Of Summer, Steaks and Suffering By Comparison

It's been a tough few weeks. Physically, I have more energy, but pain, insomnia, and "fibro fog" have also been high.

Here we are at the end of June already! It seems like only a few days ago, we were sitting down with our long-time friends, Andy and Sarah and their family, to a dinner of the best steaks I can remember eating. They were that good! A slow cook over charcoal made it even better. Great googly-moogly, if you want to make me salivate this 4th of July, offer the following menu!

• Steaks, USDA Choice or better, thick cut and broiled medium-rare to medium over wood or charcoal
• Cherries, bing or likewise, chilled with a bowl for the pits
• Fromage with Litehouse homestyle ranch, including
• cucumbers, English because they are easier to digest
• baby carrots
• celery
• Bavarian potato salad, heavy on the vinegar, sauteed onions and bacon
• "Simply" Lemonade, Limeade, Raspberry Lemonade or just chilled, filtered water over ice
• For--slurp, smack :-p~ --dessert, any or all of the following (he-he!)
• Apple or peach pie, homemade, a la mode with Hagen-Daz Five or Breyers All Natural french vanilla (ingredients: Milk, Cream, Sugar, Egg Yolk, Natural Flavor, Natural Tara Gum, and none of this nonsense)
• Ghirardelli Triple Chocolate Brownies--a Sam's Club mix but there's others,  a la mode (see above), using very high altitude (6000-9000 Ft ASL) adjustment
• Banana Bread (my mom's recipe) with thick slabs of butter or cream cheese
• Banana cream pie (my grannie's recipe) with plenty of meringue
• Finally Peaberrys, Serranos or Tucan espresso, pressed or drip, with whipped cream, half and half and Domino sugar to taste

We are not going to a friend's, so I can give such a menu without imposing. Regardless, the steaks were truly amazing! It almost made up for my foul mood.

Yep, you heard me. Even with the best meal, I can find a way to ruin it with my mood. It may be that not everyone noticed, but I'm pretty sure they did. So what happened? Why was I in a foul mood? It's a lot more complex than this, but the short of it was that I listened to the accuser.

The way it worked was that he whispered so quietly that I didn't even perceive the words so much in my mind as I understood them in my heart. It went something like,

Andy has all these things wrong with his body, but he still pushes himself to provide for his family. They see his hard work and they love him. But you ... how can you even say you love your family if you don't even do that?

To which I responded, "But he's ripping himself up every time he does that. The scars would be too much! How can he expect to survive if he's pulling himself through knot holes every day, trying to make it work? And then, either my mind was taking over or the enemy perceived far more than I typically give him credit for, but a voice responded, "At least his scars would be scars of love."

I now see how a lot of the issue was rooted in my disabilities. Andy is similarly disabled but different both in how he was disabled (the trauma) and how his body has responded to the trauma. I saw how he was striving and pushing and, instead of having God guide my response, I let the accuser of the Brothers sneak in.

The clincher was the comparison I naturally drew between his actions and my own actions, which haven't been nearly as spectacular. In fact, I often feel like-- well, it's as if I bought some land with the hopes of building a dream home.  I have all this concrete poured and set. The foundations are laid and to the best of my knowledge, it's ready for the first floor above ground. You know, the level people can look at from the edge of the property and say, "That looks like a house being built." It's sat for years, while I recover and deal with what my body experiences on a daily basis.

Even now, I feel my frustration rising. I'm stopped. I feel that I am doing anything but building a house. I'm writing. I'm praying. I'm parenting. I'm husband-ing. But in the middle of all this, I've got a body that sees even this as a major challenge! I don't want to whine, and I don't want to judge my Creator. But this is the subtext into which the accusations were injected, and it poisoned everything I said or thought that night.

That issue has sat for weeks. I dealt with the lies pretty soon afterward, but I didn't have much in terms of truth to replace it aside from the general, scripture-based "first aid." I had stopped the bleeding and got the swelling down, but somewhere, there was something functionally wrong that I didn't have the Spirit-led tool to fix it.


Then, yesterday morning at 4 a.m., I'm awake, never having slept. I tried most of my tricks to get to sleep. I even tried reading about Unified Field Theory, which is something that gives my brain a good jog. Usually, letting my mind run off and ponder the big stuff of Creation gives it a way to bypass my insomnia. No luck. So I go off and hop into the bath. If I'm going to be awake, it might was well be doing something that helps me generally. My wife, who supports me and loves me, even at 4 a.m., brought me our little hand-sized Bible.

So I asked Him, "Lord, what should I read?" I got Galatians 6. There it says,

If anyone thinks they are something when they are not, they deceive themselves. Each one should test their own actions. Then they can take pride in themselves alone, without comparing themselves to someone else, for each one should carry their own load. (NIV, emphasis mine)

The inner thought-life of a kid with a learning disorder is just brimming with comparisons. I learned to judge others and judge myself, with a little help from the Accuser. Such judgments were anything but right. They were all in contradiction to the Word. I need to consider only my own actions, and let God look after the others. God is the only One who judges perfectly. His grace is perfect and holds all my frailties and mistakes. I have nothing to worry about in His eyes. There's no test, no performance objectives, and no comparisons with anyone.

Jesus came to set us free, for freedom's sake. That's it. All I need to do is be. I am God's kid. I look up to Him, rely on Him, depend on Him, and live in Him. I don't have to perform. I don't have to meet someone's approval. By the shed blood of Jesus, which was the greatest, most terrible sacrifice ever made, I am under His grace. That's the freedom. I receive His love and it spills out on everyone around me. How hard is that? I rest in the incomparable love of God.