Perspective

This is the post I wrote yesterday. I'm writing my posts at home then coming to my parents house to actually access the Internet.

FRIDAY
We got our electricity back on Thursday night. We spent four days and four nights without it – no heat, lights, television, computers, Internet, phones. Our days were spent at Asbury. It seemed like a refuge in so many ways. We NEEDED to be there. Today we didn’t go, and it was a little bit of a crummy day actually. We did some Christmas shopping and restocked our refrigerator and did some cleaning up around the house. I wondered about my new friends: Ricky, Grace, Marietta and all the other people whose names I didn’t catch, or can’t remember. They asked last night if we would be back and we told them we wouldn’t because we had to get our lives back in order just a little. I’m sure they wished they could do the same. It’s funny. I felt more in the Christmas spirit when I was there than I did today in the crowded Big Box or the mall. I’m all for the Christmas tree, and the music and the parties, but it was good to step outside of it all for a few days as we served and gave and received and felt things in a deep way.

I’m sitting in my warm house now, in front of the fireplace with lights on and some football game blaring on the television in front of me. We still don’t have Internet or phones but I don’t care. It’s interesting to remember back about three months ago when we lost our Internet for about a half a day and we were going crazy. We called our provider and pleaded with them in a panicky voice, and wondered how we were going to cope if we couldn’t check our email or hop on the web. Now it seems like such a small thing. Maybe I won’t be saying that in a week, but I truly haven’t missed it. I find places to post and check my email. I have a cell phone and electricity to charge it. Every time I think that I might whine about it a little, I remember how cold it was in our house, and how we walked around carrying a flashlight while candles burned on all our tables and countertops. And then a crowd of faces surfaces in my mind. Many of them will go back to their homes when the electricity is restored and their lives will still be hard. They will still be poor, still unable to get decent medical care. Some will be afraid about losing their jobs, or being abused by their husbands…or dying alone in a house they’ve lived in for sixty years. And for some of them, the electricity will come back on but they will still feel hopeless.

So I’m not worried about what I don’t have because I still have so much more than so many. Perspective can be a tough thing to maintain for those of us who are so very blessed. Perhaps we need to be reminded of it every now and then by cold, dark houses, trees across our driveway, a refrigerator full of spoiled food. Or by stepping out of our comfortable suburban fortresses to see that there is a world of people on our doorstep who need shelter from the storm.