i decided today to see what it was like to live w/ an inexplicable compulsion...

...so i'm only eating oval shaped foods. for breakfast, i had half a misshapen cinnamon raisin bagel w/ cream cheese and three kinds of juice from a squiggly glass. for lunch, i think an avocado and a mango. dinner, however, will require some lengthy consideration. :) i'm amused already.


a verbal definition doesn't really do "compulsion" justice though. for some things, the best definition is "other". verbal or written understanding is so prevalent that perhaps i forget about "other". for instance, some days i feel like rainy days in the desert smell. it's not raining. it's not wet. there aren't even clouds gathered. i just woke up feeling the way the smell of the desert on a rainy day makes me feel. thus, compulsion is: actions performed in response to an irrisitible impulse which may or may not be a rational impulse. but that's not what it is. compulsion is the tug at my heart... no, my core... that i get when i ask a homeless mother if i can buy her lunch and she askes for diapers instead, when i spend an afternoon sorting clothes or bagging food for an outreach, when it takes three games of pool for a kid to ask one desperately serious question and i don't have a satisfactory answer. like a rope wrapped around me that pulls as if to pull me out of myself. a cord tied to my existence rather than my waist. it's a tug... gentle ... unrelenting... that as slowly, as surely will separate me from me. it is the almost physical equivalent of the knowledge "whatever i do will never be enough, but i wish i could find just a little more to do than i have."
i haven't had that in awhile which disappoints me because something tells me that, as christians, we should. and reading Do Hard Things only accents that lack. it's compelling. ;)