It's Always Darkest Before the Fridge Door Opens: Enjoying the Fruits of Middle Age

by Martha O. Bolton

  Last Nerves

  Most people are about as happy as

  they make up their minds to be.

  Abraham Lincoln

  How many times have you found yourself on your very last nerve? You’re not really sure what your daily allotment of nerves is, but one by one they have been getting killed off, and now that you’re down to your last one, you feel it’s only fair to warn everyone within earshot, ‘‘I’m down to my last nerve!’’

  You wish you could have given them an earlier warning, sort of like what they do with tornadoes, and have a siren go off, but we humans tend to run out of nerves so quickly, it’s hard to know when we’re on the last one. With tornadoes, the weather service can tell where rotation is happening in the clouds, and they can warn people accordingly. Nerves are a little trickier. People get on our nerves in so many places and situations throughout our day—at the mall, in rush-hour traffic, at work, at home, even in church. And without a chart telling us exactly how many nerves we’re using up with each encounter, how can we possibly keep a good tab on how many we have left? That’s what the world needs. A nerve chart, like one of those gas gauges on a car that will show you exactly how many more miles you can go before you run out of gas. Think of the frustration we could save ourselves if a chart like this was in existence. Well, we’re tired of waiting for someone to come out with such a chart, so we have developed our own. . . .

  Nerve Depletion Chart

  Action Nerves Used

  Telemarketer calling during dinner 4

  Girl tallying your groceries, chewing a wad of gum, and talking on her cell phone 6

  Inattentive waiter 3

  Phone conversation with a whiner 5

  Phone conversation with a braggart 8

  Door-to-door salesman who won’t take no for an answer 7

  Appliance calls it quits 5

  Stuck between two noisy parties on camping trip 9

  Noisy parties are playing rap “music” 17

  Children poking each other in backseat of car 9

  Son throws daughter’s iPod out car window 12

  Daughter throws son out car window 30

  Major car trouble (your car is at exit 136, the engine is at exit 135) 35

  Man cuts in front of you on the freeway 12

  Tie cut off in paper cutter 36

  The above list isn’t by any means complete, but we hope it gives you an idea of how quickly our nerves can get depleted throughout the day. It’s no wonder most of us are already on our last one by noon. Thankfully, there are other events we encounter that scientists believe can actually replace those beaten-down nerves.

  Nerve Replenishment Chart

  Action Nerves Replenished

  Check in the mail 12

  Someone saying thank-you 18

  Encouraging word 22

  Call from good friend 30

  Unexpected raise or promotion 37

  Someone really listening to you 24

  A hearty laugh at a good clean joke 25

  A repaired relationship 45

  Hug from a loved one 50

  Son buys daughter new iPod 78

  Daughter visits son in hospital to apologize for car window incident 341

  The apostle Paul reminds us in Philippians 4:4–6 to ‘‘Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.’’ Did you notice that Paul said that we are to rejoice always? Is he kidding? Rejoice in the middle of what I’m going through? No way!

  Yes way. How could he say that? Because he’s been in those difficult places, too. In fact, Paul was writing these words from prison, where he had every reason to be on his last nerve. Yet he chose to focus on three irrefutable truths for the weary and worn down. Three truths that can bring joy, peace, even laughter to our lives, in the midst of our circumstances.

  1. Rest in peace. Your Father is awake. Why should you be, too? He has promised that we will never have to walk through our disappointments, hurts, and frustrations alone. He will be there. So we can close our eyes at night and get the rest we need.

  2. Worry is a waste of good time. You know what they say, worry is like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but it will never take you anywhere. And what’s the cure for worry— prayer. God hears us when we bring our anxieties to him. So quit biting those fingernails. God didn’t intend for fingernails to be food.

  3. Be thankful. Joy grows best in the soil of thanksgiving. Even when you’re down to your last nerve, even when life is unfair, even when no one understands where you’re coming from, even when you’re being lied about, God has a way of sending nerve replenishers into our lives. People who counter every attack, every discouraging word, every hurt, and every disappointment. We won’t always recognize them (nerve replenishment often comes from people we don’t even know or expect anything from), but these stealth encouragers are secretly and steadily rebuilding our stock of nerves so that we’ll be able to face another day. God sends these nerve replenishers into our lives at just the right moment.

  Another good way to replenish our own nerves is to go in search of those who could use some nerve replenishing from us. You can’t help rebuild someone else’s nerves and not have a positive effect on your own.

  And then, with a restored nerve system, when our tie gets caught in the paper cutter, we’ll still be able to find something to be thankful for. At least it wasn’t our tongue.

  What do we live for,

  if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?

  George Eliot

  Empty Shelves

  It may be that your sole purpose in life

  is simply to serve as a warning to others.

  Steven Wright

  Reality. It’s a great place to visit, but do we really have to live there? I (Martha) once wrote a country lyric called, ‘‘The State of Denial.’’ It’s about moving back to the state of Denial because it’s a much nicer place to live. We don’t have to face the fact that our loved one lost their battle with cancer. We don’t have to deal with our job loss, our relationship breakup, a son or daughter’s poor choice, or any other factor of reality. The harder life gets, the higher the population grows in the state of Denial. It’s like our mothers used to tell us, ‘‘Denial isn’t just a river in Egypt.’’ It’s a place where all’s right and well with the world.

  The problem with living in such a state is the fact that not much happens there. We’re frozen in time, and if you’ve ever experienced a Canadian winter, as Phil has,1 you know that the only thing that grows when it’s frozen is water. There’s an old saying that goes like this: ‘‘Calm seas never made a great sailor.’’ How true it is. Growth almost always comes from the storms of life—from the pain we go through. If you’re like us, we’re not always looking for that kind of growth! We’d like calm seas and pristine sunsets and a daily buffet of good things. Prefer it, really. We’d like warmth in our hearts and full shelves in our refrigerators. But while these are nice, they are not always possible. We can console ourselves with the fact that difficulty helps us grow, that we’re not here to wilt but to bloom. That we don’t want to be twenty-six years old and still wearing toddler sizes, so the growth is helpful.

  All isn’t right and well with the world. We’re going to get hurt, we’re going to be disappointed, we’re going to have problems come crashing into our lives without warning or welcome. And like it or not, we’re going to grow and learn something from them all.

  Life is a succession of lessons. . . .

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  1Forty-four of them, in fact.

  Welcome to Whine Country

  It is no use to grumble and complain;

  it’s just as cheap and easy to rejoice.

  James Whitcomb Riley

  I (Phil) am a chronic complainer. I grumble. I gripe. I have grievances. I o
pen the fridge and find things there like grouse, carp, and sour grapes. Sometimes my whining gets on my wife’s nerves. She says, ‘‘You should quit whining, Phil.’’ But I tell her, ‘‘I’m not whining. And why do you always have to pick on me? And why aren’t there any apples left in the fridge? And what happened to my favorite cheese? And why isn’t there any iced tea made? And why are you nagging me about my whining?’’ I hate to admit it, but I have won the Wimbledon of whining and the Grand Slam of bellyaching all in the same week. These are the things I have found myself complaining about lately:

  The water from our tap. It leaves smudges on our cups.

  Mosquitoes. Big enough to ride.1

  Why I have to follow my teenagers around the house shutting lights off. It’s a full-time job.

  Long waits in doctors’ offices with mediocre reading material.2

  The weather, which includes snow in late April.

  Why the garbage truck never comes on time.

  The twenty-nine mateless socks in my sock drawer. Where are their poor partners? Is it true missing socks form the ring on Saturn? And why didn’t they tell me they were having problems staying together? I could have gotten them into counseling.

  Why all four wheels on my shopping cart go in opposite directions. Don’t they know that a shopping cart divided against itself cannot roll?

  The warning at the start of the movie that says, ‘‘This movie has been formatted to fit your screen.’’ Of course it’s reformatted. My screen is fourteen inches wide.

  How far I have to drive to church and why all the slow drivers switch lanes at precisely the same moment I do. And why doesn’t someone come out with a separate ‘‘cell phone lane’’ and let the rest of us drivers get on our way?

  Why we have a channel devoted completely to the weather and still they can’t get it right. I’m in rainstorms with no umbrella, snowstorms while dressed in shorts, and heat waves so intense I have no choice but to remove my parka. Can’t someone just tell me for sure what the weather is going to do so that I can dress appropriately and not waste ten bucks driving my car into an automatic car wash on a sunny day only to drive out at the other end perfectly cleaned and waxed just as the monsoon hits?

  I think my whining might get on God’s nerves once in a while, too. Maybe that’s partly the reason he allowed my wife and I and two of our three children to take a trip to a Third-World country (with the organization Compassion) right in the middle of the writing of this book. He knew how petty and hollow some of my complaints were going to sound in the face of real poverty and need.

  ‘‘Who moved my stapler?!’’ seems to shrink in importance when compared to ‘‘Daddy, why don’t we have anything to eat again tonight?’’

  Some children don’t stand at the fridge wondering what’s for supper because there is no fridge. There is no supper.

  On our trip, I held children who were orphaned when their fathers were electrocuted trying to tap into power lines so the family could have one bare light bulb in their house.

  We stood in a village that a hurricane had completely leveled, except for a church and the Compassion building. They told me the miraculous story with faces beaming. Yes, they’d lost everything. Yes, their homes had blown away. But the church was still standing.

  And there I stood in mid-grumble. The guy who gripes about the weather and lights left on and waiting on doctors. These people have never seen a doctor. I’m the guy with trivial complaints like the fact that my hair has gone underground and begun coming out my ears. What on earth do I have to complain about? My grumbling had been the death of my thanksgiving.

  On the day we visited our sponsored child Carlos, the temperature was almost unbearable and we ran out of bottled water.

  Never in my short life had I experienced such raging thirst. Suddenly Carlos’ stepmother pulled from a small icebox the greatest gift imaginable: an ice-cold bottle of Coca-Cola. I ran my fingers over that bottle and giggled like a fourth grader who had just heard the funniest joke imaginable. I held that bottle up to the light, then sipped it slowly, relishing every single drop as they crawled one by one down my eager throat. This drink was nectar straight from heaven. This drink was a companion and a friend and a teacher. It taught me to give thanks for each and every blessing while we hold it in our hand.

  So on the long flight home, while the ‘‘formatted to fit your screen’’ movie was playing, I wrote a list of things I’m thankful for after having been in the Third World:

  Water that comes out of a tap. And it’s the color water should be.

  A bed without large spiders in it. Especially when they hog all the blankets.

  Lights in the house. Even if they’re on too much.

  ‘‘Dot havig to plug by dose.’’ The assault on my nasal passages as we traveled through some of these communities was unbearable.

  Waiting for the doctor and knowing he’s in. We bellyache because we have to wait an hour in a doctor’s comfortable waiting room complete with leather sofas, aquarium, and hope. Most of the people I met don’t have access to simple medical cures we take for granted every day.

  The weather, even that late April snowstorm.

  Single socks. I’ll find mates for them. Even if I have to fly to Saturn someday.

  Garbage dumps outside our cities. They may not always be on time picking up the trash, but at least we don’t have to share sidewalk space with it indefinitely.

  Shopping carts and grocery stores crammed with food. In my entire life, I don’t think I’ve ever had to literally go to bed hungry. Dieting doesn’t count.3I will purge ‘‘I’m starving’’ from my vocabulary.

  Driving to church. If we had to walk, I wonder how many of us would show up.

  Family. Life is so fragile in these countries. So many have lost their loved ones to disease and uprisings. It certainly makes you appreciate the ones you love.

  A place to sleep tonight.

  And a toothbrush and comb, even if I need only one of them.

  I wish I could say that my recent trip to that Third World country cured all of my whining. But sadly, I still find myself slipping back into my old ways. Maybe the car in front of me isn’t moving fast enough, or the lady at the bank made a mistake on my account again, or I can’t bring myself to drink the recommended amount of eight glasses of water a day because it’s too much of a bother to get up and walk over to the sink and turn on the tap. Things still happen throughout my day that push my Whine button. But more and more I’m trying to stop myself in mid-whine and remember the lessons learned on that trip. How truly blessed I am.

  Satan is a chronic grumbler.

  The Christian ought to be a living doxology.

  Martin Luther

  1And show up on radar.

  2Although it sure beats a mediocre doctor with great reading material.

  3Being sent to bed without dessert doesn’t count, either. Nor does being ‘‘still hungry’’ after a full seven-course meal.

  Ten Things We’d Like

  to Hear Someone Say

  1. You know, I have way too many close friends. I don’t know what to do with them all.

  2. I guess we have enough money now. It’s time to give some away.

  3. I’ve been spending way too much time with my children. I think they need a break.

  4. I’m all caught up at work. I don’t know what to do now.

  5. I’m getting bald, but that’s okay. I’ll worry about what’s going on inside my head.

  6. I’m having to get my knees replaced. An old prayer injury.

  7. I’ve decided to find out who’s gonna cry at my funeral and hang out with them instead of those who probably won’t even show up to it anyway.

  8. I’m so excited! I found another laugh line on my face this morning!

  9. Television? Are you kidding? With so many good books to read?

  10. I know the speed limit is seventy, but I’m going to drive in the slow lane and just enjoy the scenery. At least until that cop be
hind me passes.

  Slice of Life

  Those who do not feel pain seldom think that it is felt.

  Samuel Johnson

  Do you remember sitting at the dinner table comparing slices of pie? Remember how your brother (or sister or cousin or the one doing the slicing) always seemed to get a more generous wedge of lemon meringue? ‘‘Hey, that’s not fair!’’ we yelled.1 Do you remember sitting in school comparing smarts during final exams, asking why God didn’t give you more brains? Did you ever wonder why a friend always seemed to get the perfect job, the newer car, or the bigger bank account? ‘‘Life isn’t fair,’’ your mother told you. Which didn’t really seem like a fair answer. But then there comes a time in life when you are shocked, and more than a little disappointed, to discover that she was right.

  While golfing with my friend James, I (Phil) was robbed. Not by a masked man on a golf cart, but by a more unusual suspect. On the seventh hole on our little town’s course,2 James and I were stunned to hit the green with our third shots (for those of you who think golf is a four-letter word, we made uncharacteristically good shots). As we walked toward the hole with birdies3 on our minds, something even more stunning happened. A large raven descended from the sky and landed on the green. Then, as you’ve probably guessed, the miserable bird took flight with James’ golf ball in its beak. It flapped out of sight, dropped the ball somewhere, then returned for mine. I still don’t know the rules for such a predicament. But I realized once again that life is not fair. Neither is the game of golf.

  You know what we mean. See how many of the following scenarios you can identify with:

  Your new car gets hit at the mall. There’s a note on your windshield that says, People think I’m leaving you my phone number. I’m not. Ha ha ha, sucker!

  You fail the eye chart test you studied for all month. The guy before you who just winged it passed with a perfect 20-20 score. Why didn’t God give you perfect vision, too?

  You finish a glorious morning of work, writing brilliantly about solutions to the world’s problems. This is the best and most creative work you’ve done in years. Your boss will be proud. Then before you can print it out, your computer crashes.