Goldilocks and the brake
Mar 4th, 2008 by Jesse Moore
I’m been trying for days to write a Goldilock’s post: not too heavy, not too light, but a “just right” post about something insightful or interesting.
Nothing. For days…nothing. Even tonight, just a blank cursor blinking at me, taunting me with its weak pulse.
Then I lay down for bed, and thoughts come crashing at me uncontrollably. Only each crash is a process: distraction, panic, regret and then the embrace. Each thought, and thus each process, is a wreck that I can’t avoid - the distracted look up at the road in front of me, panic at realizing I’m bearing too fast on the car in front of me. I slam on the brakes and miss - hitting the gas instead. Regret comes in the gap of time between my mistake and the results of my mistake realized, a brief high of awareness that is broken by the twisted embrace of the wreckage around me.
I laid in bed tonight and shivered with each virtual assault. This isn’t meant to be an analogy of some deep-seeded thing that I don’t feel like sharing. I spent the better part of today feeling nothing, only to lay in bed and feel the assault of everything. I saw the cars in front of me, and I heard the crunch of metal - smelled the incindiary powder from the airbags, only to have the event reverse itself and hurl me again into this conflict of inertia and metal.
I’m going to prepare myself for impact, and hope that this is only about a couple of thoughts that want to get through.
This is good Jess. All of us, at our stripped-to-the-waist bare honest core, feel like this quite often. We all feel like we’re moments away from a fatal crash, like we’re all out of control. Yet, while we’re all awaiting the embrace of the wreckage of our lives, we forget that the embrace we need is that of the One who loves us best.
I realize that people are going to have their own interpretation of this, and one of the hardest things I face regarding my writing is letting people come to their own conclusions
I felt this car wreck so vividly that I got up from bed and tried to capture it in words.
Lately I wake up early morning and dedicate my day to God, asking for wisdom in my choices throughout the day, and opportunities to leave the chains of fear, worry, and other “natural” responses to my life on the ground. I see the fruit from this behavior, but even on my best days it’s not without moments that I have trouble understanding. I just wanted to articulate this in some way…