Friday, September 3, 2010

When life throws you a curve ball ...

Music seems to do a very good job of describing my life.  Weird Al's "It's All About the Pentiums," describes my life as an engineering student, especially the line "They call me the King of the Spreadsheets, I've got 'em all printed out on my bedsheets." :)  In my first post on this blog, I commented on how the Eagles are the perfect sound track for my road trip adventures.

I added to this transitory theme in my music yesterday.  When you have a convertible and fall rolls around, you can't resist dropping the top and cranking the tunes while driving top down through campus.  I was looking for upbeat music to blast through the Bose speakers, when I ran across a 2008 ski-trip playlist.

"Chasing Cars" by Snow Patrol was in the mix.  It is a great song, branching from typical rock music to include some deeper thoughts.  Especially the line 

"If I lay here, if I just lay here, 
would you lie with me 
and just forget about the world? ...
I don't quite know how to say 
how I feel.  
Those three words are said too much, 
they're not enough."

Listening to this song brought back fond memories of Karen and me on a later road trip to Kingman, AZ.  We were reviewing our ski trip favorites, and listened over and over to this song, catching the lyrics through the heavy instrumentation and memorizing the song in the process.

From Blogger Pictures


As my Dad has been having severe health problems over the past five years, I have divided my life into work and recreation, the Weird Al and Eagles partitions of my life.  I have really ignored the Chasing Cars portion.

Not all of life is cut and dried.  Sometimes we feel lost, disoriented.  We don't know how to feel, and when we try to express our feelings to those around us, alot is said but it just isn't enough.

The words of this song really spoke to me on that lazy Thursday afternoon.  I have been trying to work through the implications of the passing of my Dad, whenever in the future it happens.  Particularly how I involve my friends in that part of my life.

Only this past summer, as Dad entered his most recent decline, have I chosen to face the idea of his passing.  So this new idea is even more difficult to work with as I renew my friendships with my school friends, and try to decide who I should update on his status.

Snow Patrol has it right.  Sometimes we just want go outside, lie in the grass, forget about everything in the world, and try to sort out our feelings.  And it isn't a logical, mathematical process.  

But it doesn't have to be.  This is part of life - not the busy, productive part, or the fun-loving part.  It's in the middle - actually in a whole 'nother dimension - where we fight our demons and wrestle with our past, present, and future.  

For all the talk about prayer I have heard in my 22 years of church attendance, precious little is centered on the Lord's Prayer, which was His response to his disciples' direct request, "Teach us to pray."  Seems like this should be the central framework of prayer, where we get our most important prayer lessons.

The Lord's Prayer was one of the Scriptures that I mulled over at Field Training, that helped me to get through standing at attention with sweat dripping down my face, that comforted me during the days that Dad's life hung in the balance 1500 miles away.

As far as the dimension of our life filled with personal struggle, that part is at times incomprehensible, The Lord's Prayer gently redirects us from our self-centeredness, and invites us to become part of the greater plan that God has, not just for our life but the whole universe. 

"Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven ... for Thine is the kingdom, and the glory, and power, forever ... AMEN!"

Snow Patrol and The Lord's Prayer ... wonderful thoughts for a Thursday afternoon of making Ipod playlists!


2 comments:

  1. wow. i am so blown away by your thoughts. starting to get overwhelmed myself, a bit tonight, as i contemplate where we currently are with dad...and your insights are just what sets the tone right.

    your will be done. makes things much smoother than pushing mine.

    xox my bro. so unbelievably proud of ya. thanks for remembering kingman.

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  2. Hey man... Way to put it! With all that's going on, a blend of the Lord's Prayer and Chasing Cars sounds like perfection to me! Thanks for a great chat this evening. Look forward to seeing you in a few days.

    L8r,
    Jonathan

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