Old Ways

  I used to have this awesome chair.  It was a leather office chair I got from my father-in-law that was a little torn up.  It had a hole worn in one of the arm rests and the stuffing was spilling out, and it tilted a little to the right when you weren't sitting in it.  But it was probably the best chair that I've ever owned.  Many a late night was spent "pwning n00bs" in that chair.  Plenty of last minute and not-so-last-minute papers were written from its comfy, leathery goodness.  I should mention that Jan hated owning that chair.  Maybe that's an overstatement, but she certainly didn't want to keep it. 

  I was rather stubborn when it came to that chair.  So much so that we ended up hauling it from Phoenix all the way to Omaha when we moved here almost three years ago.  For the last little bit it sat in our basement not really being used.  To be honest I don't even remember when we got rid of it.  I remember it being difficult to get rid of though.  It's moments like that where I feel like if I didn't have Jan in my life I would be a future participant on the show "Hoarders." 

  Why all the reminiscing about a chair?  Well, because I feel like I'm sliding back into a comfortable old chair.  A chair that I've wanted to take to the dump for a while, but keep going back to the dumpster to dig out and use over and over again regardless of where it's been. 

  It's really funny (not ha-ha) how quickly you can fall back into old patterns.  Sometimes it's triggered by things you can't control, like a death in the family, or someone perpetrating some sort of injustice against you.  But more often than not it's just us getting lazy and going back to something comfortable.  When I started this blog a little under a month ago I was really gung-ho about this whole being more forgiving thing.  My attitude was better.  I was seeing people in a new light.  I felt (as much as I hate using that word right now) like I was heading down the path God would want me to take.  But...

  Well, I don't "feel" that way any more.  It "feels" better to be a curmudgeon.  It "feels" better to hold that grudge for even the slightest of offenses.  It "feels" better to get my way.  You know what's funny (again, not ha-ha)?  Those Hebrew and Greek words that I've been looking up have been trying to tell me the sustained forgiveness story.  Words like "permit," and "carry away" are seeming to get mixed in with my own form of forgiveness.  Which really isn't forgiveness at all.  My forgiveness looks more like "let it go for now, but I'll surely bring it back up when I can get something out of it." 

  I guess God put this blog on my heart to make sure that I'd be accountable.  Sure there are plenty of people that I could meet with off the interwebz, but nothing holds you true to a course than knowing that people will read your blog AND see you in real life.   I guess that's why I wrote this post.  So you all would know that even though the blog is new, the pattern isn't.  It's digging through the dumpster of life when there's so much more to experience.

  Really, no one's going to think that a ratty, old chair is the most comfortable chair ever.  And even if it is, that doesn't mean that it needs to stick around.  There are better places to rest.