Random Bits Of Stuff And Fluff

Scatterbrained blog entries RULE, I tell you.

Right after I did last week’s entry trumpeting how I don’t worry about the small stuff these days, I lost my lip conditioner. Which, if you know me, is a problem indeed, as my lips get chapped and cracked anytime the temperature dips below, say 75 degrees. Gosh darn, that blows, I said to myself, since my schedule’s pretty busy to include something simple like going to the grocery store and getting a new one. Gosh, sucks to be me. Oh well. Lo and behold if I didn’t find it in the car a few days later, in the exact place where my earrings tend to turn up.

Additionally, this week found my complaint against my insurance company, a slow painful two-month process in which you know that they’re dragging it out because they want you to give up, resolved with a complete vindication in my favor. I bet you didn’t think angels worked at Nameless California Health Insurance Companies, but they sure do, and her name is Tracy R., and her supervisor is going to get a glowing twinkly “You Have A Rockstar Employee Working For You!” letter o’ rec from me. Most of the time, I hate it when Life Lessons like Do Not Worry are so obvious, but for these two, I do not mind one bit.

This week at work, I was sitting in my current boss’s office at the Nameless Movie Studio, watching her fill out her child’s application to a private Catholic girls’ school. She got to the question where it asks what church you attend regularly, and what religion you classify yourself as. My boss made little hemming and hawing noises, saying, “I don’t know what to put here.” I think my current boss and her family don’t practice any kind of religion, and the child wants to go to this particular school because she wants the extra attention or something. Some people might look at this as the Golden Window Of Opportunity To Talk About Jesus, God, or Other Religious Stuff. I kept my mouth shut, not even a small “Well, it IS a Catholic school, I think they’re allowed to ask,” comment. Just didn’t feel appropriate.

I’ve been making small movements to step back from commitments where I feel like I’ve overextended myself, so I can get back to what I’m supposed to be doing, which is writing. One of these things is my small group from church, which meets every week. I’ve not leaving it all together, but once a week is a little hard for me, especially since it meets all the way across town from work.

The Bitch In My Head has been having a field day with this decision. You can’t meet with your small group every week? YOU’RE GOING TO HELL! C’mon, ya big crybaby! Who cares that you wanna write! This is your immortal soul we’re talking about and should you miss a SINGLE MINUTE of your small group, you’re telling God that YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT HIM.

My small group doesn’t know that I’m planning on taking a few steps back. I was looking for my Window Of Opportunity where I would say it when we met this week. But there wasn’t any Window, and instead what we started to talk about was accountability. One the group leaders mentioned that she really wants to be in a group where she’s held accountable for her actions, where people will tell her she’s sinning and she should stop.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

Here’s my thing. I have friends, we’ve have conversations where they tell me things, things they’ve done where they’ve sinned (and very technically, each of us does something every day that’s classified as a sin. And if you think you don’t, you’re not only lying (sin), you’re prideful about it (another sin.) So there.) But the thing is, my friends KNOW they’re sinning, they don’t need me to TELL them they’re sinning. They need to talk about it, not be judged for it. So we talk it out, we look at the motivations, the behavior, the thought patterns, we kick rocks, we say the world sucks and we’re still stuck in it. And I can’t help but think that’s better than a theoretical group situation where there’s theoretical finger pointing, even if the person WANTS it that way. Man, I thought I was a masochist.

I don’t know that my small group will be shifting towards that. And me stepping back may look like an editorial comment on accountability. But there’s an element of trust involved in accountability, and I’m not sure I trust my small group like that. There’s too many of them that I don’t know very well. Whereas me, Giggly, and Native Chick could go out for accountability cocktails and that would be fine, because I trust those ladies. Gutting out houses in New Orleans bonds people in strange ways like that.

And while we’re on the subject of accountability, today at 11:00 church, they installed elders, and read Scripture verses from 1st Timothy saying that elders should be held publicly accountable if they sin. Good Lord, people would be hauled up every week. Oh, wait, you don’t mean that literally? Depends on the sin, maybe? Hmmm, interesting. Verrrrry interesting.