Long time. Almost 3 weeks.
My cousin Nooney's passing took a little something out of me, I guess.
So this blog is going to be a little bit rambling.
KB posted a scripture from Ecclesiastes 1:18 on her Facebook page the other day:
For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.
It took me back to a conversation I had with my cousin that does the Throwing Salt blog not too long ago about how there are people in the that the Lord wired with an all too heightened sensitivity and insight into where the things that happen in this world can take us.
Take a young child for instance. You know some people are so very proud of the fact that they have a 4 or 5 year old that is not afraid of anything. And then there are people who are frustrated at the fact that their 4 or 5 year old is afraid of everything. What most people don't know is that those children who tend to have a greater fear of things are thinking about the consequences of an action or an event in an abstract manner, which requires a higher level of brain function. Some child psychologists identify this fear as one of the traits of a gifted child.
I remember when I was little, my preschool class went on a field trip to the fire station. At the end of the tour of the station, we got the opportunity to get sit inside one of the fire trucks. All of my classmates lined up and jumped right in. I, on the other hand, just couldn't bring myself to climb into the big menacing red thing. Why? Because in my mind, as soon as I jumped into the seat between those two bearded firemen, they were going to get a call to go fight some raging inferno, they wouldn't have time to let me out of the truck, and I would end up in the midst of a deadly fire somewhere in McClellanville. Far away from Brown's Ferry School. Mrs. Pressley. And my Mama. Irrational? Yes. But also pure imaginative genius at that age.
That hasn't changed a whole lot in my adult life. Its the reason why I don't swim in the ocean. Its why I don't let my child use the escalators in the mall. Why I don't just make friends, but choose my friends. And yes, there is a big difference.
Its usually not about what is happening. But more about what could happen.
Do I agree that my thoughts are irrational at times? Yeah. I do. Part of it is that I am an anxious personality. Its like when I ask my supervising physician about a treatment plan for a patient and tell him that I am uncomfortable with giving a certain medicine or doing a certain procedure. His first question is always to ask me, "Why?"
My answer is always, "What happens if I screw up?" His response is always, "What happens if you don't?"
Easy to say when you've been doing this for 40 years, right?
You want to know the worse thing about all of this, though?
Its watching a majority of the world go about their business as usual, seeming to not have any clue about what's really going on. Am I the only one that understands how bad things can really get? Sometimes it makes me think that maybe I have ties to Illuminati. I've long suspected that my grandmother has affiliations. Maybe I'm the next legacy. Maybe one day, I'm going to blindfolded and kidnapped to some secret, medieval palace in Upper Bavaria where they will untether me from the secrecy and let me loose to save the world.
Nice right?
But if I really believed that, it would mean that I am insane.
And on most days, I am sure that I am not.
Instead, I choose to believe that God needs histrionic, emotional people like me. Insightful people like my blogging cousin. Powerful people like KB. Super-tender hearted people like HL. Who, for the fact that our thoughts are skewed from the norm, feel things maybe more deeply, probably differently, maybe even on a different plane. So that what perceive ourselves to know, reveals to us, directly, the sorrow in the world that needs to lifted.
I used to think of it all as
"fear." It was a bit disappointing before I knew what it really was. But then I realized its not fear.
Its "knowing." And there is a price that comes with that "knowing." Its gift and a curse, but this "knowing" guides my steps forward and is a big part of the value of my purpose.
Plus,I ain't never scared...
