OMG!!!

OMG!!! by Bernie

So I was listening to my eight year old granddaughter having a conversation with her eight year old friend. The friend was talking about a third party who was not present.

"So she says to her," the friend said of the third party. "'Oh my God, I hate you."

"That wasn't nice," my granddaughter admonished. "She shouldn't have said that. It's one of the Commandments. She should have said 'Oh my gosh, I hate you.'"

The other girl agreed.

I was very proud of my daughter at that moment -- her efforts to instill a sense of right and wrong in her daughter are bearing fruit. And I was very proud of my granddaughter for having the courage to use this knowledge in her everyday life.

Life is a little complicated most of the time. It is difficult to get a firm grasp on all its elements. Just when you think you've got it under control the transmission in the car goes out, or you burn the dinner on the stove top, or you lose your job. Oh my God, what am I going to do?  Worse still are those times when you are in control, or so you think, and still you wind up doing or saying the exact wrong thing. Oh my God, I shouldn't have done that.

My granddaughter is appropriately myopic in her observations about the world. She's eight, she's allowed to be. Hopefully, some day soon, she will begin to realize there is another dynamic at work in the statement she heard and with equal courage question the appropriateness of hate.

When I look at myself in the mirror, the phrase that most often comes to mind nowadays is Oh my God, I am getting old. I am really trying to move past this being simply an expletive. I am trying to embrace this as a prayer, trying to be grateful and hopeful. Oh my God, thank you for getting me this far, thank you for allowing me to see the fruits of my labor, thank you giving me the sense to appreciate life in all its dimensions. But there are those days when I am most keenly aware of the aches and pains, when I feel particularly diminished by the things that don't work anymore, when resignation replaces anticipation, and on those days I am saying Oh my God, do you see what's happening to me?

Then again, sometimes looking in the mirror is not a spiritual experience at all -- you just look at the skid marks and the wreckage and wonder if drinking contributed to the accident or did you just fall asleep at the wheel. In this case, follow my granddaughter's advice and say Oh my gosh, look at that mess.

There is nothing to fear, but fear and chupacabras.

 

So I am  going along living my life happily, believing that all is well. We have shelter, we have plenty to eat, and we are warm. I have done the math, and there are sufficient funds to keep us sheltered, fed and warm for the foreseeable future. Then I read this article on the BBC News web site about  "the 99ers."  This is a phrase that describes those in the US who have received the maximum 99 weeks of unemployment benefits and still find themselves without work. There are several interviews with 99ers who are of course good people who have come upon hard times. They have lost their homes and their dignity, and they are broke.

I do not doubt there are many 99ers out there, and my heart goes out to them. I am not one of them, however, and I have God to thank for that. He has been most generous to me, and has provided me with a family that has stewarded our resources well.

Funny thing is that when I read an article like this, alarm bells start ringing inside my head and I begin to think that I must be wrong about something. Maybe I added the numbers wrong. Maybe the stock market is going to crash and we will lose everything. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

What if I happen to be the first human in to live to be 200 years old? Do I have the resources to cover that?

I don't know if everybody who retires goes through this, and I don't know how long I'll continue to get rattled when I hear about how bad things can be. I know there is a lesson here about trusting in God, and maybe one day I'll figure that out.

In the meantime, Sand and I are canceling our plans to go to Texas. I read they've got blood sucking chupacabras there, probably stealing money from old people.

I'm just sayin'.