My Desk

At the center of my desk--and taking up the largest chunk of real estate--is my computer, the very heart and soul, it seems, of all that I do. ‘If this thing goes into cardiac arrest,” I tell my husband, “take every heroic measure you can think of.”

Tucked in behind the monitor, more or less, is the stack of bills, permission slips and other important papers that “someday” I should do something about. Every now and again, I flip through it and say, “oh, that,” and “I better do this,” and “yikes!” But thenI return all to its place, a little neater perhaps, but no closer to “someday” than when I picked it up.

Scattered here and there on my desk are pictures of my dog (I swear she can smile) and my children at various ages and stages of their lives. While they were in them, I thought some of those ages and stages would never end; the terrible two’s, housebreaking (kids and dog), preschool. Now, suddenly, I find myself wondering what happened to those children in the pictures and how my dog got to be so old.

On the corner of the desk, there sits a pile of scrap paper, unused copies of my résumé torn into quarters (I wonder: is this how the résumés I send out wind up as well?). On these scraps I have written notes to myself: ideas for stories, drafts of emails; important dates; my grocery list. Sometimes, turning the paper back to front, it is an odd juxtaposition: the organized, professional me I would like the world to see; and the more scatter-brained me who couldn’t remember a thing if it wasn’t written down.

Which brings me to the drawer where I keep pens and pencils at the ready. It must be one of Murphy’s Laws that the first pen you grab from the drawer never works. Nor the second or even the third. Then again, there is a lot on my desk—old Kleenex, leftover food, coffee mugs--that once its usefulness has been exhausted can’t seem to find its way to the wastebasket or the sink.

You may wonder, perhaps, how I get anything accomplished in this mess and, most days, so do I. But, every now and again, it happens. A story is written, a bill is paid, or a memory is recaptured, banana peels and all.

One foot in front of the other

I was reading about Abraham today. Abraham, the one who God promised to make the father of a great nation; the one who was told at the ripe old age of 100+ to take his one and only son, Isaac, up a mountain to make a sacrifice of him. Usually, when I read that story, I jump right to the ending, the part where Abraham has the knife to his son’s throat and he spots a ram caught in the thicket. Today, however, this line caught my eye: "On the third day."

The third day! Abraham was climbing toward an uncertain fate for three days. For three days, he put one foot in front of the other not knowing the outcome, not even knowing, exactly, where he was going. The conversations he must have had with himself; the conversations he must have had with God. “How could you?” “You promised…” “What gives?” The very things I have been saying to God myself lately.

I wonder though, once it was over, what Abraham would have said. I imagine if given the chance to do it differently, or not at all, Abraham would choose to make the trip exactly the same way. Because what matters is not the way the story ends, but what happens along the way. In those three days, with each difficult step, each painful conversation, Abraham was moving one step closer to God, which was the point all along.

image: "Der Engel verhindert die Opferung Isaaks," Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, www.wikipedia.com