The Wetsuit

I woke up grumpy today.

Not irritated.

Not annoyed.

Grumpy.

The kind of grumpy that feels like wearing a wetsuit you can’t take off.

Nothing is actually wrong.

Everything is technically fine.

But you’re uncomfortable anyway.

And then you’re annoyed that you’re uncomfortable because you know you should be grateful.

I hate that kind of grumpy.

So I did what any reasonable adult would do.

I tried to solve myself.

Coffee.

Reading.

A walk.

Then another walk because apparently the first walk wasn’t inspirational enough.

Church.

Still grumpy.

At this point, I was running out of solutions and beginning to suspect the problem might be me.

So I sat on a bench by the river and started asking why.

Maybe it was because I stayed up too late watching the Knicks.

Except that couldn’t be it.

The Knicks had just come back from twenty-nine points down.

As a lifelong Knicks fan, that’s not a source of grumpiness.

That’s evidence that God occasionally shows off.

Maybe it was because I ate like a college freshman while watching the game.

Possible.

But that wasn’t it either.

Then it hit me.

I’ve changed.

In many ways, for the better.

These days, I spend less time thinking about myself and more time thinking about the people I love.

I want to be a better husband.

A better father.

A better friend.

A better human being.

I’m grateful for that.

But somewhere along the way, anxiety moved in too.

For most of my life, I wasn’t anxious.

Now I occasionally overthink things with the enthusiasm of a man being paid by the worry.

Anxiety, for me, feels like that scene from the original Star Wars when Luke Skywalker is trapped in the trash compactor.

The walls keep moving inward.

You’re holding a pipe against them.

Trying your best.

But deep down, you know the pipe isn’t really doing much.

Nothing terrible is happening.

But the pressure is there.

And sometimes that pressure shows up disguised as grumpiness.

Just then, twelve geese came waddling toward me.

Not flying.

Waddling.

Like they had an appointment.

They spread out around the grass in front of the bench.

A few started eating.

A few honked.

One seemed determined to supervise the others despite having no obvious qualifications.

Then one goose hopped into the river.

Splash.

A minute later, another.

Splash.

Then another.

One by one, all twelve climbed into the water and drifted downstream together.

And somewhere between the first splash and the twelfth, something changed.

Not my circumstances.

Not my future.

Not my problems.

My attention.

For a few minutes, I stopped staring at the inside of my own head.

I started paying attention to the world God had made.

The river.

The breeze.

The trees.

The geese.

The ordinary beauty that had been there all along waiting for me to notice it.

The walls didn’t stop moving.

My attention just moved somewhere else.

Sometimes God doesn’t send answers.

Sometimes He sends twelve geese.