Frustration

My car is parked in a Taco Bell parking lot after I had just bought my lunch. I'm sitting there calling the admissions representative for counseling studies students and I can't get through. Today was the last day to register for courses and with two hours left to register I wanted to talk with the admissions representative to find out what happens if I don't register for classes. Her phone just rings repeatedly before her voice mail comes on and it's enough drive me crazy.

At this moment I feel so trapped I want to break the windows in my car. I can see people walking along the street outside my car and many shops with beautiful windows & displays. I want to walk along the sidewalk and feel fresh air on my face. I want to wander among the stores and window shop for a while but I can't. I have to eat, get in touch with an admissions representative and rush off to the hospital for a meeting because I volunteered to be in another research study.

This moment in my car is a metaphor for how I have been feeling all semester. I can't explain it but I didn't want to go back to school next semester. I didn't want to work or teach the high school group in my church. I didn't want to do anything I had been doing this last semester. It's become mechanical & contrived. The phrase 9 - 5 sums up the working world. Grad school isn't rough or too challenging. Ever since the first day I haven't felt like I belong there. I love the reading and the thinking and learning but I don't fit in. The high school group at church has grown and is growing but I wonder what good I'm doing. I'm one guy standing up in front of a bunch of kids telling them about God. When I was in a high school youth group I remember there kids who listened and kids who didn't. After recalling those memories I wonder if it's worth being there. I'm not going into the ministry and I'm only volunteering...why am I up there? Why am I doing anything this semester?

Here I sit in this Taco Bell parking lot and everything I have invested my time and engery into this semester is constricting the life out of my dreams. I just want to do good & help people. It's all I can think about at this moment and all that matters and I'm ready to drive as far as I can, maybe until I'm in another state, because I don't see myself doing that where I am. I just want to find that part of myself. I like that part of myself and I need that part of myself to survive.

Clueless about registration I drive out of the Taco Bell parking lot wondering if I should go home, drive to school, drive to the hospital (for the research study) or just drive. A homeless guy on the corner with a sign (most likely asking for money but I didn't get a good look because I was almost passing him) catches my eye. I drive around the block and come back to him. He looks like he hasn't shaved, showered, or changed clothes in months but it didn't bother me one bit. He was one of the more pathetic looking homeless people...the kind you look at and think there is someone who is truly helpless and he was what I was looking for (maybe all semester). Someone I could help that wouldn't pay me back. Someone I could do good to, someone whom I wasn't obligated to help in any way.

The homeless guy is looking at me as I pull up next to him and offer him my lunch. He gladly took my burritos & drink and said God bless you. Usually when I hear that remark I take it as a polite compliment or a proundly deep expression of gratitude. Today it was humbling to hear those words because helping that homeless man was a blessing to me.