Pardon My Progress

     There's a hotel in our town that is undergoing renovation.  At the onset, it was one big mess- old furniture strewn about the grounds, debris cluttering the parking lot.  Little by little, the mess has been cleaned up and the facade of the building has taken on a new look.  Still the work remains incomplete, presumably renovation going on inside, as the doors have not yet opened for business and there remains a sign upon the marquis that reads, "Pardon our progress."

     I love that sign.  It's ripe with hopeful anticipation of something glorious yet to come.  And I've pondered that sign.  I've determined that I really need one hanging around my neck.  "Pardon my progress."  It would serve to remind myself and others that I'm not a finished piece.  Sometimes I forget that.  I'm not how I was.  Some of my messiness has been cleared away.  But sometimes the mess I cant see is so much more far reaching than some of the outward junk.  Like a tree grown around a wire fence, the wire embedding itself into the young sapling, I have things embedded into my being that were never intended to be a part of who I am.  Lies I've embraced distort my perception of truth.  The toxins seeping from heart wounds have damaged my ability to give and receive love.  If I'm to continue becoming, renovation remains a must.

     I could settle, I suppose.  After all, it's not like I can't tell improvements have been made.  Quite frankly, I'm growing impatient as I look within and recognize how much work is left.  I think of the hotel.  More than likely there are those who drive by and wonder what in the world is taking so long.  The outside appears to be in order; open up already!  But if they caught a glimpse of what remains left to be finished, they would understand.  It's still a big mess.  But what's more important still, I believe, is that they catch a glimpse of what's yet to be.  If they were to see beyond the mess and gain a vision for the end result, I think their impatience would be tempered.  And maybe if I were to wear a reminder about my neck, a sign reading "Pardon my progress", the impatience I have toward my seemingly stunted growth would likewise be tempered.

     Truth be told, I'm just as guilty of looking at others on their journey of becoming with the same intolerance toward their slow growth as I am myself.  It's so easy to desire grace for myself, desperately wanting others to take note that I remain incomplete- I'm a masterpiece still in the making- while I pass judgment based on their lack of completeness.  Maybe if we all were to don pardon signs, we'd remember to look beyond what we can see to the potential for what can become.

Making THE Difference

            Articles are interesting little things.  An article, grammatically speaking, is a word used to modify a noun.  They’re similar to an adjective, although an adjective is generally more descriptive, whereas an article is used to point out a noun.  They’re rather bland as far as words go.  In this regard, adjectives completely dominate.  And being rather bland, they often fade into the background for me. “I went to the store.”  The.  A.  An.  Boring!  Boring, perhaps, but not altogether insignificant.

            Take, for instance, the familiar phrase “to make a difference”.  I both love and detest this phrase.  Certainly it evokes a prompting of sorts, a desire to be a part of something big and amazing.  But that a in there… It causes me pain.  A difference.  That seems so ambiguous, and it seems to carry with it an unspoken mandate to make such a difference large and meaningful and important.  To bring about such a feat, the doer of the deed must therefore be meaningful and important.  And to be quite honest, most days I feel much more like a baby chicken than a soaring eagle.  Let’s just be honest:  not even a baby chicken.  They’re cute and fuzzy and cuddly and elicit adoration from onlookers.  I feel like just a regular chicken, pecking my fool head off to try to find whatever it is I’m supposed to be looking for, every now and again flapping my silly little wings when I get an inflated sense of self and think of myself as something more than a flightless, ground pecking non-eagle.  My focus immediately shifts to what I’m not, and that nagging voice inside my head incessantly yaps to me of my failures, real and perceived, and paralysis sets in, and I once more do absolutely nothing to yield any sort of difference.

            I wonder, though, what if we were to simply change the article in that phrase?  What if, rather than attempting to make a difference, we instead attempted to make the difference?  To say that someone has made a difference, their status immediately elevates, and we view them as some sort of super human whose level of significance we will never attain.  To make a difference is to be important, to be significant, to matter.  To know this of ourselves- that we’re on this planet for more than decoration- is a longing every member of the human race has in common.  We want to be important; we want to matter.  What I believe we fail to understand, though, is that our “mattering” is intrinsically woven into the very strands of our souls.  We matter because of who we are, not what we do.  The “what” is supposed to merely be a natural output of the “who.”  But for so many of us, the significance of who we are has been lost.  Sadly, for some people, never have they experienced the truth of their worth.  To make a difference is to be important; to make the difference is to change the nature of something.  I have no doubt that some of us were born to do things that all would esteem as significant and amazing and incredibly noble.  I wonder, though, if some of those world changers are holding those differences as merely untapped potential, unseen potential, because there are those who, would they embrace the truth that their significance is intrinsic, that the value of the difference they make doesn’t get to be defined by anyone else but that it’s value is beyond all worth nonetheless, would make the difference in the life or lives of those whose worth is hidden from them and change the very nature of a soul.  Sounds pretty noble to me.