Flipping Pages

by: Kandie Delley {2000}- document editing in progress.

There you go again. You bought or checked out another book and still haven’t finished reading it. It just sits there on the sofa, the bookshelf, the TV or coffee table. I know, I know. Your intentions were genuine. You had finally convinced yourself to get the book all your friends were raving about. So far it’s a good book. Full of twists and turns, broad characters, adventure, romance, suspense and DRAMA with just a touch of comedy to smooth it over. Sounds a little like life huh?

But once again you’re stuck in the middle. In the beginning you were jamming through the first chapters and now for some reason the thrill is gone. You’re still a little intrigued to find out how it ends, but there’s a part of you now jaded. Maybe there’s a subplot in there that wasn’t believable? So you stop reading and become content with just wondering about it.

Soon days turned into weeks and weeks into months. You stumble across ‘The Book’ a few times and try to recapture your initial enthusiasm. But wait, you forgot a few things about the characters. You decide to read over a few previous chapters to refresh your memory.

You do this routine over and over again until it becomes a broken record. It becomes a cycle, kind of never-ending. What’s so amazing is as people the same thing happens with our lifestyles. When we’re young (at least for most of us) life was new and exciting. We went through life with reckless abandon. We seemed to laugh at fear and embrace change. We cradled love and were patient with time. We were usually willing to take a chance, meet new people and experience all that life had to offer.

Somewhere down the road we bumped into lost loves, phony friendships, financial hardships, and lack of self-identification. You know the daily pitfalls of getting older and the growing pains of becoming a young adult? To be honest, you weren’t really prepared for this. A few were but a lot of us were raised in family tradition so it’s like stepping into unknown territory. True, the classroom instruction and family support aided against disappointments and failures. They were there to give a hearty pat on the back for achievements. However, this roller coaster of life was a whole new ballpark. Our environments impact us socially, physically, spiritually and mentally. We each have our own way of reacting to these changes. Some of us rebound a lot quicker. Some us dwell on the past (re-reading the same chapters of that book…) others hold grudges and some of us become so discouraged that our inner child goes into hiding. We lose a part of who we are. Always trying to please others or in a self-conscious sense, we are constantly trying to mold ourselves into what we believe we should be.

It’s a big mental trip. You don’t know what to do, because you don’t recognize the problem. When you don’t recognize the problem you walk around in circles, you live in cycles. You attract the same negative-type people. You go through the blaming game not realizing that when you point the finger, three are pointing back at you.

Finally you realize what’s going on, after you’ve been in limbo for nearly two years. I like to call this limbo period the “holding tank” based off of a powerful sermon that God used our senior pastor to offer. It was a comparable story to Jonah and the Whale. The sermon impacted me so much that I remembered my own personal storm between the years of 95-99. I realized that I got comfortable.

For a complete transcript of this article please contact transcripts@kandelmedia.com with “Flipping Pages” in the subject field. Thanks!

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