The CEO showed up again yesterday.
I was in my kitchen, grilling asparagus. Which may seem an odd place and time for The CEO to make an entrance, unless you stop and think about his track record hanging out in kitchens with womenfolk.
I’d been thinking about some of the new trajectories my life seems to be arcing into these days, and found myself feeling overwhelmed by wonder and gratitude. I mean, two months ago I was in a very dark, enclosed place, curved in on myself, and now I’m somewhere new and different. It made me get a little misty, standing there blinking furiously over my olive-oiled vegetables.
“Most people would use a salt shaker on those,” observed The CEO. (You’ve got to love a Savior with a sense of humor.)
We talked about my life. About the juxtaposition of loss and gain, of sadness and liberation, of grief and guilt; about what my pastor had said to me when I’d mentioned my equivocal feelings to him – that experiencing a loss in one’s life can lead to new, good things filling up that empty space, and that it’s normal to question that even while celebrating it.
And I talked to him about an incident – just a momentary, thoughtless curvatus in se incident I’d had over the weekend, where I had been something less than considerate of someone else just because I was so wrapped up in my own head…ironically, in rehearsing what I was going to say and do to demonstrate my all-around swellness as a human being. Afterward I’d berated myself: Idiot! Idiot! Idiot! “I’m sorry,” I told The CEO. “I don’t want to be like this. I don’t want to be so self-absorbed that I hurt or neglect other people, even in stupid little ways. I want to be better than this. I want people to…well, to get to know you when they get to know me. Please…help me. Help me get out of my own way. Help me be a better person.”
The CEO smiled. “So what do you think I’m doing already?”
Thank you…I’m sorry…please…thank you. That’s pretty much what we talk about, The CEO and I – whether it’s in the context of the Daily Office or church or in the kitchen. You’d think The CEO would get kind of bored with this, but…he just keeps showing up.
4 comments:
He never seems to get bored, does he. Or if he does, he hides it well.
I call him the Big Guy, by the way. And yeah, he did show up in a suit once. I died laughing.
Our God is amazing! My first real experience with the CEO showing up was on my way out the door as I took out the trash! No lightening flash, no thunderous roar for me; just a humble task and a Savior who joined me on the way.
Rachel, I call him the Big Guy, too! Don't know why (especially since I'm usually all about inclusive language), but it works.
LC, the Big Guy does have a way coming back for more. If I were him, I would have gotten tired of hearing me whine about looking for a direction in my life by now. But he just seems to smile and say, "The answer is there if you open your eyes for a change."
Oh, and he definitely has a sense of humor. Can totally see him making the salt shaker comment!
Once, a long time ago, I dreamt of Jesus. I dreamt that I was in his apartment, and it was like Jerry Seinfeld's apartment on that show; and Jesus was in jeans and a chambray shirt, like Seinfeld, and was busy making lunch for several of us sitting at his breakfast bar. And he was droll...what he was saying (which of course I didn't remember upon waking) was much more profound than Jerry Seinfeld, but he was delivering it in a very wry, deadpan standup style. And in my dream I was sitting there thinking, "I can't believe I'm sitting here in Jesus' kitchen." I'll leave it to any real or pretend psychologists out there to analyze that dream!
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