Alternate Routes

Lately, I feel like I'm experiencing a miraculous continuity of themes in my life. Something will be on my mind and then someone else brings it up- or I see it in a TV show- or I read it in my Bible. You know that feeling when you have something to say and then the conversation gets sidetracked and you completely forget what it was? I feel like my whole life has been that feeling, thoughts running through my fingers like sand. Now I'm experiencing this season of completed thoughts and it's kind of epiphanic (isn't that a good word? what a word!). Any who, this week's thought is about alternate routes. I know, spoiler in the title.

One of my recent projects has been rebuilding a bulky, overcomplicated Excel report. Full of tabs, unnecessary formulas, and overwhelming data, it didn't quite suit its purposes. It often malfunctioned and its complicated appearance kept people from making use of it. As we delved into each redundancy and overdone function, we realized the root of the problem was an aversion to changing things that were already done (even when they needed to change) or learning a new way of doing things (even when the old ways didn't work). As I spoke with someone about this realization, I thought about how much I've learned in my professional life. I've also been guilty of being afraid to try another way. Even if I knew I could be more effective by changing my methods, I was too lazy or to anxious to try. Especially when I first started in leadership at work, I would avoid learning new tasks. If someone else knew how and I could say 'oh, you'll have to do it. I don't know how!'- I got to:

A) Be lazy
B) Deflect responsibility if something went wrong
C) Avoid having to feel stupid while figuring something out for the first time

Things like that don't tend to just happen without consequences, so in turn I became:

1) A bad leader
2) A mediocre employee
3) An unhelpful and disappointing peer
4) An unhappy, unfulfilled person whose growth (with promotions, recognition, positive relationships, and personal satisfaction) was COMPLETELY STUNTED BY MY OWN ACTIONS

Sometimes when I feel like I'm onto something (these themes in my head), I like to rattle them off to someone in long, excited raptures. My mom is one person who often happens to be available and who, history has shown, will enthusiastically engage with me about these half-formed ideas, either countering or agreeing and providing more examples. So, after a day of working on the unwieldy Excel workbook, I gave her a call. This stuff must have been in the back of my mind, because I actually started out talking about whether I would want to stay at home one day instead of working (that's a story for another day). Eventually I got to talking about how much I learn every day in the professional world. The report came to mind and we began to discuss it.

As we spoke, another story called itself up from memory. I thought of another time, before I gained all this #adulting knowledge. When I was in high school, I had an older friend who worked just outside the east side of town. The school was on the west side. On my lunch, I decided to go visit. The trouble was, I really only knew the path I was used to taking when I went to church each week- a path that started on the east side of town (where I lived). Instead of trying to figure out a better way, I went all the way to the edge of the east side to get to a long winding road that led to a turn onto another road that headed back west. I wasted almost my entire lunch period just trying to get there before realizing I didn't have the time to make it. I turned around and headed back to school, effectively disappointing my friend and myself.

In both of these situations, an alternate route was needed. In both situations, someone was afraid to do it. For me, it resulted in a wasted lunch period. For the author of the Excel report (and several people after), it resulted in wasted resources.

So what is the moral of the story (besides that I am obviously growing up and am so unbelievably wise)? It's that when we refuse to change routes, when we refuse to blaze a trail or try something different, there's waste. We waste our potential (because we can't reach it through the old paths). We waste our time (because doing things the wrong way always takes longer in the end). And we waste our good will (because the next person who has to come along and fix your mess may actually hate you a little bit). The moral of the story is...don't waste what you have been given because of fear.

If you're on this blog for generic inspirational nuggets, this is your stop. But if you want to dig a little deeper...

So...continuity. Connectedness. Here's the last part and then I promise I'll shut up. My new study Bible is fantastic because its focus is on cultural backgrounds. It sheds light on the deeper significance of things that we might not see in the context of our current environment. Things were different when the Bible was written and so the audience would have understood it differently than we do today. One of the first extremely illuminating notes I encountered talked about Abraham. He began to call upon the name of the Lord. So he prayed? Okay, we all do that these days. No big. He said "the Lord will provide." Yeah, that's what the preacher men say. And, well, God literally gave him a ram to sacrifice instead of his son. So duh, he thought God would provide after that. Oh but wait...he said that before it even happened. On the surface, neat statements (all of this in the first half of Genesis if you're interested)- but why are they so very special?

In Abraham's day, people were all on the polytheistic jam. The whole narrative of religion in the culture of all of his neighbors was rooted in it. They believed that there were the major gods, who probably didn't care about them at all, but who had a hand in the "big picture" stuff- the fates of the nations. Then there were their gods- household gods, city gods, regional gods. These guys actually listened to the prayers of the people and were considered kind of in charge of the people's welfare. They were connected to (as alluded to already) where you lived and who your family was. That Abraham began to see God as both the orchestrator of world events and available to him/personally concerned with his welfare was a complete departure from anyone else's belief system at the time.

Without telling him, 'worship only me,' God nudged him toward monotheism. He told Abraham to move to a new land. This was a HUGELY alternate route because inheritance, wealth, status, and safety were all connected to your people and location. Abraham listened. He moved away and the connection with his old gods was effectively broken. He learned to depend solely on the Lord and was blessed because of it. The Lord told him in Genesis 22:18: "through your descendants all the nations of the earth will be blessed- because you have obeyed Me." And He followed through. Abraham was the father of nations and his family led Israel for generations to come. Abraham broke tradition and habit. He chose an alternate route.

Jesus gave us a new route, too. Maybe I'm experiencing all this continuity because I'm seeing it in the Word. Long after the Old Testament days, a man came to change the game. He walked the old roads for us and gave us a new destiny.

Today a status came up in my Facebook Memories. This day last year, I had to go another way to get home from work because of snow, ice, and bad drivers. I proclaimed "I am the queen of alternate routes!" Well. I'm really not. But Jesus is the King of them.