Music Monday #1: Your Mother and I

This post marks the first in a weekly series I'll be starting, Music Monday. Each Monday, I'll post about a song, album, or artist that moves me in some way, or just whatever catchy song I can't manage to shake from my brain. I'll confess I got this idea partly from Kirsti. Thanks, K!

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I was driving to Target today, in the snowstorm, trying my best not to skid all over the road, and sort of failing. While I was driving, I was listening to NPR, and they happened to play this song, by Loudon Wainwright. (There's talking and stuff at the beginning, but if you skip to 0:38, you'll get right to the song.) It's called "Your Mother and I," and he wrote it for his children when he and his wife split up.  

As I heard this song play, all of a sudden I felt five years old again, listening to my mom and dad tell me they were getting divorced. It was my own story, playing to me in song form. It's one of my earliest memories, hearing my parents tell me nearly all of the things in this song. 

I wish I had a place for this to go, for some moral to this story, a happily ever after. But I guess the moral is that life doesn't always work out like you planned. People make mistakes, life throws you a curveball or two. Sometimes all you can do is the best you can and trust God with the rest. 

But this isn't something you should feel bad about for me, friends. Things turned out pretty great, after all. 

Bah Humbug.

I'm supposed to write about Christmas. Isn't that what bloggers do? We write about holidays, about major world events, about our feelings.

I'm good at the feelings part. But not so good at the holidays or the world events part.

I did write about Christmas, last year.

But this year, I've been working a lot, and honestly, I haven't had much energy to think about Christmas, as bad as that sounds.

And to be honest, I still don't want to.

I had a bad day at work this morning, and then I broke off my car key in the lock for the trunk and was late for Christmas Eve dinner with my family. (Side note: Seriously? Who does this?! This is why we can't have nice things.) I'd like to give a special shout-out to my mother who is the best mother of ever for saving the day and bringing me a spare key.

But all I want to do is drink beer and watch non-Christmasy things and go to bed.

Maybe tomorrow, I'll be slightly less Grinchy.

Here's hoping I get a little Christmas spirit.

And just to prove I'm not a complete Scrooge:

The definition of irony, in case you were wondering

is having your car run out gas as you pull into a gas station which has also run out of gas.

Yes, gas stations can run out of gas.

And yes, this really happened to me this week.

Okay, so I wasn't completely out of gas. But had I left to go to another gas station, I would have run out on the way. In the middle of the road. No one wants to be that person who runs out of gas in the middle of the road.

All I could do was laugh.

Sometimes that's all you can do when life throws ridiculous curveballs like this at you. I'm learning that I shouldn't take anything too seriously, that sometimes I just need to laugh at my own rotten luck and get over it. 

So what did I do?

Luckily, a giant truck full of gasoline arrived with gas. But it was too late, the damage was already done. I was already an hour late for work. But my boss thought this was as hilarious as I did, and it ended up not being a big deal.

But there's your laugh for the week, friends. I have a much better appreciation of irony after this.

Can't I just sleep forever?

It's difficult for me to want to do much of anything these days. I work two jobs, I'm involved with church, and I can never seem to get enough sleep. It takes an excruciating amount of effort to get out of bed for work in the morning.

So when all of my effort is concentrated on being an adult and not calling in sick because I'd rather stay in bed, it's hard to want to do anything else. Including write. It's partly why I gave up on NaNoWriMo last month about two weeks in. And it's also why I haven't been posting lately.

I don't know what to do when this happens, when apathy this strong sets in. I want to care about things. I want to care about my blog, about work, about friends. But I don't.

I just seem to have this insatiable desire to crawl into bed and sleep until the second coming of Christ.

Any tips for me, friends? Any advice on how I get interested in life again?

Whoa.

I've known that violence exists in this world. I know that in my own city, people get mugged, raped, shot in the street. We all know that things like this happen. But a great deal of us will never be exposed to such violence. The violence that exists in our own cities will remain an abstract, far away concept, like the things we learned about in history class.

The other night, something happened which made all of this vividly real for me.

Someone was shot on our street this past Friday night, so close we could hear people screaming for help.

Believe me when I tell you, friends, you will never feel so helpless as when you hear someone begging for the help you know you can't give them.

Please, don't ask me if I'm okay, how I'm doing. Don't pray for me because of the neighborhood I live in.

Pray for your own city. Pray for God's mercy.