Yesterday, I was walking to the little convenience store in front of my apartment complex. Across the street, a church meets for their Sunday morning service. The first thing that caught my eye was a police officer fully uniformed, guarding the front entrance.
I thought, This is some great material for my next blog!
As I walked back to my apartment from the store, it seemed like the officer was staring me down from 300 yards away, and I smiled. Whether it's true or not, I felt that if I were to walk over there at that moment there would be trouble. I was wearing cut-off jorts and an Astros shirt, but that didn't seem as offsetting as what kind of people I was representing.
My apartment complex is full of Hispanics, and most of them are probably illegal immigrants. And the thought crossed my mind, Are they trying to get certain people in, or keep certain people out?
And with my already-a-work-in-progress prejudice toward the church, and my already-a-work-in-progress prejudice toward police officers, my default mindset told me that this church was trying to keep the people from my apartment complex out of their services - you know, the riffraff, the outsiders, the people who don't look like the majority churchgoers.
I wanted to take the unfinished, biased, and prejudiced attitude I had toward the situation and start a heated Facebook conversation. I wanted to rile up some debate. But, something inside of me said to do otherwise. So, I waited until this morning, and I sent the pastor an email. I decided to go straight to the source and find out why a police officer was guarding the entrance to the church building.
I can't tell you that I've ever done any sort of investigative work into something that left a bad taste in my mouth. Even as the general manager of the restaurant I work at, I'm very short-scoped in my desire to look at all angles and hear all the sides of any given story before I make termination decisions.
But the truth is, every situation has a story. And every story has characters. And every character has a purpose.
If I would've had any anger or disturbances going on when I saw that police officer, I'd be on the computer stirring up a hornet's nest of conversation. But, for some reason a little voice reminded me that picking fights doesn't work anymore.
And what I've learned since yesterday is this: when I explore all the angles I can come up with, the story changes.
The story escapes my head - which is full of spin - and becomes truthful. And in this case, the story became less about my jaded views of the marriage between civil authorities and the church, and more about my full understanding of a situation that I would've formerly written off as another instance of the church being wrong.
And that brings me to an even deeper point. When's the last time someone yelled at me? Maybe it was a boss. Maybe it was an angry driver. Maybe it was a parent. Did I walk away from that experience thinking, That person is an asshole, or did I walk away with the thought, I wonder what was going on in that person's life to cause them to act that way.
And I can turn it around. When's the last time I yelled at someone? Would I have hoped to do things a little differently? Would I have hoped that the person receiving my verbal lashing would've walked away thinking that maybe I was just having a bad day or I was having some stressful situations going on in my life?
I heard someone say once that our lives are made up of inches and seconds. The things separating me from decisions that can potentially change my whole life are merely moments away. It's the phone call, the wrong turn, the angry jeer, the clenched fist, the boiling resentment.
And the thing that can literally change the course of the rest of my life is understanding. In order to understand, I have to be able to take a deep breath, pray, and see outside of my raging emotions. That little gesture may be what saves my life. That may be the thing that saves me from myself at any given moment.
Every thought that goes through my mind is based on either positive or negative principles. By default, I'm a depressed, manic, and as chaotic as they come. If I don't take my morning pills, spend a couple hours in meditation and contemplation, and ask God to help me plan my day, my thinking will not get me where I want to go. It takes a whole lot of commitment and discipline to let go of my crazy mind and grab hold of God. It's the only chance I have of bringing something good into the world instead of constantly feeling like the world is against me. Inches and seconds, right?
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