E-RANTS AND INSIGHTS

After all, how often does one chance upon a love-scorned 5th grader???

It was my first time babysitting him and after feeling me out during the first couple of hours, at some point he decided I was okay. That's when he confided in me and gave me all the business. I knew elementary school was rough but technology and pop-culture has morphed these times of social development into a straight up after-school special. He had a girlfriend for a whole year and she dumped him for a popular new boy. Poor guy was the last to know too. The popular boy text messaged him on Saturday that he couldn't wait for Monday. When he replied with "Why?" he got no answer. So, of course, on Monday he found out homegirl was throwing him the deuces.

As we were cleaning up his playroom, we kept finding things he had either lost or forgotten about. Of course, I made him throw out 65% of what we found. I guess he had caught the purging spirit because we started coming up on some ex-girl leftovers. She left her CD player (which he kept), some teeny-bopper magazines (which he ripped up), and her Miley Cyrus point card. Apparently, she loves Miley Cyrus and had racked up a whole bunch of points and as he put it "has probably lost her mind looking for this thing." He asked if he could do something he's always wanted to do. "You mean return it to her?" I asked jokingly. "No." "You can't burn anything. No fire." "I don't want to." "What then?" "Be right back!"

That boy came back with a pair of scissors and went to TOWN on that Miley Cyrus card! I was too tickled, I just started laughing. I know that was a time to teach forgiveness and whatnot but my laughter was evidence of a depleted resource of maturity.

He has some radio songs on his cell phone and after time passed played some of them. They were kid-friendly except this one he was passionately singing with-- T-Pain's "Chopped and Screwed". Normally, I would have told him to turn it off but I didn't. I totally got it.

Melancholy.
Like an acoustic guitar strummed slowly
on a cloudy day
behind closed doors
for an audience of one.



Focusing on the pluck.
Humming with the strum.
Listening for a melody
to make sense of the noise your pain
wants to make,
and the song your heart wants to create.

As Time heals,
Anger cools,
and Logic becomes irrelevant,
the wooden therapy is released from personification,

and there is an opening
for the next reason, season, or lifetime.

I literally wrote this while driving to church this morning. It was so loud in my head that I could not ignore it. It was blaring.

I had a bit of a rough start this morning. Instead of becoming a typical recluse, I made church mandatory.
For the first time ever, I went there seeking "a Word from God". When I don't feel so great, I may go to church to feel better. "Feeling better" usually comes in the form of a song because I'm not a fan of my church's sermons. Anyhoo, this was a first. I was completely open to hear whatever God had to say to me and I was also a little disoriented.

I stopped at a red light and I continued to write. I heard a car honk and so I drove on-- by myself. I looked in my rear view mirror and realized that no one else had moved and I just drove through a red light at a 4-way intersection!


I get to church (not mine...one I visit) and once I'm seated, the choir is wrapping up a song. The preacher takes his place at the pulpit, and what is the topic of the sermon? "NEXT: Finding Faith for the Next Season of Your Life"


You ever see those good church people taking notes during the sermon? Yeah....that's not me. Ever. Actually, I take that back. I did once in high school. But today?? Ya girl was taking some notes.

The preacher directed us to the 3rd chapter of Ecclesiastes. I respect whatever you choose to believe or not believe, but you have to be a complete idiot to not hear the common sense in the plain English of this passage.

Check it out:

"To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:"

and in verses 2-8 examples are listed. I even found a lyric from The Beatles in verse 8,

"A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace."

But man o' man did he break it down! "Seasons" are distinct from "time". As the preacher defined it, a season is a span of time that includes a progressive collection of moments, events, circumstances, activities, and experiences that when added together, create a particular effect or purpose. "Time", on the other hand was defined as "a moment or occasion".