Sticking People I Know to the Wall

A funny thing happened while I was stripping wallpaper off my bathroom walls today. Yes. THAT bathroom. The pepto-abysmal one with the teal wallpaper which refuses to just peel off.

THGGM, mostly-helpful man that he is (although, presently he is ill) heard somewhere that if I would stick wet newspaper to the wall and let it sit (he did not remember for how long, hence the label of 'mostly'-helpful) it would just roll right off.

Roll. Right. Off. It. Did. Not.

Have you gotten newspaper wet recently and held it up over your head? Newsprint is really gray water, which strives to seek it's own level by rolling down my arms and coating me in damp gray.

This, of course, is pleasant compared to what rolls down once the glue is eaten away by the pleasant smelling Downy mixture which is destroying the skin on my hands. Oh. And the dripping Downy water mixed with glue, tiny bits of wallpaper and wet newspaper makes the floor very slippery. But, you probably guessed that. I did not guess that. I experienced that.

Anyway. That wasn't the funny part.

The funny part was how as I lifted a wet piece of newspaper to stick on the wall, I noticed a 50th Anniversary announcement of some old friends of mine. Let's call them R and J. There they were, in the newspaper.

I hadn't thought of them in years. Years. Like, almost twenty years.

The newspaper-soaking-sticking-peeling went much faster while pleasant thoughts of a very unpleasant time in my life passed through my mind.

R and J were part of a class I went to on Monday nights for a few years. They were world-class-know-it-alls. Self-proclaimed answer people. But, their lives fell apart and knowing the answer was no longer enough.

Have you ever witnessed this happen to someone? It isn't pretty. I think it hurts worse to watch it happen to someone else than to actually have it happen to oneself.

R and J broke, like everyone else who lasted through that class. There's not a verse, a word, a minister, a church that can fix a person once they are broken.

Because, broken is the only way we are of any use to God.

If we aren't broken, what's inside has no way to get out.

We may have great plans, fabulous ideas, excellent agendas and the perfect program, but unless what we are pouring out to the people around us is the love of God being continually poured into us, we have nothing to give.

When I saw R and J's picture, that is what I thought of them. Love pouring out into a room full of people who could have cared less about what R and J thought they had to offer. Because the real stuff is so much better.

I learned something from them.

We don't get to choose what life throws at us. We don't get to choose how those we love respond to what gets thrown at them. But, we do get to choose how we respond.

Intelligence, knowledge, achievements, and willingness to be used have little to no lasting effect on the people around us.

Vulnerability (faith? - we cannot see it), brokenness (hope? - total healing hasn't taken place yet) and love are the three things R and J graced my life with. And the greatest of these?

Love.

Today I stuck a lot of pictures of engaged people, just married people and anniversary celebrators to my bathroom wall. I'm so thankful that I noticed R and J's picture. How fitting, that this month they celebrate that.