you get what you get...

i recently decided to start blogging again - maybe because this is the fodder from which my books will draw...or maybe because blogging on facebook is too public. or maybe because i think out loud and i have a lot of thoughts i need to sort out. regardless,

in the recent discoveries and events surrounding the mysterious disappearance and behavior of d.c. ... i'm left with a dissatisfaction that i just don't understand. how a person can lie with a straight face, how none of my friends and family that met him picked up on this character flaw, and why all of this was at all necessary.

it takes me back to 2.003 (linear systems and dynamics) soph year, with the awful AWFUL professor who couldn't teach and didn't give us a book so we could teach ourselves. i remember being so frustrated in that class because it just didn't make sense. his derivations skipped steps, the assumptions came out of nowhere, he was just unable to communicate - we were all so confused, problem sets were exercises in shooting in the dark. halfway through the semester, the running joke became the motto of the class: "it's 2.003. just accept." whenever he'd throw us formulas or solutions and they made absolutely no sense - we'd just resign to the fact that the traditional modes of learning how to be an engineer (ie. understanding) would have to be thrown out the window, and the most efficient way to get through the class (and be rid of this prof forever) would be to just accept and regurgitate as best we could.

fast forward to now - i notice that i have trouble accepting what i don't understand, particularly when behavior is ... wrong. mean. not honorable. insert adjective here. i can't help but look back and put the pieces together, even if it kind of sucks and everyone says to just forget about it. but forgetting means accepting and accepting means acknowledging that it's ok.

and some things are just not ok.

it's strangely similar to when i had my knee kicked out earlier this year. or maybe i'm just thinking about that since worlds are this week and i'm acutely aware that i'm at home while d.a. is there. sitting around crippled for a month left me a lot of time to wrestle with the fact that it wasn't ok with me that at the end of the day she chose to go for my knee. and when sab said, if that's how they're going to play the game, and if the refs aren't calling it, to do it right back to her - i just couldn't.

but what was the result of trying to do the right thing? i left the arena on a stretcher, with a purple swollen knee and yet another 2nd place finish. what did she get? the very thing that i had wanted so badly and worked so hard for. yes, i did the right thing and my conscience is clear - but that doesn't make me feel one bit better about what happened.

of all the things i've been struggling with lately, the top of the list returns to elder brother syndrome.

²⁹But he answered his father, 'Look! All these years I've been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. ³⁰But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!'

i think what doesn't sit well with me is that in trying to be obedient, or trying to act in a way that God would want - it's particularly difficult to see those who don't do so ... get rewarded. rewarded with the very thing that you've wanted, strived for, asked for - and been denied.

i know grace is grace, neither merited nor earned. as my 3 year old nephew recites when he doesn't get chocolate milk and has to settle for vanilla: "you get what you get and you don't get upset"

well, God, that's a lot to ask. and i know that in the big scheme of the Jesus card - nothing is too much to ask. i know what the right answers are. and i know these are not everlasting rewards, and that treasures in heaven are far more valuable.

but it doesn't make it one bit better. in fact, it makes it pretty damn hard.

there are some things you have to accept. God's ways are higher than our ways - of course. but much like abraham pleaded for sodom and gomorrah - if not for fifty righteous would you save the city? forty? thirty? twenty? ten? he sought to understand the God he thought he knew - the God who would smite the righteous with the wicked in an act that didn't make sense to him. but at the end of the day, for whatever reason - he walked away satisfied from that conversation, somehow having reconciled the character of God to a point where he could accept it.

i know i can't know everything. but i want to understand at least so i can accept. even though the city was ultimately destroyed - to have met face to face, pleaded for understanding, and received something to walk away with that restores confidence and hope.

such is the state of the union.