A Metaphor Stretched Too Far

It's funny what you remember about people sometimes.  I'm sitting here at my office, alone, eating a tangerine.  And then a memory comes into my head, some tactile association with oranges triggering a memory of Cassie, and how she liked oranges.  In fact, I don't even know if this is true, if there is an actual fondness for oranges involved here or if  we just happened to share an orange one day.  But of all the things to remember about my friends in Texas, as I sit here in Ohio now, six years later, I remember that Cassie once peeled an orange on my behalf.  Even at the time it must have struck me as an admirable character trait, when someone is willing to peel an orange.  As though it indicates some deeper truth about someone's personality, some faith in a reward that is worth the work. 

I never analyzed it too deeply before, but my attitude towards oranges has been indicative of my attitude towards life.  We have before us something that may be good but won't really be known until it is tried.  Something that requires us to work at it and get our hands dirty for a reward that may not even be worth the work in the end.  Some utilitarian philosophy in my brain always did the math before and came up with an equation that said it's not worth trying.  Take what comes but don't hope for more.  And such is true of life; it does not hand us ready to eat oranges.  Thank God for the friends who help us along the way.  I guess what's slipped into my life in the stability of the past few years is a small faith in the possibility of something good, something worth trying for even if the result is unknown.  I may be starting small, but I'm peeling my own oranges now.

I realized this week as I've thought about posting just how interesting some of the processes are that I go through with journaling. Not necessarily interesting in any objective sense, but interesting to me. I know I should journal, I know it helps me order my thoughts and process things and just get stuff out. But I usually don't. I can excuse it with xanga because this is public, but that doesn't explain why I don't spill some ink in the privacy of any number of journals that are laying around my room. I don't like to talk either, although luckily for me I live with and go to church with some great women that I trust and can talk to, or as in the instance of last night, just start crying when they ask what's going on. I have a reputation as a crier now, and its too late to change it. It's more prevalent in some circles than others, but it's out there. It's interesting when these things happen to yourself. I cry a lot, sometimes I'll go a few weeks with no crying, and then hey, there they are, tears, they just come out. It would help if there were something going on in my head that would give some warning, but its usually the other way around. I guess that's what being out of touch with your emotions does to you, although unfortunately when you have a tendency to cry other people tend to think you are emotional and unstable, not that you are out of touch with your emotions. But its usually the case that I'll start crying and then have to stop and think about why. I have to stop and sit down and figure out why I'm sad, which can be difficult when there are any number of things it could be at any given time, and its usually not whatever circumstance I'm actually in at the moment. So it goes something like I'm fine, still fine, now I'm crying, I'm fine, crying again, try to think about what is wrong, cry some more, get sick of it all and go back to being fine.  Over the past few years God has broken in a few times and brought about some actual healing, and then its nice and I think I'm fine. Lately though I'm reminded of just how not fine I actually am. And some of that is nice cause I realize there's so much more to life than what I'm feeling, and there's so much to the Christian life and serving others that is not dependent on my feeling good; and sometimes just loving and being loved by the people around me right now actually helps a whole lot. It doesn't replace the things I've lost, but it does keep me from losing even more, and missing out on the rest of life.