Lists

My life is fairly governed by lists. If I don't write something down on a little scrap of paper, and occasionally I don't, then I don't end up attending to it and it feels as though the world has come undone. So there's the list of things to do for church, the list of things to buy for Sunday School, the list of things to do for School, the list of people to call and emails to write, the list of long term household tasks that I really intend to get to but almost never do, and then there's the ultimate list, What I Have To Do To Feel Like A Proper Human Being. This last list isn't actually written anywhere, but it rules over me mercilously.

Theoretically this list should be short and should include only things like Try To Get Dressed, Pray, Eat Lunch and so on. But of late it has begun to grow, balloon out, as it were, mushroom into great cloud of death. The children's school is on this list. The laundry is on this list. Painting my nails is on this list. And, as you would of course expect, everything on this list is of equal value. If I don't get through the whole school day And don't floss my teeth, I might as well have not even tried.

The existence of this list drives Matt crazy. He know it's out there, stressing me out and he thinks, wrongly–he is very wrong about this– that I, in occassionally numerating the substance of my list in his presence am trying to draw him into the vortex of my stress. That's not true! I am merely trying to share my heart, cough, to relate to him in the daily busyness of life. He should suck it up.

Anyway, yesterday, like that awesome guy in the Onion, who, for 37 minutes had his whole life together, I, yea even I, did everything on my list. Everything. When I slid into the end of the day, not so dead that I could actually floss my teeth and read a few pages of an improving book (also on the list) I wondered at the glory and mercy of God and then thought perhaps that the end of the age haD come, perhaps this is it, Jesus is now free to come back because I Got Through My List.

But of course he didn't. And then this morning, the appointed text of my bible reading was the Blessings and Curses on Mount Ebal and Mount Gerazim, two lists if ever there was One. And I was shocked to see that the blessing list seemed sort of shorter, though all encompassing and to the point. And the cursing list seems enormously long, catastrophically so. Felt really sad as they all went by, knowing that it would be the curses and not the blessings that Israel ultimately chose. Here's the great tragedy, though, the people weren't really even to have a list. God had the list. They were just supposed to love him and want be with him. That one thing was too difficult and too much. They prefered a great vast burdensome list to facing down the one thing. Felt really sad because that's really where I am. If I can just get through my list then I will love myself and if I love myself, God will probably love me. Too bad it's not true.

Nevertheless, I will still try to get through my list today. But maybe, with these two lists hovering in the back of my mind, maybe I will hold my own list with a lighter hand, and try to concentrate on being with Jesus. Probably I won't, but who knows, God can do anything.

Have a lovely day!