It’s not me…It’s you.

Ok, before I get started there are a few things you should know before you read the rest of this post, this information will not only improve your understanding of what I’m talking (or writing) about but also is a fun bit of personal erik trivia…for any of you future biographers.

1. Every Monday during my morning “routine” I read one entry from My Upmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers. I try and use whatever entry I read as a focal point for my week.
2. Along with The Definition Collective I also work for Sloan’s Pharmacies as a delivery driver, which means that every other week I drive all over Lancaster county delivering medications to folks and spend a great deal of time behind the wheel trying to occupy the soft gray mass in between my ears usually in an attempt to better my self but often just to stay somewhat sane.
3. I farted in a job interview once and was told to leave…in my defense I had food poisoning. (This actually has nothing to do with the rest of this post, I just feel like we have a good report going here and I wanted to show you that I can be vulnerable)
4. I have an incredible gift for being overly self critical, and second guess pretty much every decision I make. Like telling you about the farting thing.

There is a verse from the Old Testament that I came across last week in my reading that has been buzzing around between my head and heart like an out of control hornet during the last warm days of summer stinging, biting, and clawing at everything it comes in contact with. It’s one of those verses that you hear all the time from slick late night TV preachers who push the prosperity gospel on poor lonely and scared insomniacs who are looking to grasp any small peace of hope that they can to assure them that God is still at work in their lives and has not forgotten about them. It is admittedly a verse that I have turned to more then once in my life looking for the same relief.

Strangely, this verse that I was confronted with the day after Christmas and meditated on throughout the week has become a mantra of renewed desire to serve others.

What’s strange about it is I have never thought of this verse as being the kind of thing that is directed at others, it’s more of a selfish verse the kind of sentiment that is directed at oneself not others. It’s always been for me a kind of ‘stuffed animal’ verse. You know the kind of thing you turn to when you’re alone and scared and need the comfort of something to hold onto. So you read it (often out of context) and tell yourself that there’s no monster under your bed and that everything is going to turn out all right.

The only problem is nine times out of ten there IS a monster under the bed, a monster with ten heads, razor sharp claws, and laser-beam eyes. It’s the monster of debt, loneliness, doubt, regret, addiction and a fear of the future.  And no matter how hard you squeeze the soft totem of comfort and security, in the back of your mind you can still hear the hungry growls coming from deep inside.

These are all the thoughts that were ruminating in my soul as I was working this past week. One part of me was grasping for hope in the words I had read, and the other more cynical part of me was making fun of the innocent “hopeful” me like a schoolyard bully.

Then I made a delivery, a delivery I make every other week, a delivery I had completely forgotten that was on the list for the day.

All I know is that she lives alone with her son in a low-income apartment complex, and that her ex-husband is a drunk “asshole” and that she is very sick. I also know that she was not excited about Christmas coming this year because her son was spending Christmas with his father because she knew he could afford to buy him presents and she didn’t want him to not have anything under the tree on Christmas morning.

This is what I knew about her before Christmas.

What I learned the same day that I was decoding the personal mysteries of my scriptural conundrum was that on Christmas Eve she was given a little gift, it was an anonymous gift from some folks that wanted to show her love, to let her know that out there people cared and that the world was more then illness and drunk assholes and because of this little gift she was able to run out before her son got home and pick up some stuff for under the tree.

She told me it was great Christmas.

And that’s when the verse made sense, because I realized that the verse wasn’t meant for me. The comfort that I had been trying to hold on to, the growls from the monster of bitterness and doubt that I had been trying to drawn out by simply saying the verse louder in my head were not words that I needed to be saying to myself but I needed to be saying to others.

These words aren’t for me, they’re for her…and you.

“’For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’”