Starlight, starbright

"The night is dark, it seems starless, but I know it’s not. Sometimes, it’s just the cloud cover that blocks my ability to see the small twinkles of light that dot the night sky."
Click here to read my sister-in-law's most recent post at Segullah. It is lovely and I highly recommend it.

Only human

Sunday promised to be a warm day. And it was warm. And windy. Dirt-in-your-eye windy. The Texas wind is a plains wind. It swept across empty, unplanted fields and tossed loose, rusty dirt into the sky.

We were safe in our car.

A man on the corner held a very large, wooden cross announcing, "Jesus Loves You!" Behind him, the sky was angry, a choking peachy-brown. One driver honked his horn in support as he zipped through the intersection. "Beep Beep! I agree!" But that's about as friendly as it got. Unforunately, the only ones to read the sign were people who were already devoted enough to get their butts out of bed and go to....wait for it....Church.

Most of us were thinking, "Yyyep. And He'll still love you if you call it day. He made the wind and the dirt in your eye. Go home. Testify on a less blustery day."

I said, "I'm not as devoted as that guy." And I'm not. Long-suffering is not a personal strength. Nor did I think to bring him a hot chocolate or...something. That's sad considering I had just come from...wait for it again...Church. And it's not really comforting to note that you didn't stop either.

Well, maybe it is. Sometimes I think it does help to remember that I'm not the only human being who is only human.

I have a friend who is expecting a baby. It's wonderful. And terrible. She's very sick. My friend went to Target the other day to make a quick return. Exhausted by building a placenta or tiny toes, she just couldn't hack the long walk from the nether regions of the parking lot. Plus, those empty spaces were just too far from the morning-sickness-accommodating public restrooms she might possibly need to rush to. So, she swiped a handicapped space. There is more to this story, but the point is, she felt guilty.

{By the way, I don't know how to fix that sentence. It "might possibly" be redundant ending with a "to?" }

In conclusion (because I know you haven't followed me):

We do things inefficiently (testifying to ourselves in a windstorm.) We aren't always committed enough to make sacrifices for a great cause (witnessing in a windstorm, even if the only one who really witnesses it is the Creator of said windstorm.) We don't stop to shield another from the windstorm (or at least bring a restorative cup of joe, I mean, cocoa.) We make jokes about coffee when we've promised to abstain AND to avoid the appearance of evil. We don't know how not to...end a sentence with a preposition. And we must call attention to our faults and/or grammatical errors before someone else does. We are simply mortal; sometimes sick, sometimes weary, and never able to foretell the future. And sometimes we take things that don't belong to us.

Sometimes, there are valid reasons for taking things that don't belong to us. And sometimes, even the most valid of reasons are not valid enough to satisfy the demands of our own conscience.

The lessons I'll be learning until I die
The antidotes to this mortal quandary: Flexibility in the face of unforeseen circumstances, giving and receiving mercy, and laughter and friendship -->thus, hopefully increasing my own personal devotion.

P.S. This post does not speak for my friend.