The Growing List Of Things That Just Don’t Matter.

I’m coming up on my fifty second birthday.  There are things I don’t like, as I get older.  And many, many things I do, that I didn’t even notice before.  I like a sunny day, and boring things like that.  I dream one day of going off-grid, even though I probably wouldn’t give up my Facebook long enough to do it.  My favorite vacation is the time my wife and I went to a cabin in the mountains above Gatlinburg, a place we almost had to four-wheel-drive to get to.  We rented a couple movies, did a couple days of sightseeing, but the rest of the time, we just sat around and said “wow” at the view.  Boring?  Not for us.

At my ripe old age I like brussel sprouts, and very fresh fish.  I don’t care as much for pizza as I used to, and I don’t do well with chemicals and preservatives in my food, just because Melissa is allergic and I am now not used to them.

Here’s the big one, I don’t like talking politics for any reason with any person.  I try hard, not to participate in dinner table debates, or comment on political posts on Facebook.  I don’t speak of my opinions at church. In fact, no one there would likely be able to guess what party I am registered with (by the way, I am registered with the national “Send Them All Home” party).  When I visit my dad, I smile and nod as much as I can, because we get along now as adults much better than we did when I was a rebellious teenager, and he is pretty convinced of his views and frankly I don’t always disagree, and even when I do, I simply don’t have a need to convince him anymore.  I’d rather just have the good part of the relationship, and leave the politics to the voting booth.

I know politics are important, and I am a “patriot, more than a pinhead” and I know this thanks to a famous conservative commentary.  I’m not advocating apathy, and I’m not saying that I don’t care, in fact, quite the opposite is true.

But here’s the deal:  I am just tired.  Dead tired.  Tired of conflict.  Tired of anger, fighting, killing, the evening news, the wonderfully salacious, and even the beautifully sexual, because mostly it wants to sell me something.  Tired of being told if I don’t fit into a size 32 pants and can’t run a fast 5K I’m less of a human being.  Tired of being too fat, too thin, too small, too big, too educated, too worldly.  Tired of being told what to feel, what to buy, what to believe, what to love, what to hate, what to eat, and what not to eat.  I can’t keep track of what is killing me one year and is a good antioxidant the next.  Coffee and red wine, both bad for you and both the best things you can have at least once a day.  I am more and more convinced that more and more of our lives are about the way we behave as consumers, and I’m over that now.  I do suspect every telephone company truck has government secret agents in it, and they are watching me.  Don’t go into the convenience store, they take your picture and they know where you live.  Just kidding.  But really, it’s true.

I have lots of feelings, one way or the other about the events of the day, but here is the way most of them affect me.  For example, gay rights, and gay marriage vs.  the pristine ordained marriage between one man and one woman.  I am not gay, so it doesn’t affect me really (right?).  I do know I would not want a gay person telling me that I could not get married because I was straight, and only gay marriage was ordained.  And I would be extra angry if there was a discount I could get on my taxes or other costs if I was just a little gay.  So here’s my position.  I believe my marriage was God’s plan for my life.   I’m grateful more than I can express for that marriage.  I believe that a gay person’s marriage is between them and God, too.  If it’s right, God will bless it, and if it’s not God’s will, God will take care of that, too. Frankly I am still too freaking busy trying to figure out if I am good enough to throw the first stone yet.  (I’m not.)

So I have a plan.  A new plan.  I have decided that there is so much more is on my “It doesn’t matter to me” list than ever before.  In fact, that list was very small when I was young, but it is huge now and growing exponentially with every year.  So I am re-tooling now for the next phase of life.  The wonderful fifties.  I love the age I am now, and it’s getting better all the time.

I have a plan that should provide more efficiency.  I am starting a list of what I DO care about.  From now on, everything will start automatically on the “doesn’t matter” list.  The “things that matter” list will be guarded judiciously, and anything that ends up there will have to be defended regularly to remain.  One of the main filters in my new way of thinking will be the filter of grace giving instead of grace killing (thanks to C. Swindol). I will live in a permanent state of “First Stone Grace,” meaning that the task of considering my own sin (before I get to throw that first stone as in John 8:7) is too great a task for me to ever really get around to judging others, and I will live in that “First Stone” state of mind.  Not cheap grace, because it wasn’t cheap, it cost a lot, but grace none-the-less; a grace so big, and so complete that I will never be done sizing it up against my own gratitude.  In fact, I may not have time to judge anyone else for a very long time, and my list of things that don’t matter is going to have to cover a lot more stuff.