell you what happened this morning. A meeting was scheduled for nine a.m. Management at our office was supposed to have a little face to face with management from their office. Mostly everyone from our office was there at nine a.m. I strolled in at around 9:10, thinking that I was late. I was, but I wasn’t. No one from the other agency was there yet. Nine-thirty rolled around and they still weren’t there. About this time we were all ready to give up, having had a little impromptu meeting on our own to pass the time. It was then that one person from their office showed up. I thought my boss’ boss would burst a seam, but she was quite pleasant. In a pleasant conversational tone she asked, “so, did you think that the meeting was scheduled for nine-thirty?” In a somewhat dismissive tone, the representative from this other agency said, “no, I knew it was scheduled for nine… I tried to rush here as fast as I could.”

    Forty minutes late and it’s all because she couldn’t rush faster? You’d think she missed the news about good ‘ole Alex Bell’s little invention. Is it any wonder that relations between the two offices are not particularly chummy?

  • No.

    Recently my daughter told me I say “no” too much.

    I told her there was a simple solution to her problem: she should ask questions she thinks might have a different answer.

  • Calling on God.

    Dear God,

    First of all I wanted to thank you. Thank you for listening to me, for your patience with me, and for all of your gifts given for me. Sometimes the whole “God loves me” thing seems a little abstract, but I guess that’s partly why we go to church: to make it a little less abstract. Oh dear Lord that sounds a little over simplified now that I can read it on the screen!

    What I really wanted to say is that some things have been hard lately. Not world class hard; no one is dying, no one is suffering from great physical pain, and no one is suffering these problems in isolation. No, it’s one of those medium grade problems; the kind that lingers for months. It’s the kind that you can’t really do anything about. It’s the kind you just have to wait out, and it’s eating away at me. Part of me feels ashamed for asking for your help. I feel like my problems are not worthy of your attention. Part of that may be my self esteem talking. But on the flip side, it seems like my problems are just a tiny blip on the radar of trouble; and there’s a wide swath of vast and profound suffering that makes my own seem insignificant by comparison. Oh well, I didn’t really want to talk about my personal short comings, so I’ll try and get to the point. This whole Waiting for a Miscarriage thing is really getting old. Every morning I am excited by the sight of my widening wife. It’s a sight that gives me hope, a sight that makes me dream about possibilities. And that’s the problem. I feel like I can’t afford that much excitement. It feels buying things left and right on credit, but with an insecure job. If we have another miscarriage then the bill will come due and I won’t have enough in the bank to cover it.

    I really want to ask you to make everything OK. Make our unborn kids healthy. Make my wife more at ease. Help my daughter accept it all with grace. At the same time I don’t want to think of this episode in our lives into a referendum on our faith. I am leery of the trap that “if we pray enough and ‘believe’ enough then everything will work out.” I know in my heart that things don’t quite work that way. Bad things happen to good people (assuming of course that we are good people – I hope). There is not necessarily any good associated with it… it just sucks and we move on. No, what I want is what I think you can give. Give us the strength to get through it, good or bad. Regardless of the outcome, help us to remember everything that we do have: our family, our friends, our jobs, our love, your love.

    Please let that be enough.

    Amen.