< NOTES New

I desperately needed to write a note to my husband in church recently.  Why didn't I just whisper what I needed to say you might ask?  It wasn't a whisperable sentence.  My husband's hearing as of late has been less than superman-ish.  And since it wasn't a whisperable sentence the first time, should I had to repeat it the second time, it might have been disastrous.

Now to that you might say, well then you probably shouldn't have been saying it out loud.  To be honest, I probably do say some things out loud that maybe possibly I could keep silent.  But if I can say it out loud I can process it, release it, let it go.   I was needing to do that in church.  But, where was the damn paper.  And, did I even have a pen?  My technology light is still not 100% the shining beacon it could and should be in my life.

In my IPhone non Siri 4.naught I have a notes app.  It is full of tid bits of this and that - thoughts that come to me that I am afraid I will lose if I even blink, repairman information, a list of titles of my New York Times bestseller should I get one.  Slowly that little yellow lined post-it note app is replacing my plethora of real paper scraps and sticky notes full of words, thoughts, lists.  It's a slow and painful death for me.  

That is where I typed my note to Doug in church.  I started a new sticky note page that said, Am I missing something????  There was nothing more.  Nothing less.  The four question marks made up for the rest of the words that were unsaid; help me out I'm not getting this, is this doing anything for you, do they know no one is following this, I just wanted to connect to God, I hate performances.

There it was again.  I said it out loud.  It was yet again my somewhat angst battle with how we as a culture do church sometimes.  How it looks.  How it feels.  How my deep craving to connect in a church body seemed absent this particular Sunday. I was struggling with their inserting "self" into the service and yet I was no doubt inserting self in it too - my thoughts, opinions, feelings, longings.

I felt caught a bit.  I really like paper and pens, but I didn't have one so I used my IPhone to write a note to someone sitting right next to me.  Reluctantly I had acquiesced to technology - to a smart phone.  Maybe I needed to acquiesce a bit to the imperfections/performance of church.  I needed to stop expecting and just be present period.  How do I give up being bugged by performance at times or by being read to for a sermon? 

I had been on the inside inner circle of church for many, many years.  I knew what it took to get a service together, to deliver it, to provide an avenue to people to see God.  My humanness got in the way at times.  Maybe that's why I struggled to sit, to not want more or different, and sometimes to even go.  I felt so inauthentic yet I craved the things that I couldn't even master myself.

My note to Doug was found right next to another note which held a quote I didn't want to forget, "You gotta make people uncomfortable in the present if you want to move them to the future."  Fitting for me indeed.