Soapbox

Nothing of significance has happened lately (besides everyone being sick all the time but you’ve already gotten those pleasant details, several times), so let me just get up on my soapbox again. Yesterday at church we had a lesson on obedience. It made me think of the following:

I have been going to church since birth. It was never hard because it was always part of the routine, no questions asked. Until NYC. The first year we lived there, we lived an hour away by train. David had to go early and stay late. So I rode with 2 kids, 1 of which has some kind of 6th sense that tells him to talk to all scary-looking people. There’s also some kind of magnet in his butt that’s turned upside down and makes it very difficult for him to stay seated for any amount of time. And I got a church calling that sucked all the remaining juice out of me. Then my lonely hour ride home with 2 overtired children and a juiced soul. The torturous session lasted about 6 hours and we arrived as it was getting dark. The result was a weekly 1-woman party which usually included tears, snot, with a whopping side dish of self-pity. I did not want to go to church. But I did. And the spiritual blessings were phenomenal.
Soapbox message: Obedience is necessary. It can drain my will to live, but the rewards always fill me right back up again until flowing over. There’s nothing a little discipline and a whole lot of praying can’t solve.

Isn’t it crazy, with a tiny little drop of obnoxious, how your greatest blessings are usually also your biggest challenges, like pre-packaged paradoxes.

Speaking of paradox: The corrupt police stopped D again a few weeks ago. He gave the man a lecture on faith in the constitution of Mexico and upholding the laws of the land. The cop kept insisting, “But there are other ways of getting around this.” David’s discourse droned on and finally the baffled cop let him go. Without a ticket, but more importantly, without a bribe.