Surgery at the ice cream store

I was out at lunch today with my son. A woman sitting in Braum's (an ice cream/burger joint in Texas) said something that I think everyone uses to never change. I remember their conversation fading into mine (mine was a conversation about lights, Nate is quite enamored with them) as I fed ice cream to my son. I remember about the time I was thinking "is this ice-cream too hard for him, is he going to choke?" (I'm a new dad okay...) I heard this woman's voice fading into the foreground of my reality. "You see, you see! Everyone has issues, everyone, see, I told you everyone is screwed up." So, as a counselor I was drawn in, not verbally but stealthily as she began to speak about things that no one should and I began to hear things, sadly true, angering and hopeless things.

You see this woman began to tell her friend "that's why I gave up...its no use, no one can get over their issues, so I give up." Now, there is this part of me, a counseling part, that almost blurted out "Here's my card!" But alas, I was staid by a curiosity as to what exactly was this woman's issues and how are we all the same as her? Now Nate, my 1 year old, sat back in his chair pointing at the lights saying "Ga, Ga" and letting chocolate chip ice cream drip down his chin. I no longer cared about his chin, my duty was no longer about ensuring his aesthetically pleasing appearance, it was about eaves dropping on this woman.

She sat just one table away at this place, where all tables are not wiped down, sticky and crammed in closer than a bunch of hippies in a telephone booth (?what?). "My meds are just getting too expensive and he (the doctor) just keeps marking up my dose, that's all they (docs) do, push medicine." Now I am really intrigued, I am about to be privy to knowledge that I could only attain if I were on this woman's HIPAA forms, and I am not. Her friend looks over her shoulder at me as if to see if I am listening, I quickly glance away and start yammering to Nate about the ice cream. At this point I begin to survey their table, double cheese burgers, a mound (seriously, a REAL mound) of fries and each woman has at her disposal, a banana split. Two on one table, my wife and I usually share one. "He says he won't (this is the poor doc again) be able to get it approved, my surgery, because I haven't "tried everything" (she actually made the little finger parenthesis signs) so I'm arguing with my insurance company."

This is not made up, she was talking about diabetes meds and bariatric surgery. Everything was the doctors fault and the insurance company's fault, no one would approve the surgery, everyone keeps shoving pills in my face. But where is the personal responsibility? Oh, yeah, back at the beginning of the blog---"You see, you see! Everyone has issues, everyone, see, I told you everyone is screwed up." No longer is this woman asked to be responsible as she has bought into the notion that we are all screwed up, all taken advantage of and with that knowledge she lives her life demanding to be taken care of despite her actions, because after all we are all screwed up. No one is able to control their diabetes, no one can control their appetite, no one can control their porn addiction, alcohol use etc.

This mentality is what keeps people stuck in their wounds as well. I hear countless times, "well, my life wasn't as bad as the next guys". Well then who is that poor guy at the end of the line whose life was THE WORST life? Seriously? Where is that line drawn where woundedness and "issues" are bad enough to actually do something about them? We are all called to let our stories be true (God is truth, he wants us to live there too). This means that we are not supposed to allow our issues to remain just because other people have them too. Our issues are invitations from God to see Him move in places that feel hopeless and out of control. Everyone does have issues because we live in a fallen world where everyone has been wounded. And, thankfully, everyone has the invite from our Father to allow Him to meet you in those wounded places...He waits in the messy parts of our hearts, go seek Him there. Surgery, alcohol, sex, porn, etc might not be your answer after-all.