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Inside Voices Inside My Head

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I don’t remember a lot of things from grade school. But there is one image that is seared into my memory.

I’m in first grade. The class has just come in from recess. Our line was loud coming in from outside. The room is dark because we forgot to turn on the light in our dreadful anticipation of our teacher arriving. We know the inevitable lecture. We are not new to the ways of school. We know that outside voices are for outside and when we are inside, we need inside voices. But we disobeyed. And now a punishment awaited us.

Eventually, everyone learns the whole inside voices thing, and it’s not really a problem anymore. But somewhere in adolescence, someone starts telling people that as long as you are using your inside voices, you should be listened to.

I wish people didn’t listen to me so much. When someone gets coffee with me for the sole purpose of talking to me, I talk too much, I say things I don’t mean, and worst of all, I make mountains out of molehills.

I think a lot. It’s kind of something I do. But I waste it. I waste it on all of these gossipy things that I think are conversational mountains, but really, they are molehills. Tiny. Insignificant.

And it’s kind of like I’m using my outside thoughts, inside my head, trying to create drama among thoughts that don’t have drama. No one ever tells you that you need to use inside thoughts, inside your head, but you do.

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Trusting Authority

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When I was applying to college, my mom made me go talk to people from a really boring small honors college at a university nationally known for being a top party school. I had my sights set on higher things, more studious places. I was going to be a real academic.

But I went, and after my first meeting with the assistant dean at the Honors Tutorial College at Ohio University, I knew it was where I needed to be.

A little over three years later, I can’t imagine being anywhere else. Most of who I am today has been dependent on being part of the HTC or being a student at Ohio University. Sometimes, parents really do know what’s best for us.

When someone really cares about us and has more information than we do or a wider world view, they normally make decisions for us that we would make if we had all the information. That’s why I think my failure to not trust God is almost humorous.

God knows infinitely more than me. God cares about me infinitely. Why, then, would God want anything less than the best for me?

Sometimes I perceive God the way I perceived my mom when she was trying to get me to visit Ohio University. God wants me to give up what I really want in order to do something the way God wants it. But that’s not the way it is. God wants to stretch me so that I can consider the kind of options God considers for me.

Jesus said some stuff about this (Matthew 6:25-34):

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you – you of little faith? So do not worry, saying “What shall we eat?” or “What shall we drink?” or “What shall we wear?” For the pagans run after these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

God is going to dress us in clothes brighter than the flowers. We have only to let Her or Him.

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If I Ever Get to Be On That MTV Show About Being Seventeen I Will Tell This Story

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Once when I was seventeen, I ran my family’s car into the side of the road. As far as I know, it’s the only thing I ever did that could be chalked up to stupid adolescent behavior, the only thing that ever got me into big trouble with my parents. I have never been pulled over by the cops; I have never sneaked out of the house after curfew; and I have never otherwise been caught doing anything rebellious or bad. And I would have gotten away with running the family’s car into the side of the road if it wasn’t for the fact that I dented the front bumper pretty noticeably.

Now, normally, seventeen-year-old  Spencer was all into being overly upset about mistakes he made. But on this particular night, I was with my girlfriend and trying to look grown-up and I was remembering all of the crazy stories my parents had told me about when they were kids. We laughed about those. So I figured this would be a laughing matter.

I called my parents and laughed through most of the conversation. My parents weren’t laughing, though.

Life did not progress all that well from there that night.

Tonight, I was standing in line at a fast food restaurant, and the woman in front of me asked for a large cup for water. Expecting the cashier to not be cool with this, the woman launched into a five-minute explanation of what had led her to ask for a large cup of water. It was loaded with too much information.

That woman and seventeen-year-old me have a lot in common. We both thought that we knew the reaction of the person we were communicating with. And in both cases, it didn’t work out well.

I pull punches all the time. I pepper my conversation with words and phrases and attitudes that I think will make the information easier or more acceptable for the person I’m talking to. It never does.