Finding Direction: The Wind Vane Chronicles

That title sounds like a contradiction in terms because how can life be lived intermittently, you wonder. You are either alive or you’re not. No intermittentcy about it.

But that doesn’t seem to be the case around here where we live. Everything – and I do mean everything, including life itself – seems to be operating on an intermittent, stop and start, sputtering along erraticly, basis.

Our electric power stops and starts, surges, slows down, stops all of the clocks in the house, which must be constantly reset, and then does it again.

Cable access to the internet on our computer suffers fits of erratic behavior causing us great consternation (okay, that’s mostly me we’re talking about here!). But, it is terribly aggravating. (Especially when one is in the middle of a brilliant blog post and internet service goes out! ha!) And it’s going out frequently, sometimes for hours at a time.

The same is true for TV. Sometimes just certain channels disappear, sometimes they all do.

Gasoline is hard to come by at times. That is, regular grade gas at the stations that are the least expensive. It is all expensive (as you all well know), but the ones with gas a few cents less run out first. At best, there are long lines with some of the pumps bagged.

Trash pickup in the neighborhood is on some kind of sporadic schedule that no one understands or can predict. So piles of trash and garbage sit out on the curbs for days and days at a time without being picked up and taken.

Telephone service isn’t reliable, either. Our line now seems to be okay, but most in the area are not working properly and trying to reach anyone or any business sometimes takes many tries, and even then one can’t get through. With cell phones, it’s even worse.

So we’re really talking about communication of all kinds here being in various types of limbo with no end date in sight.

It’s quite disconcerting. Very unnerving. Wears on the mind.

Thus the mind, too, begins to suffer from intermittent lapses of its own. It loses function from excess of displacement in so many necessary, routine areas of life.

Those areas of displacement are multiplied many times over in people all around – everyone you meet and talk with throughout the day – over and over and over.

You cannot escape it no matter where you turn.

You get very tired of thinking about it and want it all to go away, for things to return to "how they were" when things were "normal." Life was "normal." You want that back. You don’t want to talk about it any more or write about it any more or deal with it any more. You’ve had enough!

You begin to feel paranoid about it, yet cannot find a cure. What’s even worse is that everyone else around you suffers the same way.

For most, the intermittent life is much worse. They don’t even have homes to live in to experience the losses of power and communication. They are all staying somewhere else, with someone else. Many have no clue what to do.

We have kept some of them ourselves and it looks like we are going to be keeping even more in days and even weeks to come.

It is not easy anywhere, even for the strong.

Our only hope is God and His comfort and presence. I thank God for every blessing I have every day and express that thanks to everyone I meet, along with the promise of prayer and hope for them at His hand.

Tom has been working extremely long hours every day of the week for weeks now because he is so short handed (as is every business around), but each night when he finally gets home we talk together first about how thankful we are, and blessed, for all that we have when so many around us have so much less. And we try to do our part. How can we do any less.

So even though you are probably sick and tired of hearing all I have been saying here of late, which seems even to me to be repetitive and over and over again until even I get sick of it – please don’t tune me out. Please.

Remember those hundreds of thousands of fellow Americans who are truly and deeply suffering physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually and pray that those of us who are Christians may help to light their way.

May God bless us all.