Feeling Like Job

This week I have been feeling a lot like Job.

I had a killer backache all week from lifting weights without good form and started catching a cold yesterday morning. Each one of my almost 47 years on this planet were like bricks on my broken back.

As is my typical response, I ate raw garlic to repel the cold virus invaders. Garlic also ironically has anti-inflammatory properties on aches and pains. It causes a sizable pain but also provides a bigger cure. Yet, it has to be eaten raw...rawer than a 36 degree wet and December morning and scorching as the Saharan sun in the noonday. Terrible and powerful, a paradox indeed. The Jews in the desert clamored for the leeks and garlic of Egypt. There was something both amiss yet understandable in their cry. Garlic is one of nature finest curatives but it is hardly kind.

Although, I overkilled on the garlic and ate too much. I had to spit out the fiery mush and eat it in increments like a baby with pureed peas. The garlic, coupled with too much of my Whup-Ass Hot Sauce the night before, caused great distress in the bowels. I will spare you the play-by-play. All in all yesterday, I was eagerly awaiting some boils, and looked around for some broken shards of pottery to scrape them with as a prep. The cold was killed but it was like chemo with cancer. A lot of collateral damage.

Compared to what Job went through--and others like him over the ages--the comparison shows me to be a wimp. Yet, God knows what we can bear. We often can bear more than we imagine. But only bearing the burdens teaches us this. Chalkboard sayings are mere dust without the exhortation of experience.

I knew it was going to be a challenging week. Every year around this time, my school counselor colleagues and I work on student schedules. In all, it is a laborious process, full of drops and adds, gaps, and rescheduling failed courses. Like making sausage, the process is not pretty. It is harsh and bloody. By the time we have the schedules in their casings, my head and butt both hurt.

Typically it takes about 7-10 days each summer to clean things up. So, when people ask what I do with my summers, assuming that I don't work, I enlighten them about this duty (and others over the summer, like registering new students). People are genuinely surprised that schedules are so difficult to do. They assume that such things come out right the first time. Really, what does? The world is not merely running down, it is crashing...all creation groans awaiting redemption...it is not merely a whimper.

Ignorance and empathy only come from first-hand experience and maybe observation. I do my part to defend my profession...school counselors, the Charlie Brown's of the working world. Perceived as an expendable adjunct until schedules aren't done, suicidal and distraught students are not seen, bewildered parents are consolationless, and collegiate & career advice is missing. A great job for a Christian by the way as it is common for us to feel unappreciated. I do think our students, parents, teachers and administration are much more appreciative at our high school than most...it must be because we are so awesome! ;0)

So, after working 12 hours late into Monday night on schedules, I went home.

On the way home, I noticed I was out of gas in more ways than one. My car was exhausted too. So, I stopped by the Turkey Hill and pumped away. While putting back my wallet in one hand and holding the gas pump in the other hand, my phone rang. About the only phone calls I receive on a regular basis are from my wife Lina. She is in China. I had to pick-up so I put my wallet on top of my car. Bad move...never put something valuable where it is ultimately not supposed to be.

I was afraid that I would miss the call and I don't trust ATT when it tells me that I won't be charged international rates if I were to call her back. I have been misinformed by a cell company before (Verizon) and the contract became a noose that could not be escaped from despite the wrong information. We finally cut the rope down early and paid the ransom early termination fee demanded. Suffocation was near and I needed a better phone and an enhanced service plan. Still wondering if Verizon will ever get the I-Phone.

On the way home, after I pumped the petrol, Lina was regaling me with adventures big and small from China. When I got home and pulled into the garage, I realized that my wallet had gone AWOL. Or, instead, that I had. The wallet was innocent of all malfeasance. I re-drove the four mile route several times from the house to Turkey Hill. I scoured the parking lot of T.H., probably looking like a 6' 8" madman. Suspicious stares emanated from peoples' cars...doors started locking no doubt.

I contemplated dumping out the trashcans, thinking that I might have put the wallet on the side of a can. I did not recall where I had placed it nor which pump I had used. The hapless Turkey Hill clerk rummaged through the lost and found drawers. Nothing. He had just taken over the shift. If I worked at a Turkey Hill with its low wages, I might be tempted to treat a lost wallet turned in as a unexpected financial bonus. I also contemplated that a fellow customer finding a wallet could quietly pocket the wallet and scamper away. I decided that given the time frame both scenarios were unlikely, I knew what I had to do. I drove home, got out a flash light, and commenced on running the route at 11:00 at night.

I had wondered how I was going to have the energy to exercise, after getting home, before losing the wallet. Now I had more than enough. I retrospect, I should have started running from the Turkey Hill first rather than the house. Items like wallets would be more prone to fall off sooner rather than later on a car roof traveling 45 mph. Lesson learned.

So, I ran like Gump. Images of having to cancel and replace all of my credits cards and dealing with the Pa. Driver License hellhole seeking a replacement, slam-danced in my head. I have a ton of schedules to do, I am supposed to be going on family reunion vacation next Monday for a week. Fear, raw fear, of someone taking my cards and ordering a slew of goods on the web also bounced around my pea-brain. Should I call and cancel credit cards now? I was getting desperate. It gave me a new appreciation for the Jesus parables of lost and found. How was I to get cash? I thought that maybe my bank would allow me to cash a check if I could bring an expired ID. It is frightening how devastating losing a wallet can be. I don't have time and energy for this. I ran on.

Sweating profusely, I hit the main drag to the Turkey Hill...462. About halfway up the road to the Turkey Hill, I spotted a five dollar bill. I either thought that this was a booby prize of sorts that I found a little cash of someone else's OR that it was a sign of my wallet nearby. Then, I found a $ 20 on the side of the road like a discarded Marlboro box. I knew that my wallet had to be close! I looked out into the road...there it was, sitting all alone, a vulnerable monetary orphan in danger's path. I spied a huge delivery trucking coming right for it. I surmised that I didn't have time to save it so I could only watch the concussive collision of truck and wallet. Man, a direct hit! Painful to witness.

In the aftermath, the circle of credit cards got exponentially larger in diameter like an IEP explosion. In-between the onrushing cars and trucks, I collected the strewn about Visa, MAC, American Express, Mastercard, and COSTCO cards. Other wallet belongings, like shipwrecked cargo, were also rescued and dredged off of the road. I did a final reconnaissance for cash and found most of what I thought had been in there originally...about $ 60 or so additional bills.

I thought that I had everything, the credit cards and other items were in remarkable good shape. Only my Highmark Blue Shield card was damaged. It was gnarled and broken in two. It had given itself so that the others would not bear to costs of the crash. Quite Christ-like and perhaps a metaphor on Obama-care. Having the federal government run health care should cause us all to be frightened...look what a great job it does with everything else.

Yesterday, I was at Musser's Grocery Store and discovered, at the check-out, that my Musser's savings card, was yet missing. I had not thought of that. So, I went back to the scene and found it sideways in some brush along the side of the road. Any cash remaining, if there had been any, was long gone. The winds had either ushered it away or other hands had hands had found it first. Found cash is fair game in my book if it is not in a wallet. There really is no way to prove ownership unless we see someone drop it. Anyone walking 462 probably needs the cash more than I do.

The whole ordeal reminded me of how worked up I can get about a wallet being lost but how strangely apathetic I am about people being lost, who have left their souls on the automobiles of life and then pulled away in unawareness and sin. I know that I often see consequences as someone's just desserts...you did the deed now take your whupping. How un-Christian. It is not good to go the other direction either...to exonerate the guilty by removing all consequences because all that does is make someone else pay. And not learn the lesson. Grace teaches us that there is a cost in blood for the lost wallets of humanity...we are redeemed by the credit of Christ on the Cross who laid his riches on the road of perdition and got run over for us. We dare damnation when when think such redemption is our due and deserved. Or, worse yet, not even necessary because I am meritorious on my own account.

Well, I have to get back to scheduling...working at home when I would rather be playing, somewhere else on vacation with my family. Someone always has to pay the cost. Oh yeah, my back feels better. Thanks garlic. Thanks God.

Failure is a discipline. As a test of strength and as a test of faith alike it is without a rival. J.B. Lightfoot