Month: July 2024

I Didn’t Earn This

~ Paul Phillips ~ Leave a comment
image by Alexander Mils on Unsplash

 

The visit to the specialist was going well until he asked the question.  Now I’m wondering about lots of things in my life.

I have struggled with back pain for years, but the weeks before my appointment had been especially difficult, with a flare-up that left me mostly housebound.  A visit with my family doctor led to a few tests and a follow-up with the neurologist.

Eyes on the computer screen where the MRI images showed, he asked the question that kept me awake most of that night.

“Did you do something to earn this?”

After a short reply about 35 years of moving pianos, he clarified the question.  He wanted to know if there was one thing I could point to that had brought on the current crisis.

I couldn’t.

It doesn’t mean I didn’t earn it.

I’m going to be a little circumspect here.  Meaning—I think I may creep around the edges of this discussion rather than engaging aggressively.   You’ll understand better as we proceed.

I have never—until now—made decisions regarding actions I would take based on whether they might damage my spine or not.  If I wanted to play soccer with the kids, I did.  If I needed to dig out a stump in the yard, I did.  When the opportunity to help move furniture for friends was presented, I showed up.

And, I really did move pianos for thirty-five years.  Knowing full well that there could be a price to pay, I agreed every time a customer asked.

Did I earn the back pain—the inability to function normally for the last few weeks?

I did.

Not with one action, but with a plethora of them.  A lifetime of insignificant choices, seemingly.  One by one, the transgressions color the injured area with hurt—with unnoticed harm, followed by unnoticed harm, until all at once the body feels nothing else.

I earned this.

Why am I so reluctant to accept responsibility for the situations I find myself in when I have led my life as if I want to be exactly where I am?

The preacher’s son in me wants to hammer this point home and, moving past the tangible world of physicality,  would like to discuss consequences of all kinds.  Relationship problems.  Legal entanglements.  Most any type of abstract ailment you might care to argue about.

I want to.

But, as I said—circumspection is key here.  I know there are many different perspectives and many different situations.  Not all have a villain at whom we can point a finger.  Perhaps, I’ll simply leave the reader to work out the ways in which my doctor’s question might apply to them and their own milieu, physical or otherwise.

Besides, my wandering mind has another question that captures me more completely today.  It did during my recent sleepless night, too.

No, that’s not correct.  It’s not another question.

It’s the same one. Precisely, the same one.

“Did you do something to earn this?”

But, it seems to be applied to a different scenario.

This time, instead of awful pain and the dread and sadness that accompany loss of function, I look at the beautiful family, at the lovely home, at the nice vehicles I have and I wonder.

“Did you do something to earn this?”

Of course, in my head, the immediate answer is yes.  I worked all my life to make a living, to build a legacy.  I labored with my wife to raise our children.  I earned this!

And then, my memory is drawn to the fellow with a sign, standing on the street corner near the grocery store.  Or the folks last winter in the parking lot with two flat tires on the car in which they live.  Or the lady I know who works two full-time jobs just to pay her rent and keep the lights on for her children.

One after the other, they are drawn to mind and I wonder how I have the audacity to say I have earned my ease and comfort when they live in such straits.

My mind is drawn to the phrase traditionally attributed to the English martyr, John Bradford, who is reputed to have said, as he sat in Newgate Prison awaiting his own execution: “There but for the grace of God goes John Bradford.”

He was speaking of murderers being taken to the gallows to be punished for their sins.  I remember wondering, years ago, when I first heard the story, if he was speaking of the execution, or the crime the men had committed to be punished so.

Since my visit with the radiologist, now weeks ago, I have asked again and again (about numerous things), “Did you do anything to earn this?”

There are so many things—and people—in my life that I can only point to grace and mercy as an explanation for their presence.  I could never have earned them myself.

Not if I had worked for an entire lifetime.  Or ten lifetimes.

And again, my mind jumps ahead of itself.  But, this time, I don’t wonder at all.

I think about my relationship with my Creator and all my pride seeps out completely.  If anything, all I’ve earned here is sorrow.  And separation.

But sorrow and separation are not what I have.  Thanks to nothing I have done—not one thing—I have assurance of walking with Him and being followed by His goodness and mercy for all of the days of my life.  And, into eternity.

I am no better than any of the millions taunting God and His followers today.  Not even a little bit better.  I have nothing for which I may stand tall and say, “This is mine and you can’t have it unless you earn it.”

Our Creator’s grace and mercy reach.  They just do.

I earned my back problems.  Perhaps, I even earned that look from the Lovely Lady when I took a second plate of food at lunch yesterday.

But, God’s gifts to me, I could never even begin to earn.

I didn’t do anything to earn this.

But, it’s good.  Really good.

And, it’s yours too—if you want it.

 

“For by grace you are saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God;  it is not from works, so that no one can boast.”  (Ephesians 2:8-9, NET)

“Your worst days are never so bad that you are beyond the reach of God’s grace. And your best days are never so good that you are beyond the need of God’s grace.” (Anonymous)

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2024. All Rights Reserved.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Moving the Apostrophe

~ Paul Phillips ~ 2 Comments

“That apostrophe is in the wrong place!”

I was unhappy.  It’s not a mistake I’d usually make.  I’m a stickler for correct grammar and punctuation.  Oh, that doesn’t mean I don’t make errors; it simply means they usually have been corrected by the time I deem something fit for public consumption and click the button to post it.  After I’ve read it over five or ten times.

But there it was, as clear as you please.

I was reposting an old note I had written a couple of years ago on my social media account.  At a time when I was tired, hot, and covered in dust, I had seen the beauty of the sun shining through the trees, making the humid, dusty atmosphere glow with the bright rays of heavenly light.

“As I mowed my neighbors’ yard yesterday, I looked up from the hot and dusty task before me to see this.”  Those were the words with which I started my post.

Except there is just one person who lives there.  The fact that I placed the apostrophe after the s that made the word neighbor plural meant more than one person was living there.  I should have placed the apostrophe between the r and the s to make it a singular possessive word.  

You see, my neighbor is a widow—her husband having passed away nearly two years ag. . .

Oh.

When I wrote it, two people were living in the house next door.  One of them, my friend Skip, would leave this world for the next a mere two months after it was written.

I did!  I did put the apostrophe in the right place!

I feel as if I should be happier. Being right should be more joyful than this.

And yet, I’ve been looking at that apostrophe for the last hour or two.  It was in the right place when I wrote the post, but it’s not now.

I’m not sad about how a sentence was written two years ago.  I’m sad that all it takes to correct the loss of my friend is to move an apostrophe, the tiniest of punctuation marks, one space over.

One space—his loving wife’s loneliness and loss, shown in that tiny action.  All the sadness of his children and old friends summed up in a movement of less than a quarter of an inch.

Perhaps though, my sadness is even more deeply rooted than this one exercise in grammatical nerdiness.

I stood with dear friends in church today and, speaking with them, realized anew that I will not do that with one or both of them many more times in this world.  Health fails; the body refuses to continue on in its earthly mission.

Life on this spinning ball of water and rock is precarious.  It’s short.  And, unpredictable.

Today is a good day to hold close those our Creator has given us.  It’s the perfect day to say, “I love you,” to everyone to whom the words apply.

Do (and say) the important things now, while the apostrophes and commas are still holding firm.

Tomorrow, the commas may all turn to periods—the apostrophes may slip over a space.  The Author of our story writes and edits as He sees fit.

Of course, if the punctuation holds fast and isn’t moved until years in the future, we’ll simply have made the world a better place to be for all those extra days.  And, our longer stories will be more lovely to read because of it.

And that seems to be acceptable.  To me, anyway.

I hope you agree.  If you don’t, send me a note. 

Just try to get the punctuation right, will you?

 

“The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. May the name of the Lord be blessed!”
(Job 1:21, NET)

 

“As I mowed my neighbors’ yard yesterday, I looked up from the hot and dusty task before me to see this.
Nothing spectacular. Just the sun’s rays shining through the dust that hung in the air. Somehow, life just seems a little sweeter in the light.
The heat seems unbearable. It’s not.
The sadness seems crushing. It’s not.
The dread of what lies ahead seems overwhelming. It’s not.
Our hope never was in the stuff of this world. Time to look higher.
‘The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.’” (John 1:5, NIV)
(from a Facebook post on July 7, 2022)
© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2024. All Rights Reserved.

Messy, Isn’t It?

~ Paul Phillips ~ Leave a comment
image by Alana Jordon on Pixabay

It was a fifth Sunday this week.  An event that happens 4 times a year.  My church used to have a dinner every time the day rolled around. Nowadays, we get together to sing on the fifth Sundays.  Songs by Request, we call it.

The Lovely Lady plays the piano.  I usually get roped into leading the singing.  Folks in the audience yell out hymn numbers (yes, we pull out the old hymnbooks for the event) and we sing a couple of verses from each request.

Arriving early on Sunday evening, we noticed a microphone on a regular stand near the center of the stage.  Knowing that a boom stand would work better to get the microphone close to me, I went looking and found one in the back of the equipment room.

It wasn’t until the end of the first song that I noticed the problem.  It might have been the reason the stand was stowed where it had been in the little room off the stage.

As we sang, the weight of the microphone pushed the end of the boom down toward the music stand that held my hymnbook.  I pulled it back into position, tightening the adjustment knob to hold it there.

We sang another song.  By the end of a couple more verses, the mic was right back where it had been. You understand, don’t you, that a mic has to be close to one’s mouth to be effective at all?

Repeating the process, we soldiered on. But, after another two verses, it was clear the boom stand wasn’t up to the job.  Begging the pardon of the waiting audience, I went in search of the original stand.  They of course had been entertained by the extracurricular activities, so there was a fair amount of laughter from their seats in the interim.

Amid the laughter, I heard a voice from someone suggesting I prop up the end of the boom with the regular stand.  I thought about that for about two seconds and rejected the idea, instead trading out one stand for the other.

I’ve mentioned before that I like things to be orderly, haven’t I?  I sort my potato chips into stacks of broken and whole—my M&Ms by color.  Don’t tell the Lovely Lady, but I even like my blue jeans hung up by the degree of fading (when they’re not sorted by waist size, that is).

It would be messy to have a regular mic stand sitting under the business end of a boom stand propping it up.  I wouldn’t like the optics.

So, I set the microphone atop the regular stand and disposed of the boom behind me, forgetting that the mic wouldn’t be close to my mouth unless I leaned in next to it.  Even with it sitting beside my hymnal, instead of behind it, I’d have to adjust my stance to get the sensitivity necessary for clear sound to reach the audience.

For the rest of the hour, I repeated hymn numbers over and over as folks would say, “What number again?”  When I asked the fellow with whom I had arranged beforehand to pray a closing prayer, another man nearby touched his chest and mouthed, “Who, me?” because he couldn’t hear me clearly.

Because I wanted to keep things neat, folks were inconvenienced.  Perhaps, even embarrassed.

But, there was no mess on the stage!

I know, if you ask any of the good folks who attended, none would remember either the mess or lack thereof.  They probably weren’t even annoyed much by the need for me to repeat myself.  I may be the only one having any second thoughts about my choices that night.

But, I want to remember. 

I want to remember that life is messy.  Our interactions with strangers can be awkward.  Our exchanges with family members are often without tact and require apologies afterward.  We don’t always fit together without fidgeting and rubbing off some rough corners.

I want to remember that sometimes you leave the errant green bean, that somehow escaped from someone’s plate and onto the floor, to be cleaned up later.  The joyous cacophony around the dinner table won’t be flawed at all because of a little mess underneath it.

I want to remember that sometimes the notes don’t come out perfectly and my voice cracks when I sing the high ones.  And, once in a while, the Lovely Lady plays a natural when it should have been a flat.  And, we don’t stop and correct it, because the music is beautiful despite the mess.

Beautiful and messy. 

And, that’s all of life, isn’t it?  A glorious mess. 

Still.  I think I’ll check out the mic stand before the next hymn night.  It never hurts to plan ahead.

“Life is a journey that must be traveled, no matter how bad the roads and accommodations.” (Oliver Goldsmith, Irish novelist/poet)

“Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.  Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling.”  (1 Peter 4:8-9, NIV)

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2024. All Rights Reserved.