Control freak

Advent is season that celebrates interruptions. The annunciation interrupted Mary. She was in the middle of wedding planning, and was interrupted. Lauren Winner, a Duke professor writing in The Christian Century, said having a child is synonymous with interruption, so the good tidings Gabriel brings are tidings of a lifetime of interruptions. Winner goes on to marvel at what it takes to embrace an interruption. She said she’s not especially interested in being interrupted by God. “God’s plans seem rarely to coincide with my own.” Interruptions, she said,

lead to uncomfortable glimmers of self-awareness; they show me to be a prideful control freak who dares to think that whatever I’ve got on tap for the day is supremely important and who dares to think I own my precious time. They are interruptions that, when I let them, foster a little humility. And it is that hard-to-swallow fruit of humility that allows me to sometimes recognize these interruptions as God’s way of gradually schooling me in the grand imperatives of letting go of all I cling to and following Christ.

I’m pretty sure this latest diagnosis isn’t God trying to interrupt me. More like an annoying cat in your face begging for attention by digging his claws into your skin. (Did I say that out loud?) But this interruption has led to some uncomfortable self-awareness. When the ultra-sound came back problematic but I couldn’t get in to see a specialist for three and half weeks, it wasn’t the possible cancer recurrence possibility that concerned me as much as the inability to get everything taken care of in the week I had off at the end of the year.

If you know what I’m talking about, raise your hand. Control freaks unite!

Advent, the season of interruptions, is now past but I’m still waiting for another kind of interruption: the interruption of God’s revolution into the world–where endocrinologists are plentiful but we’re all too healthy to need them.