Metallic Grease

Not much good comes from a story that begins in the doctor's office.  But mine is going to start there.  After telling the story to a co-worker earlier this week, it made her feel as if I were somehow terminal.  She later brought me into her office where she closed the door behind me (nothing good happens when you're called into an impromptu office visit, the door closes, and whispering commences) as she began to ask me how "sick" I really was.

I didn't even have a fever.

I had wheezing the afternoon at the doctor's office.  A headache, a dull one.  The day at school had been spent with my voice at nothing really higher than a whisper.  I chose not to call out sick.  Sometimes as a teacher, it's more work to call out than it is just to suck it up and go to work.  I would have still been awake early and driven myself to work to hustle out some simple lesson plans that would not have been followed anyhow.  Depending on the presence of the sub, I would have come back to school to a room full of fires to extinguish.

Before my appointment, the kids received their flu shots and my son had his check-up.  I spent 15 or 20 minutes admiring my kids.  My daughter in her stretchy jeans and boots, my son in his droopy shirt, in need of a haircut and his mind filled with nothing but the adventure of future conquests.  He's small for his age, and his lineage is rote with blunt-legged and squatty rumps.  I think sometimes that as long as he isn't overweight, I can live with anything.  That's my brokenness, I know.

I was about five minutes late to my appointment by the time we were done.  All I wanted to do was nap.  The doctor walks in.  "How you feel?"

"Great," I answered back.  And the doctor seemed to pause and then gave me the type of look that meant to say, "Really?  You're great, you say?  Maybe I should ask again."

Up to that point, it was "S'all good."  It's the epidemic written from The Sleeping Giant, a class I'm having the blessing to lead every Wednesday.

It's what most guys think anytime you ask them how they're doing.  "S'all good!"  Even if it isn't true, men will say otherwise.  I have cracks on the surface of my life.  The piles here among the house, the subtle reminders that things need repair.  Our second vehicle's drive shaft literally ripped off the clutch.  I can't even get it out of park.  It sits there on my driveway.  One day it will certainly have a flattened tire.  The van we drive each day has taillight problems.  Not good to know when you're upon the darkest season of the year.  Fluid built up on the passenger side light.  I repaired it, but perhaps the initial water caused a short because both lights are out.

My personal maintenance needs work too.  Months ago I was supposed to have blood work done.  High blood pressure was on the agenda.  I failed to follow up.  My ongoing affair with obesity continues to mark my life like a ketchup stain on a black shirt.  You can scrape it away but there's still that stain everyone can see, metallic grease.  I didn't follow up with my dentist this summer.  My mind is a constant race of thoughts and agendas once the lights are turned off.  The book I'm leading mentions that one reason men don't enter into Bible studies or church is that the men they view as "saved" are the men that seemingly have it "all together."  Nothing could be further from the truth.  If not for God, I'd be a walking jello--spineless and adrift.

So for all intents and purposes, I felt I answered honestly.

But there's some truth in how we interact with one another.  Jokes are telling sometimes, as they reveal our true nature, those buried feelings that are awkward.  Sarcasm is like that to.  Sighs, blinks, the non-verbal ticks and looks that give away someone's thoughts when you're in a conversation.  Perhaps it was God kicking me in the shins.

You sure about that, brother?

Well, I was.  But now that you mentioned it...

Devotions.  Prayers.  Clean up the house.  Sleep.  Rest.  Get better.  Heal.

It's my RX for the future that lies ahead.