Dr. James L. Snyder
After many years of denial, I finally realized how easily I am confused. Why it took me so long to realize this, I will never know.
If only I could go back to my wonderful teenage years when I knew everything and nobody could tell me what to do. Why do those days go by so quickly?
Now, I’m at the stage where I’m looking at life a little more realistically than I did back in my teenage years.
The main problem with this is not only can I get confused, but I rarely know when I’m confused. That in itself is confusing to me.
I am not blaming old age because, as I look at my life, I’ve been confused throughout although I didn’t know it at the time. I have no idea what old age contributes to my state of confusion each day.
The Gracious Mistress of the Parsonage is the one person in our home who is never confused. I’m not sure how she has done this all these years. It can’t be easy living with someone like me, who’s always confused.
I’ll be working in my office, she’ll step in and say, “Are you ready to go?”
A little surprised, I look up from my desk and say, “Go where?”
She looks at me for a moment and says, “Don’t you remember you have a doctor’s appointment today?”
What,” I will say, “do I have a doctor’s appointment for?”
At that point, I am in a real state of confusion. But I had to ask, “It’s not a psychiatrist, is it?”
“Oh, I wish,” she says and walks away.
I could not remember my doctor’s appointment for today. Do I really have a doctor’s appointment? Or is she taking me to see her doctor?
Surely, there must be some advantage to being confused. I’m going to search for it until I find it, and until then, I will operate in my confused mode.
When I grab my truck keys and head for the door, The Gracious Mistress of the Parsonage often asks, “Do you know where you’re going?”
I don’t think I would’ve been confused if she hadn’t asked that question. Obviously she knows something I didn’t know. I look back at her, smile, and ask, “No, where am I going?”
On my way to the door, I thought I knew where I was going. I carefully planned everything out: where I was going and what I would do and when I would return home. But when she questioned me, all that came up in my fuzzy mind was confusion. Do I really know where I’m going?
I wouldn’t say this out loud, but I sometimes think she does that intentionally to confuse me. And boy, is she an expert at that. When I’m confused I’m easy to manipulate.
When working on a writing project I am never confused. I know exactly what I’m doing and quite content and what I’m doing.
My biggest problem is knowing if I should do something or not. I can never figure that out. “To do, or not to do?” That seems to be my confusion.
I get up early in the morning, take my coffee to my easy chair, and enjoy those few moments of quietness. During that time, I think of my schedule for the day.
It’s easy to think of what I could do, but my most demanding job is figuring out what I should not do. If I do everything I want to do, I’m never going to finish anything. I need to learn to manage my time so I don’t sink into the swamp of confusion.
Thinking along this line, it occurred to me that if I could figure out what not to do I believe I could get much more done. Differentiating between “do and don’t” is very hard for me.
If I do what I don’t have to do, it takes away time to do what I should do. Oh boy, this is very confusing.
I recently spent a week observing The Gracious Mistress of the Parsonage, watching her every step. I wanted to see her aspect of “do and don’t”. The end result of that week was I couldn’t find anything she didn’t do. She is the Do Queen of the Parsonage. I could not find one thing she didn’t do.
I wish I could understand how that happens and differentiate between “do and don’t”. That would eliminate some of my confusion, I think.
Perhaps that is why people get old and forget things. Maybe it’s a good thing to forget some things. If only I could select the things to forget, my life would be a lot better and less confusing.
Until then, I will wallow in my confusion.
While pondering this I was reminded of a verse of Scripture in Philippians 3:13-14. “ Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
With all of the things in front of the apostle Paul, he boiled his life down to just one thing, “forgetting,” and then “reaching forth.” To know what to forget enables me to understand what to reach forward to. That certainly will simplify my life.
Dr. James L. Snyder lives in Ocala, FL with the Gracious Mistress of the Parsonage. Telephone 1-352-216-3025, e-mail jamessnyder51@gmail.com, website www.jamessnyderministries.com
