Racquets and Reflections

My dad and I have begun a workout regimen in my last few weeks at home, something of a late New Year's resolution. So the other day we got up, determined to exercise but too tired to convince ourselves to run. So my father suggested Racquetball. "It's great exercise!" he assured me. So he retrieved his old equipment and off we went and reserved for ourselves a racquetball court.

What can I say about racquetball? It is, as my father said, great exercise. My dad gave me a few pointers, told me in general how the game works, and so the game began. It took me quite a while to get the hang of it, but I finally got to the point where I thought to myself, "Hey, I'm doing pretty good!" Soon after that, of course, my dad enlightened me to the rest of the rules of the game, and it became much more difficult all over.

So I found myself running back and forth in that little court, swinging wildly at a ball that, for the most part, evaded me. (Interestingly enough, even little rubber balls can tell that I am exceptionally short, and ridicule me for it by always whizzing by three feet above my head. I would have told it that it was by far much shorter than I, but it was too busy defying gravity to listen to me.)

I will tell you, at that point it stopped being fun. I was so frustrated. I could not hold the racquet correctly. I could not figure out where the ball was going. I could not hit the ball. I could not reach the ball. I could not hit the ball in the direction I wanted it to go the few times I did hit it. After another half hour of this, my frustration levels always growing, I watched the ball bounce off the walls and realized that the ball, the walls, and the racquets were all this game was about, and yet all I was thinking about was myself. I had to recognize that if I was entirely focused, not on the game, but on my inability to play it, there was no way to be at all successful. Suffice to say, the last two minutes of that game were a thousand times more enjoyable than the hour before.

In Mark 8:34-35, Jesus tells a crowd of his followers, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it." Jesus, as he so often does, seems to be pointing out such an important principle, one that I could certainly stand to hear over and over again: that focusing on myself, my life and my needs and my problems and my faults, in the end will doom me to whatever I might be trying to avoid. But focusing on the things I live for: Jesus himself, his life and his message, actually gives me a much greater return for what little effort I offer. If, as they say, you become what you focus on, I'd much rather become more like Jesus than more like my flaws.

Truly His,
Caroline

Vacuum of Terror

Sophisticated people in the realm of psychology have done quite a few studies, and one of the things they found is that children, in general, are born with only two innate fears. One of them is the fear of heights, and the other is a fear of loud noises. I have never known myself to be extremely terrified of heights, but I can certainly relate to the loud noises fear. Suffice to say, I abhor the vacuum cleaner.

This morning, I was tidying up the house a little, and found myself downstairs. After organizing the movies, folding the blankets, and picking up a few bits of trash, I looked over at our large popcorn machine and noticed it to be full of week-old popcorn. So, naturally I thought to myself, "Better vacuum out the popcorn machine." For those of you who find this statement odd, let me assure you, it is completely reasonable. You see, when we moved into our new house, we ended up with two unexpected appliances: one, a house-warming present, was the delightful popcorn machine. The other was an industrial vacuum cleaner. We already had a perfectly functional home vacuum cleaner, so what to do with the new one was a bit of a quandary, until we stumbled upon the realization that it is the perfect tool for quickly cleaning out the popcorn machine. So it found a home next to the popcorn machine, and there it lives to this day.

So this morning, feeling industrious myself, I decided to vacuum out the popcorn machine. I opened up the machine, flipped the switch on the vacuum, and jumped in fear when it made a very loud noise. Yes, I am aware that vacuums always make a very loud noise. No, there was nothing unusual about the noise. Yes, I was the one who turned on the vacuum in the first place. Still, I found myself frightened. But I fought my fears for the sake of the popcorn machine. Unfortunately, halfway through the popcorn, the vacuum ceased to be effective. "Jingles!" I thought to myself, "It's full!" So I turned off the vacuum, relishing the quiet, and opened it up. I hadn't quite expected it to be as full as it was, and the moment I unlatched the lid a wave of crushed, stale popcorn shot out of the vacuum and onto the floor. So after I had scooped most of the popcorn into a trash bag I had to once again turn on the vacuum to get the rest out of the carpet, and once again was completely unnerved by the noise.

Pondering my responses to the wailings of vacuum cleaners, I have to realize how very silly my fears were. I was completely in control of the situation. My fears were entirely irrational. And when I study the Bible, I have to realize that every fear is just as irrational as that. Isaiah 41:13 says, "For I, the Lord your God, hold your right hand; it is I who say to you, “Fear not, I am the one who helps you.” " When any fear rises in me, I have to realize it is just as irrational as fear of the vacuum cleaner, because God, who is fully in control, promises to be with me, just as he promises to be with you. So fear not.

Truly His,

Caroline

What did he say?

Since I so often refer to you as Readers, I am going to assume that you like reading just fine, and I'm right with you. I love reading. A long while ago I was reading at least two books a week, but what with the all of the business that life provides, finding books to read on my own is one of those things that faded away. A friend and I were discussing this a few months back and decided that we should get a few people together and choose a book to read every month or so; a book club, if you will.

The first book selected for our book club was Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner. I had never heard of this book before, but was excited to be reading anything that wasn't required for a class. So I ordered my copy of the book online, and before it had shipped I headed down to the library to take a look at this piece of literature. After reading a few pages, I went back to my computer and ordered a dictionary as well.

You see, Faulkner is an interesting individual. I now believe that he was one of those men who tried very hard to seem mysterious, because his whole book seems to have one central purpose: to keep me from understanding it. First, the story. Our dear friend Willy likes to start the story in weird places in the chronology and then spend hundreds of pages spinning around it in mysterious ways so by the end you may or may not have actually figured out what happened. But he has to put the story in there somewhere, so just in case he was becoming too coherent he fills each chapter with something I can only describe as thesaurus vomit. He uses a few huge and obscure words on practically every page. So for each chapter of Faulkner I end up spending a lot more time reading the dictionary than reading the book.

Every now and then Faulkner will offer me a page or two that are mostly comprehensible, but then I think he realizes what he has done and so he shakes out his thesaurus over the rest of the chapter. The most frustrating thing about this is that I am incapable of remembering any of the words I have learned in the hours I spend perusing dictionaries over Faulkner. Whenever a large word arises, I think to myself, "Oh, I saw that word two pages ago! It means... um... oh dear..." and then have to look it up all over again. 330 pages into the book, I have resigned myself to the fact that I will not understand these long sentences and so I have given up looking up every word.

I know that if I devoted more time to this book, studying it, defining terms, rereading, I could certainly master it, but luckily for me, I don't have to; this book is not in any way essential to my life. But just as lucky, there is a book that does matter, that I should devote my time and energy to, and it has a whole lot more to offer. James 1:25 says, "But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does." While I don't plan on spending too much of my time poring over Absalom, Absalom! I will be studying God's word, because it is worth it, because it gives freedom.

Truly His,
Caroline