Tag: waiting

The Usual

I’m sitting in a waiting room of an office building. I spend a good chunk of my life in waiting rooms, and in office buildings. So far, two people have asked if they could help me, and I’ve told them both that I have an appointment at 9:30. It’s 9:00 now. I hear men outside the door loading trucks. Not sure what they’re loading. There’s sounds of banging of metal. I hear a woman’s voice, and a man’s voice, inside the office. I hear men talking and laughing outside. I hear a television, perhaps an informational or instructional video.

There’s a sign on the front glass door, and another copy of the sign on the sign-in table, warning those with colds to stay away, so that staff are not exposed. The corona virus is in the news all the time, day and night with updates on new cases and quarantines. People are terrified of getting sick. I’m not sick, so I stay seated and wait for my appointment. I do use the hand sanitizer. You never know.

Days seem to fly by, but I agonize with moments where I have to wait—wait on doctors, wait on traffic lights, wait to pick up my wife from work, wait on dinner to cook, wait on bible study to start, wait on bedtime to give our pets their snacks. We have eight pets: a yellow lab, my wife’s guide dog; a brown chihuahua; a small, but chubby, orange cat; a fuzzy, but thin, orange cat; a black and white tuxedo cat; two grey cockatiels, and a green parakeet.

Our pets take up a lot of our time, attention, and energy. They keep us in a routine, and they keep us from moving around too much, as they like to lay in our laps. When one or both of our laps are occupied, we say, I need to do such and such, but so and so is in my lap. This excuse sometimes keeps us from getting up to get a snack, or it just might keep us from doing a chore, or doing a favor. The pets are the owners, we’re just staff, as they say.

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Sometimes I Freak, Part III

Sometimes I freak when I go to church. When you step into a church somehow you feel like you should be on your best behavior. That’s not really a Godly feeling or sentiment, since I believe that God accepts us exactly as we are, wherever we are, but that is how I was raised. In fact, growing up, my mother was ruthless in spurring me and my brother to get ready and stop goofing around on Sunday morning. What was important was looking good by being on time, behaving well, answering questions intelligently and in a spiritual way—basically, putting on a front. Lord knows my family was falling apart at the seams in every way, with my grandmother passing away, my parents’ separation and eventual divorce, and my mother’s undiagnosed mental illness. All was not well in the Bowman household. And those feelings come back to me today as I step through the doors of a church, any church, even one as positive, inclusive and accepting as mine. I wonder what deviant thoughts people suspect me of (well, actually, I am quite the skeptic), what deviant acts I am guilty of that separate me from other Christians and from God, what rebellion I am in that alienates me from the same. Going to church is something I want to do, but at the same time, I do struggle with these things every time, and it compromises my experience on the whole.

Sometimes I freak when I try to pray. Yes, God and I are not on the best of terms—haven’t been for a long time. In fact, except for when I pray with others—my wife at the dinner table and the occasional attempt at a weekly prayer partnership, my male prayer partner, something I initiated this year as an attempt to get closer to God because of my lack of an intimate relationship, and the occasional prayer with my Sunday School class and with the congregation in the sanctuary—I am not on speaking terms with God. I know after that enumeration of instances it doesn’t sound bad, but I guess I am a perfectionist, and I realize how far I am from any kind of daily routine which would bring me into any kind of genuine intimacy with God. Being alone with God is a frightening experience for me. Feelings of emotional and physical abuse from childhood along with visions of an angry Yahweh of the Old Testament conjure a being to be faced that is not the loving, caring Jesus that spoke to the disciples in the upper room that fateful night and told them that when we see him we have seen the Father, because he and the Father are one. When it’s just me and God (and I have to admit it is always the vengeful Father that I envision in my mind, not the gentle Jesus), I just freeze up. Gone are the soothing thoughts of “come to me ye who are weary, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light”. Instead it is a booming God that stares down at me and demands to know every sin I have committed and has come to punish me for them in some crazy sadistic way that makes me cringe and from which I yearn to escape. Not a great relationship, obviously.

Sometimes I freak when I open the Bible. I’ll admit, it’s intimidating. Yes, there is a lot of wisdom there. Yes, I believe it is divinely inspired. Yes, I believe there is potential for healing, instruction, direction, inspiration, grace, forgiveness—all that. But you know what else there is? God. He is there, waiting, behind those words. For what? I don’t know. But the potential scares me. I have read the entire Bible many times over, and if there is one thing I know for sure, there is power behind those words. And the thought of being overpowered, perhaps in a scary way, is what keeps me from those words. I have been overpowered, many times, in absolute terror, and I have run from figures of authority, figures who were supposed to be trustworthy caretakers, symbols of love and support, that have turned on me like a viper lunging for its prey. Is God like that? My intellect tells me no, but my heart, and my body, are not so sure. After all, if humans, blood, family, can be tyrannical, how much more can God? And there is something else—God is all powerful. Do I want to surrender myself to an all powerful tyrant? Do I want his thoughts to be my thoughts? No, not by a long shot.