After many years of denial, I finally realized how easily I am confused.
The main problem with this is not only can I get confused, but I rarely know when I’m confused. That in itself is confusing.
The Gracious Mistress of the Parsonage, wife Martha, is the person in our home who’s never confused. I’m not sure how she’s done this all these years. It can’t be easy living with someone like me, who’s always confused.
I’ll be working in my office; she’ll step in and say, “Are you ready to go?”
A little surprised, I look up and say, “Go where?”
She looks at me for a moment, “Don’t you remember you have a doctor’s appointment today?”
At that point, I’m in a real state of confusion. But I had to ask, “Not a psychiatrist, is it?”
“Oh, I wish,” she said and walks away.
When I grab my truck keys and head for the door, Martha often asks, “Do you know where you’re going?”
I would’ve been confused if she hadn’t asked that question. Obviously she knows something I didn’t know. I look back at her, smile, and ask, “No, where am I going?”
I thought I knew where I was going. I carefully planned everything out: where I was going and what I would do and when I would return home. But when she questioned me, all that came up in my fuzzy mind was confusion.
My biggest problem is knowing if I should do something or not. I can never figure that out. “To do, or not to do?” That seems to be my confusion.
It’s easy to think of what I could do, but my most demanding job is figuring out what I shouldn’t do. If I do everything I want to do, I’m never going to finish anything. I need to learn to manage my time so I don’t sink into the swamp of confusion.
If I could figure what not to do I think I could get a lot more done. Differentiating between “do and don’t” is hard for me.
If I do what I don’t have to do, it takes away time to do what I should do. Oh boy, this is very confusing.
I wish I could understand how that happens and differentiate between “do and don’t”. That would eliminate some of my confusion, I think.
Perhaps that is why people get old and forget things. Maybe it’s a good thing to forget some things. If only I could select the things to forget, my life would be a lot better and less confusing.
Until then, I will wallow in my confusion. While pondering this I was reminded of a verse of Scripture in Philippians.
“Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
— Philippians 3: 13-14
With all of the things in front of the apostle Paul, he boiled his life down to just one thing, “forgetting,” and then “reaching forth.”
To know what to forget enables me to understand what to reach forward to. That certainly will simplify my life.
Dr. Snyder is a former pastor who lives with the Gracious Mistress of the Parsonage, wife Martha. His email is jamessnyder51@ gmail.com.
