Previous Challenge Entry (Level 1 – Beginner)
Topic: Lock (03/06/06)
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TITLE: Lock, Stock, and Barrel | Previous Challenge Entry
By James McClellan
03/10/06 -
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ADD TO MY FAVORITES
“I’d like a number eight with fried rice, an extra egg roll, and soy sauce on the side.”
To which he replied, “Will that be cash, check or charge?”
He confirmed my address, and told me my order would arrive within the hour, as I poured the evening’s first glass of wine.
What some would call a career, feels more like indentured servitude most days. Today however, was different. It was nothing more than slavery. The big brass from New York had to get involved. If they would just back off, and let me do my job!
On a day like this my pajamas won. I fell into my well worn Lazy Boy and accidentally stopped at channel fifty-two, where there was a hansom young man, in his pen stripped suit on a well lit stage with his arm outstretched. He was beaconing to me, telling me the bible teaches us, in Matthew 11, if we give Jesus our burdens, He will give our souls rest. I laughed aloud, as I rubbed the tender spot on my sole, where my high heel had spawned the beginnings of a large blister. Once upon a time I believed the fairytale he was selling. I even walked the isle and was baptized when I was a teenager. Life has taught me better now, and that simple faith went the way of Santa Clause and Cinderella. Even so, every great once in a while for some reason I still feel the need to go to church. That is, after I have forgotten how much I hate it. Sitting there in the hard, scratchy pew always makes me feel dirty, like I’ve done something wrong. I haven’t, so why do I embark on this masochistic ritual? Latent guilt and anxiety are the likely culprits, according to my therapist. She must be right because I haven’t felt the urge quite so strongly since I started taking my Prozac. Turns out sin is created by the church.
“Jesus loves you,” I heard the young man say, “just the way you are.” He sounds just like that Margie Walsh with her sunshine and daisies theology. Marge, as she was called, worked in the cubical next to mine, before my promotion to Associate Director of Marketing and transfer to our west coast division. After my third husband kicked me out of our house, she offered her useless, but perky advice.
“Take heart dear,” she said with her warm thin smile, “You are a child of God. He can work miracles. After all, we know that all things work for good.”
“Perhaps it was God’s will for your life,” was another common phrase uttered by the well intentioned, dreamy eyed believers in my life. Did they really believe His plan for me was to live out of cheap hotels or the willing gentleman’s bed for the next six months. I did not see it that way. Neither did Marge, who apparently found out through the office grapevine. She told me as much whenever I would give her the chance. No, God was not there in my time of need. He saw fit, to allow my marriages to dissolve and simplify my life thereby glorifying Himself.
That was over ten years ago, and the bitterness toward God has mostly subsided. The truth is I just don’t care about Him enough to think one way or the other. I think maybe George, my first ex was right. He believed that just because church was right for some, didn’t make it right for him. Ironically, that belief is part of the reason we didn’t make it. I was still holding a few thin strands of otherwise unraveled faith, which broke almost precisely the same time I signed my name to the divorce papers. I signed my life away that day, and find myself now echoing his words, “Church, just isn’t for me.”
The truth is that no one really knows the truth at all, it occurred to me, after waiting years for God to change my mind, or provide me with a sign. At that moment, the doorbell rang. I flipped the channel.
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