The Dopey Moper

I’ll be blunt: It was a crappy day.

[Am I allowed to say the word “crappy” on the Internet?]

I had to go in to work at 4:30am. That means I need to get out of bed about quarter after three. In the morning! I have hunter friends who scoff at this early awakening, but at least they’re getting up to go do something they enjoy.

The day was [see the adjective above] for a number of reasons:

1. It was really cold.
2. It was the first week of January and there’s nothing to look forward to until, like, my birthday in April.
3. I had to get up crazy early.
4. Instead of going to church the day before I had spent two hours in the ER with two of my girls, who were both diagnosed with croup, so I felt rather disconnected.
5. Did I mention how cold it was?
6. Neither I nor my harried wife Bethany had gotten uninterrupted sleep lately, what with our sick infant across the hallway waking up at least once a night for the last week or more. *yawn* (Though for the record, Bethany had gotten much less sleep than I have)
7. It was going to be a long day.

So I was moping internally. Probably externally too – I don’t always know how others perceive me, so I may well have appeared mopey.

Woe is I! I am tired and cold! My full-time job is busy enough to pay me time-and-a-half for at least two days this week! Whimper-waaaaahhh!!

I was a dopey moper.

Occasionally I find myself in a mood that I don’t want to be in. I am fully aware that I am being selfish or shortsighted or petty or whatever, but “kicking” the mood, as Oswald Chambers espouses, doesn’t always work. I suppose part of me somehow enjoys feeling sorry for myself, enjoys moments of misery, even though common sense belies the logic of that sentiment: Enjoying one’s own sadness? What the what?

I take no credit for removing myself from the mood, though. I had a chance to tell a coworker a little bit about my family’s desire and goal to move to the Bronx later this year, and soon found that my perspective on the day had changed. I’ve got to keep the big picture first, I thought. I’m healthy and alive, as is my family (relatively speaking), and we’re together; that’s more than many people can say. My coworker couldn’t understand why I would want to take my young family into such a place as the Bronx – it just doesn’t make sense! Then my mood improved, and that doesn’t make sense either. God often works that way, doing things that don’t make sense to our eyes.

And I, for one, am glad that He does.

Armed with my rejuvenated mood and refreshed perspective, I finished my work day and went home. Shortly thereafter Bethany took our almost-8-month-old Juliet back to the doctor because she had barely eaten anything since the day before. They went to the doctor, then straight to the ER, then to their room in the pediatric wing of the hospital, where they stayed for the next four days.

But that story will be another post. God gave me the strength to handle the next several days as a single dad while Bethany was in the hospital with our youngest. He sure knows what He’s doing, doesn’t He?