The Wrong Side of The Bed

I’m pretty sure I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. Or as Sara Groves once said in her song How Is It Between Us: “Woke up on the wrong of the bed, the wrong side of the room, the wrong side of the world…”

I haven’t had a particularly bad day. My classes weren’t terrible. Nothing overly frustrating happened.

Yet I feel a little like I could snap off someone’s head. And I’ve felt like this all day.

I’m pretty sure this desire is not very Reverendly. Yet it’s very human. And Reverends are human, too.

As I drove home today, brooding about all of the things that are bothering me in my snap-off-someone’s-head grumpiness—borrowing but not returning, making plans but not communicating, taking but not giving, pretense but not integrity, surface but not depth, expecting someone else to do your job, leaving things worse than when you found them, beauty skin deep, ignorance, jealousy, disrespect, rejection—I prayed that God would help me turn my wrong-side-of-the-bedness into something that might be meaningful to someone else.

Immediately, I thought of a recent conversation with a friend. “Please keep us in your prayers,” she said—as she pointed to her family. She said no more; I asked no questions. A few days later, when we had a few moments to talk, I said, “I’ve been praying for you. Is there something you want to talk about?” With tears in her eyes, she shook her head and said, “I can’t.” And she couldn’t. There were no words. I made a guess as to what might be burdening her. She affirmed that my guess was correct. I told her that I would keep praying. And I will. And I did in the car in the midst of my brooding…suddenly feeling really small for being so ridiculously and selfishly petty in my thinking when there is so much deep hurt and suffering in this world.

Have I experienced deep hurt and suffering? Yes. Is it ridiculous and selfish to acknowledge and feel that hurt? No. Please hear that. I think sometimes we diminish real suffering out of a misguided sense of humility and selflessness and an unhealthy comparison of there always being someone struggling with more. But deep hurt is not what I’m feeling today. I just woke up on the wrong side of the bed…and I never found a way to get myself to the other side.

Although…I think I may be finding a way to get myself to the other side right now. I think that in praying specifically for my friend, I’m finding a way to lay down my brooding and awaken a calmer sense of purpose in myself—a quiet, steady service of love.

Oh. I pray all day, everyday. Sometimes I feel as if I have credits rolling through my mind—a long list of people who are important to me, who I want to offer to God in prayer—students, coworkers, family members, people from my past, people from my present—but sometimes those credits roll so quickly that they can roll at the same time as other thoughts—and brooding.

But this intentional praying. These specific prayers. They don’t leave room for anything other than themselves...and the reminder that, “Greater love has no one than this that (she) lay down her life for her friends.”

And then…evidently…she will have the opportunity to get up on the right side of the bed.