an inconvenient truth

We have this movie in our Blockbuster queue, but haven't watched it yet :) Nevertheless, I'm learning more and more that inconvenience is part of the Christian life and that I think God actually wants it that way! Let me explain...

I, like most people, dislike being inconvenienced. It screws up my day/week, I can't get what I had planned done (or at least can't get it done in the time frame that I want it done), I have to expend more of my energy to handle the inconvenience, whether it's caused by road construction, someone needing my help, someone needing my husband's help, etc. It often leads to me giving up some of my free time for someone else's needs or purposes. As a stay-at-home mom who gets precious little free time throughout the day, I guard my time to myself with the utmost vigilance!

However, I'm learning more that inconvenience needs to be a part of my life, that I need to be willing, and cheerfully willing, to inconvenience myself in order to love other people. I think that's what we're called to as Christians. It's the refusal to give into our selfish inclination to make life about us and our needs and wants and instead to consider others better than ourselves.

For me, this is a hard lesson. I am selfish to the core, though God has used my children to beat the selfishness out of me! I still cling stubbornly to that last bit of self-absorption that I need to just give up already. I need to remind myself of the people that I know who refuse to be put out and the destructive effects on their relationships through it. I'm glad that God doesn't leave us to wallow in our sin, that, as believers, He provides a way out of it.

Book Review - Truman

I have a backlog of book reviews that I'd like to do, but I'll do the most recently read one first since it's freshest in my mind. I started reading this book when I was pregnant with my oldest child but for whatever reason (probably because of my diminished mental capacity as a pregnant woman) I didn't really get into it. I picked it up again on a friend's recommendation and I'm glad I did.

First off, I love biographies/history books. And David McCullough is truly a national treasure. He writes as a novelist, but doesn't use rhetorical flourishes or makes his voice the primary one in his books (at least in the 2 that I've read). Many will be initimidated by the sheer girth of the book (1,000+ pages in all), but don't let that discourage you. It is a relatively quick read and you'll find yourself not wanting to put it down.

Harry S. Truman was truly an extraordinary man and president. He came from humble beginnings (he didn't go to college), ascended to the highest office, and spent his whole life in service to his country. He did what he thought was the right thing, regardless of popular opinion or popularity polls and history has proved him correct in many of those things. There's a quote by Mark Twain that I really liked and summed him up well:

"Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest."

Another striking quote that tells a lot about our current state of politics comes from a letter from his Secretary of State, Dean Acheson to Truman in reference to the Kennedy administration in regards to Kennedy's preoccupation with "image":

"This is a terrible weakness. It makes one look at oneself instead of at the problem. How will I look fielding this hot line drive to short stop? This is a good way to miss the ball altogether. I am amazed looking back to how far you were from this. I don't remember a case where you stopped to think of the effect on your fortunes - or the party's for that matter - of a decision in foreign policy."

Oh, how I wish our current politicians felt this way!!

I came away from this book wishing that our culture wrote more letters and kept diaries/journals versus blogs (guilty as charged -- I used to write in a diary daily until I got to college). McCullough was able to write this book because of the confluence of personal correspondance that Truman wrote in a diary and to the people in his life and that they wrote in return (all of which is archived in the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri). Actual letters take time & will to sit down and write, you have the opportunity to be thoughtful and reflective and it is more likely to write something meaningful than our culture of quickie emails, twittering and texting. It's interesting as we've become a more efficient society that we've become way less personal and communication is often reduced to "lol" or "ttyl". From a historical standpoint, having electronic documents and correspondance is convenient from a storage-wise, but I wonder how much of it will actually be useful in figuring out what a person's character is and what their thoughts & feelings about a specific situation are.

I also learned more about the Korean war than I ever have. I never realized how many lives were lost (mostly Korean, but also many American lives). My stepfather served in the Korean war and it gave me a greater appreciation for his service. It also makes me wonder about my biological family and the impact that it had on them.

This book is making my Top 10 list. If you are so inclined, pick it up! You'll be smarter for it.