Excuse Me?

Some years ago, a friend asked what had gotten into me. She said I was on a roll writing, that evidently my writer’s block was gone. I’m not sure I had a blockage. I think I was being lazy. If you ever need excuses for not doing something, let me know. I have a million of them. I’m tired, it’s hot, my foot hurts, the cat ate my homework, etc.

In my more realistic moments, however, I know it just boils down to one thing. Laziness. I love to play cards. But, because we’ve already established I’m lazy, I don’t like playing them the “old” way. That’s too much trouble. Sitting in a chair with a board on your lap or sitting at the dining room table dealing cards. That’s work. I like playing on the laptop or tablet. The recliner is perfect for games, and the cats don’t bother you. Well, they do, but not like when you’re trying to put a jigsaw puzzle together on the table. They like to eat the pieces or hide them someplace. They can’t do that when you’re working on a tablet. Yes, I have jigsaw puzzles on mine. Cat safe activities.

Do you know what one of my favorite things on the computer is? It’s the undo button most card games have. That is extremely handy. If you realize you’ve made a mistake, you push the button. It would be even better if life had undo. Or fast forward and rewind capability. The possibilities for either of those functions are endless.

How many times have you said something and immediately wished you hadn’t? In my case, too many. Just as the words are leaving my mouth, I realize I’m an idiot. Too late. What will usually happen around this time is I’ll get the arched eyebrow with the “Excuse Me?” look that goes along with it. You know the one I mean. Unfortunately, even though I’ve searched for it, life doesn’t have undo. You must do a mea culpa and hope for the best. It would be so much easier to push a button. Even rewind would be preferable to saying something with the potential of hurting someone’s feelings, damaging a relationship, or just looking like an idiot.

Fast forward would be handy, too. You could skip through all the boring parts of life and get to the good stuff. Like skipping cauliflower and going straight to the ice cream. One year my mom and I went to see Handel’s Messiah. We were so pumped! I love that song. I get some of my idiocy from my mother. She, like me, didn’t know this was a whole concert. We thought it would just be an endless singing of the one song. Boy, were we wrong.

At the intermission, we left. Giggling like a couple of schoolgirls, we snuck out, hoping no one would see us escaping. The auditorium we were at had a balcony overlooking the parking lot and there were about a billion people on that balcony watching us leave. That only made us laugh harder and negated any possible attempts at escaping unnoticed. There was one lady on the balcony with a wistful look on her face. I’m pretty sure she wanted to leave with us. I’m also pretty sure her husband was the one who had been snoring earlier.

When we left, we still hadn’t heard the one song we went to hear. With the right buttons, I could have solved that problem. We’d have skipped the music we weren’t interested in and gone straight to the one song. Then we could have rewound it a couple of times and heard it over and over again. But since there were no buttons, we just sang it all the way home. I guarantee you that guy wouldn’t have slept through our singing!

The buttons would be handy for things other than just correcting mistakes or ending boredom. So many moments in life are extra special. Ones you wish would never end. That’s when you push the rewind button. You don’t have to try and remember what happened—you could instantaneously relive it. Kind of like Bill Murray does in Groundhog Day. I suppose you might get sick of the whole thing after a while but on the surface, it seems like that might be a handy feature to have.

God has given us an undo button. When we ask for forgiveness, He readily gives it, without us having to see the “Excuse me?” look. What I need more than that, though, is the rewind button. I could use it for the number of times I’ve just been too lazy to do what I think He wants me to do. Or if I stay up really late on a Saturday night and decide that sleeping in on Sunday morning is more important than going to church, I could just rewind that whole thing and go to bed earlier. Or rewind enough to get up in time for church.

Playing games relaxes me. That mind-numbing exercise of doing absolutely nothing worthwhile. Unfortunately, it can become a trap. Sometimes I hear the voice in my head asking, “Hey! Aren’t you supposed to be doing something else?” Normally I just ignore it and keep on playing. Life is a little like playing solitaire. Doing what you want instead of what God wants you to do. Eventually it will catch up with you, if you’re paying attention.

I joined the Air Force because I felt God was calling me to join. I haven’t ever figured out why, but I don’t regret for one moment my 23+ years of service. Even though I knew what He wanted me to do, I didn’t do it as quickly as I think He wanted. I remember going to church one Sunday and the message was “Are you doing what God is calling you to do?” The songs were “Where He Leads me I Will Follow,” “All to Jesus I Surrender,” and similar songs. By the time the service was over, I was hiding beneath the pew. I enlisted the following week.

It’s for times like that, when we get complacent about doing His will, that the rewind button would be invaluable. We could wipe out all the procrastination and do what He wants. Instead of playing cards on the computer, we’d be living for God. Instead of hiding from His will, we’d be pushing the fast forward button, so we could get to the good stuff faster. We’d be relying on our ace in the hole, God, instead of spending all our time with the ace of spades. The undo button would still be a good thing, though. For those times Father can’t keep us from looking like idiots. Free will can be embarrassing.

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