Sometimes I Write

I’m often amused by the bumper stickers I see plastered on cars of all shapes and colors.  And there’s hardly ever just one, after all, how do you narrow down your thoughts and ideologies into a single sentence?  I guess Facebook and Twitter are good practice for that.  I find stickers far more entertaining than church signs, but I get wary of the negativity of them both. Maybe I’m looking for something to make me laugh or at least smile instead of something that insults me or makes me roll my eyes in disgust.

While sitting at a red light yesterday, I saw one that made me think.  It read, “Some days all I want to be is a missing person.”    Now, we can all relate to that, can’t we?  Life is demanding and an uphill haul.  We have people, activities, and commitments pulling at us from every direction and we’re screaming on the inside to be left alone for just one minute so we can think straight.  “Relax” isn’t a normal word in our vocabulary, and we feel like we’re not enough, can’t do enough, and can’t be enough to be satisfactory.  It’s overwhelming.  Being a missing person, or at least absent from the rat race, sounds so appealing to some of us.

What if the bumper sticker had read, “Some days I feel like I am a missing person.”  That changes things a bit.  Maybe these are people who wish they had so much happening in their lives they would be stressed about slowing down and having some breathing room.  Are missing people actively sought after?  Maybe by their loved ones, or the people who are paid to find them, but by the general public?  Probably not.  Every time I walk into WalMart I scan the missing persons board, but that’s usually about as far as my actions take me.  Honestly, I’m looking to see if any of my friends on the streets are up there.

My life is so busy that I don’t take up the cause of “missing people” except for the ones that are already in my life.  I have a few of those.  I’m sure you do too.  They’re the lonely people who aren’t being sought after by their families, don’t have many friends, and are feeling unloved.  Depression and self-medication are commonplace.  If they had a bumper sticker on their car, it would read, “Life sucks, then you die.”  And what am I doing about it?  Am I loving these people?  Am I meeting them right where they are at or am I demanding they become more like me first?  That is one of those hard questions I ask myself on a regular basis. And while that’s an easy description of our friends on the streets, I’m not talking about them.  I’m talking about the people in my church, my neighborhood, my Friday school group, and my circle of friends.

Maybe I’m taking this whole bumper sticker thing way too seriously.  Maybe I’m not.  Maybe wisdom shows up in unexpected places and I have to just go with it.  If you were to create a sticker that would describe your thoughts and ideologies FOR TODAY, what would yours say? I think mine would say, “Life is in the questions.”  There’s more to this…