On the Edge

“On the bright side,” I said to Sarah as we sat on my porch from which a $30 package had just been stolen, “we live an interesting life. I think this is what it means to live on the edge, to be continually running into situations where you have no idea what to do.”

“Hmmm. I think you’re right,” she said. 

“Living on the edge always sounds so great until you’re doing it,” I added.

I thought this morning that maybe I was too discouraged to write a blog at all. This could just be the week I don’t write. But as I reflected on my week by telephone with my sister, I began to recall these moments that showed God’s presence. 

Take for instance the fact that Sarah had already been planning to come that night of the theft of the box off my porch. She was planning to come pray with me about the vandalism of the mini barn. Handy, to have another theft on the same day so we could pray about that right away. And handy, I must admit, to have a friend come over to help redirect my anger. 

Yes, I was furious. Yes, I slammed my front door shut much harder than was necessary to get the latch to catch when I realized the package was gone. Its delivery had been confirmed by text just a few hours before and a trustworthy neighbor had seen two adults sitting on my porch in the time between its delivery and my arrival. And, I had ordered running shoes that were due to arrive on my porch the next day. 

Sarah didn’t just sympathize with me, but prayed with me and called me to something higher. And my trustworthy neighbor agreed to pick up my package for me the next day. 

The next day, I cried most of my walk home from work. I cried down the street from the hospital and down Lexington Street under the trees where spider webs catch at my clothes in the early morning. I cried around the bend in the river, and past the turtles on their outcropping–there weren’t so many today, but I still checked to see they were there. I cried past all the houses and over the river on the big bridge with the lamppost still shading the remains of the mayflies, and down into my neighborhood to my trustworthy neighbor’s house, where her husband sympathetically stopped sawing lumber and handed me my package of shoes.  

I threw the package with exhaustion and disinterest on my coffee table and collapsed on the couch and called my aunt who I do crossword puzzles with and promptly bit her head off with my angry commentary about the physical and psychological vandalism I was experiencing and how I was pretty sure I wasn’t thinking like Christ, and that I had been praying to become more like Christ but that I was really getting tired of all the opportunities presenting themselves for me to learn to act like Him.

“I might add that I got up at 3:15 sharp to see if I could run three miles before walking to work where I was for 14 hours before walking home, so I suppose I’m extra tired,” I confessed. 

“Maybe you should get some sleep,” she agreed.

The shoes remained unopened. Who knew if they would even fit. I didn’t care.

(The running program seemed oddly crucial to me, because I’ve been gaining weight all summer, and even though I’m too fat to run, I enjoy it and I found that I could still do it, even at 3:15am and 30 pounds too heavy.)

The next morning I was pacing in my office crying again, and furious, before 8am.

I received a call on my church hotline about this time, informing me that a spry grandpa from our church had fallen and had spent the night in another part of the hospital for observation.

Now, I have never before asked this gentleman for advice, but I picked up my binder and headed across the hospital, feeling a great need to talk to a person who had been walking with God for many more years than I. 

As I walked up the hall, I saw him, sitting up in bed, reading a Bible. I can’t tell you how relieved it made me feel to see him doing that right then. 

I sat down and inquired about his health, and he said he was feeling great. 

I then proceeded to recount the anger I was feeling.  

He didn’t say much, although I could tell he sympathized with my situations. 

“Do you have any advice?” I asked. “I’m so angry and I’m sure it’s not right.”

Now I know what advice I would get from a person who is not following God, because I’ve gotten it, various versions of self-presentation and revenge. 

“There’s only one thing I can think of,” he said. 

I sat up in my chair. 

He suggested that if someone attacks me, if there is any kernel of truth to their attack-regardless of its presentation- I could thank them for pointing it out to me. 

Thank them? Thank them. 

He said it so calmly like it was the first thing a person might think of. 

“I never thought of that before,” I said. 

And the more I think about it, the more I realize that vandalism in any situation might carry a kernel of truth. Not always, and it doesn’t make it my fault. The theft of my package or my lawnmower or the  graffiti on my mini barn is not my fault. 

However, if the perpetrators were to say, “You have so many things and such a big support system that you can replace these things anyway,” they would be right. 

The lawnmower was given to me, and it was a nice one, and it was fixed by my neighbor for free. The mini barn was sold to me by my uncle at nearly half price. The strength and motivation to start running again was an idea from God, so if the things I bought were taken, they were taken from Him. And if I have felt superior to my neighbors, they have a point-even though it’s still wrong for them -in stealing the things that prove to them that I’m privileged and can afford a loss. 

Before I left, the man from my church—who by the way had been volunteering his skill, standing on a chair putting a screw into a family member’s garage when he suffered his injury–said,

“Sometimes things happen and we don’t know why.”

And I was reminded that I was not the one in the hospital bed. 

And I had just gotten some very Christ-like advice from someone I was not expecting to see that day. 

After talking to my sister this morning and telling her the story of my week, I found a package of pumpkin spice latte mix on my porch from her entitled “happy mail”:

I also finally tried on the shoes this morning, a cheaper shoe that I remembered liking as a teenager. I have trouble with running shoes hurting because (of course!) my feet are too wide. 

They fit perfectly, and I went for a nice (if slow!) three mile jog. 

Then I sat down and wrote my blog.