One Sunday, several months ago,
I missed my exit.
I was so lost in thought, running through that morning’s sermon in my head, that I drove right past my exit on I-70.
I was already running late, and the next exit where I could turn around?
About 15 miles up the road.
That made me half an hour late. I just barely made the service. Yikes!
Stuff like this happens to me all the time.
Now I don’t think, at the age of 42, I’m being plagued by “senior moments” yet. Honestly, I’ve been doing spacey things like this since I was a little kid.
I think the term for my condition is: Absent Minded.
Yep, that’s me.
I’ll “zone out” in a middle of a conversation because something somebody said sends me down a mental rabbit hole.
I’ll walk into a room and have no idea why I’ve gone there.
I’ll spend more time pondering how to do something than actually doing it.
It’s true: Sometimes my mind has a mind of its own.
I think it began when I was a child. I never felt perfectly comfortable in my environment, so I developed a rich interior world. My imagination became a comforting place for me, a creative alternative to the boredom or uncertainty of the physical world.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve been more aware of the strange dual-residence in which I live. Sometimes I live here, in the world of jobs and schedules and people and problems, and other times I go wandering inside my own brain, into the world of ideas and dreaming and endless possibilities.
I wish the two parts of my life could better live in harmony.
Psalm 139 has this important reminder:
1 O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from far away.
3 You search out my path and my lying down,
and are acquainted with all my ways.
God is a part of both sides of my life. In fact, God made me to be integrated, so that my inner thoughts and my external path are created to work together.
When I am absent minded, it means I have not integrated my life the way God wants me to.
So, is it possible?
Is it possible to live focussed both inward and outward?
I think so. I’m gonna work on that.
But my recent Sunday morning side trip reminds me…
trying to be present and absent?
That’s unimaginable.
Have a great week,
Mitch
Living inside my head has been my whole life. I try to choose my times to be aware
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My favorite Psalm.
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