All Comfy Cozy

 Sometimes I don’t want to wake up.  Now don’t freak out, I don’t mean it like I meant it 6 months ago, I mean it like the bed seems to just be so comfy, and cozy.  The pillows ever so softly supporting your head, the body pillow smooshed into just the right position, sleep music gently wafting through the air.  Today was one of those days that I just didn’t want to wake up.  It was one of those things, the bed said.  “Come on you know you wanna just stay here.  You can read, you can color, you can nod off and on throughout the day, shoot you can even call for Zoey to hand you the remote and the controller and you can, if you have the gumption, even play video games.”

That is what the bed said today, and oh how I wanted to succumb,  to just be the lump in the bed.  There is of course a problem with that.  It can become a pattern if I’m not careful, a pattern of just not doing.  For the record I am up, have been for several hours.  I’ve walked the dog, made coffee, texted Joyce, talked to the work guys and set up photo storage for the family.  I’m getting ready to head to my counseling appointment, then it’s on to the day.  Cleaning upstairs and then downstairs, prepping for the outside project I want to tackle, calling the dentist, and insurance.  Sending out apps with Indeed. 

Which is the point of this whole entry.  Sometimes what we do is not about what we want to do, it’s not even about what we have to do, it’s about what we choose to do.  More and more as the days wind by I’m realizing that all those things that I taught are more than a little bit true.  We have so many choices in life that we don’t realize are choices.  Maybe it’s because we have gotten into a routine and forget that we are making a choice.  Sometimes things become second nature.  Ingrained in us in such a way that we just do them without thinking, and yet they are still something that we must choose. 

I remember being told I had to learn an instrument.  What started with the Piano (something I never did learn,) ended with the Saxophone.  I was given the choice and I chose that particular instrument.  The lessons that I took were important, the music sitting on the stand as I sat in the instructors den or whatever it was. Moving through the pieces one at a time.  Reading note by note through them.  I hated practicing at home, but to be honest I’m not sure what kid actually likes to practice when there is so much more to do, especially an 80’s kid that had all of the outside to enjoy.  I took lessons for quite a while, I don’t actually remember when I stopped, but then something happened. I chose to start playing my own stuff and by ear.  I started to listen to songs a couple of times and then I would play along, I would find the dead spots and fill in, adding some depth to the music.  I did this all through college and even afterwards.  Playing that particular type of music that is fun and free, that sounds good.  I was no longer chained to the bass or treble clef, pages of notes didn’t bind me.  I chose a different type of playing, and to be clear it made it much easier in many ways to play with different people, different church bands, or even for myself. The freedom that comes for that type of playing can really make you feel important, or talented, or needed.  Here’s the thing though.  In making that choice, the one to play by ear, I didn’t realize I had also made another choice.  I made a choice to forget how to sight read.  The choice to not use physical music was a choice to lose something, and each day that I played by ear instead of opening the book or folder with the notes, was another step down the path of losing a skill, and each time I told a keyboard player or guitar player to play through the piece twice, usually how long it took to learn it, I was making the choice to not know how to read music.  Even when I didn’t think about it, even when it just became second nature, it was still a choice and it had consequences. 

To this day I can hear a song and pick up the sax and play, adding filler where it’s needed, or just playing the melody for myself.  What I can’t do is look at a sheet of music and remember what finger placement should be used to play a given note or notes.  

This plays out in other areas of life as well.  The obvious ones, of course for me anyway, but also in the not so obvious ones.  

As I move through life I realize more and more the beauty and curse of free will, because sometimes, just sometimes the mitigating circumstances around any given choice can make it seem less like free will and more like a liability.  There comes a point when the choice is harder and harder to make, not easier and easier.  

Take the addict.  No one sets out to be an addict.  No one chooses that path.  No one really knows what it is that will fuel their personal addiction, and let's face it everyone has a potential addiction.  Free will is what starts the addiction process.  There is a point where that person makes a choice to do something that for others is no big deal and in making that choice they have no way of knowing the path that they are about to set their feet too.  Each time they make the choice to feed the thing it sets them further down that path.  Sure at any time they could make another choice, they could choose to turn aside from whatever it is that pulls them inexorably down that path to further and further need, but they have, in many cases, given up the reigns of their free will to their need.  Now the addict is making hard choices each time they give into their need.  It’s moved from desire to need and needs have a way of changing the game.  The reason it’s hard to make the need choice is because humans tend to not think of needs as choices.  They are by their very nature something that has to be. It’s hard to make that kind of choice, the one that says “I know this is bad, I know I’m not healthy or doing what I should be doing, I know this thing is slowly killing me physically or emotionally or spiritually but that doesn’t matter I need it. At any time the addict can choose a different path.  There will of course be consequences to that path.  The actions of the addict before making the choice to not be one any more will enact their own special vengeance.  The thing after all wants to be fed and nurtured and allowed to grow in importance.  Changing course, using the free will to make the easy choice, the one that says “I’m no longer going to give into this need, because what I’m realizing is it’s a desire, a desire blown up to proportions that are inexplainable and have somehow dwarfed what matters.” That choice is easy, what’s not easy is the aftermath of that choice, and so the hard choice is made to stay with the overinflated desire.

What amazes me in all of this is the promise we have from scripture.   We can read more than once the desire of God to have us realize that the grace offered by Him is more than adequate.  

This is how Paul says it in Corinthians.

But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Therefore, I will most gladly boast all the more about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may reside in me.

In this particular verse Paul is talking about his thorn in the flesh.  There is speculation over what that could have been, but it’s not so much the thorn that matters, it’s more the fact that Paul didn’t like it.  He wanted it gone, he wanted whatever that weakness was to be gone.  God said no.  At that point Paul had a choice.  He could lean into that grace for whatever that thorn was or he could choose to walk down a different path.  Working to purge the problem all by himself.  Paul talks about other things.  He talks about his struggles in rather candid ways even going so far as to say this in Romans.

For I do not understand what I am doing, because I do not practice what I want to do, but I do what I hate.

He spends several verses talking about this concept, and I mean this is Paul the one who wrote a rather large chunk of the New Testament and is responsible for all of humanity having a shot at redemption and relationship with God.  

Free will, choice, amazing gifts from God and at the same time one of the worst gifts humanity can have, mainly because of what Paul says in Romans, but also because the proof is in my life and in yours if you’re honest.  Leaning into grace is hard because I don’t believe I should be given grace, and if I’m honest with myself the truth is I don’t.  That is the beauty of Gods love and desire to know me.  Thats the beauty of grace.   If I didn’t need grace then it wouldn’t be grace at all,  grace can’t exist without failure.  

And so dear reader.  I put it to you.  Make the easy choice and fall into Gods grace for the hard consequences or make the harder choice and go it alone. 

See you around the blog…