When the Power Goes Out

Our iMac has suffered its first major systems failure - something to do with the power source. We came back from our recent trip up to Indiana to visit family only to discover that we could not turn our computer back on. Consequently, we have been suffering and lamenting our limited life. This, of course, is the worst time of year to have a problem with your computer as the holidays provide a barrage of problems for getting any service. Yet, Apple is being rather generous in their support - a generosity I had to coax out of them during an hour long phone call this past Sunday.

Our problem with the computer is more than a technical frustration. It has also caused a host of anxieties and lamentations from inside our souls. To understand those deeper cries of frustration, though, you have to understand the background to our computer problem, so please allow me to fill you in with some details you will likely find trivial [problems are curious in that we think our own are the worst ever while other people's ills are always overblown; it's like the joke I heard: if I see somebody walking down the street, and they fall on their face ... well, that's comedy. But, if I'm walking down the street, and I fall on my face, well, that's tragedy.]

Anna and I were wise enough to purchase Apple's extended protection plan so that - when our computer did experience a minor or major glitch like all computers do - we would be able to get it resolved with relative ease and without any huge cost. Well, we bought the plan when we lived a fifteen minute walk from an Apple store, when we could have easily walked our computer into an Apple store to get it fixed. Fast forward to where we live now: Kentucky, which (groan) does not have an Apple store in the entire state! (Or, as the Apple customer service provider said with bewilderment: "huh, I didn't think that was possible. There ... are ... NO ... Apple stores in Kentucky." To which, I replied, "welcome to Kentucky.").

And, it just so happens that the Apple protection plan can only provide on-site service if you live within 50 miles of a service provider ... well, guess how many miles we live from a service provider: 60.6 to be exact! I was none too pleased (although also none too surprised) to discover this and to hear the phone service guy tell me I would have to take it to Louisville or Indianapolis to get it checked out. Well, after a few minutes of flat out admitting my disbelief and disgust, the gentlemen kindly went head over heels to line up an on-site visit. In the end, Apple proved itself to be what I had heard and hoped they were: kind and helpful.

And something else good came of the situation. Jonathan and Kendra graciously loaned us Jonathan's work computer - a Macbook - since they are away on vacation this week. It is extremely kind of them, but they said they understood the plight and misery of our condition. I try to tell myself this is how community is born.

I'm also writing right now because Wyatt is crying ... well, he was crying for the last forty-five minutes, but apparently the magical off-switch has been triggered somewhere in his brain. Wyatt happens to be a light sleeper, and any knock or bump in the night startles him into a crying fit that cannot be soothed. In short, he doesn't yet know how to put himself back to sleep ... There he goes again; sleep evades him still.

It bothers me that such little things trouble Wyatt so much ... but in the very writing of this blog I can't help but see the similarities between the way Wyatt bemoans an unsettling event in the night, and my own unrest and troubled soul that results from relatively minor hiccups in the course of my life.

I am also aware that part of what makes Wyatt's rest so delicate is that he has never been able to get enough sleep. Consequently, he invariably finds himself in desperate need of sleep while also too tired to rest well. It is a damnable condition. So, his crying because of a small bump in the middle of the night exposes more than just a minor nuisance. His crying reflects the deeper problem: his bodies inability to rest well.

So too my frustrations over minor things are symptomatic of much deeper burdens and anxieties in my soul. Why do I make mole hole problems into mountains? Is it a skewed sense of entitlement? Am I bothered that my life has become so limited? Am I worried about what would fill my life without the distraction of music or the internet? Something perhaps like silence.

But something deeper than all of that has been going on over the last few months. Anna and I have both sensed it. We are experiencing the classic signs of grieiving - to be expected after leaving California but nonetheless dramatic or difficult. I don't know exactly where we are right now in the grief process, but I know there is a lot of anger and despair at times. It is becoming ever more clear that we are not in Pasadena any more - a fact I will recall acutely when I wake up on New Year's Day and there is no parade moving boisteriously down the street. And day by day it seems we find more evidence that "this place" is not the place we have come to know and love ... not yet. This place, this newness, this quietness, this relative obscurity is so very not like the other place.

"Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies it bears much fruit," Jesus said - revealing a great mystery of life and faith. But who really wants to die? And who can endure the terrible darkness of waiting to be reborn?

But, for this evening, until the dawn of the day, darkness is all I have. In time, new life will emerge. And Wyatt will grow out of his troubled patterns. But, not tonight. Tonight Wyatt is still crying ... troubled to the core. He cries for a disrupted night, filling the hollow halls of our house. And I listen, disrupted down below, waiting for a new day of peace and joy.

Wes