THE EVENT, DAY 21 – WHY?
Why. It’s a word that checks the box on five parts of speech in its definition of “ for what cause or purpose, or reason. It is a word I met twice this weekend in its questioning form.

On Friday, it was in regard to my goatee by a new student. I occasionally grow one because of irritation caused by shaving. That was the answer I gave though the truth was different. My recent stroke, “the event”, has left an almost imperceptible, except to the eyes in my mirror,  drop at the corner of my mouth. The true answer is vanity.

This morning, I got the second “why?”. Why do I write and open my soul, my insecurities, the battles?

That answer is more complex. I do it because it helps me unload mentally without unloading verbally or worse on those that matter to me. It keeps me from unloading a bottle of Ireland’s or Scotland’s best 80 proof three or four ounces at a time. It allows me to lay out what God has laid on me, what He’s scarred me with. The scars, a road map for those that might need it.

It’s my contention that if I’m feeling something, there is someone else feeling similarly. That regardless of the battle, the peak to climb, the valley to climb out of, we all have the same symptoms in the disease of our humanity.

We all deal with the parallax of fear versus fearless, hope against hopelessness, ashes and beauty, faith or a lack of it. The gap between requiem and renaissance is sometimes deep and wide as the Grand Canyon, sometimes as thin as a razor’s edge. Not to be indelicate or oversimplify, but the body not working in unison and causing worry that a quick trip to the men’s room will leave evidence on the front of the slacks of a quick trip to the men’s room.

I felt that last Thursday. The worst day since I entered hospital room 410 on September’s first Sunday. The day conspired against me until I thought about something my pastor said on the last Sunday in August.

To paraphrase his words, “…it’s a disservice to God and to the people we know and the people we’ll meet to not share the wisdom gleaned from what God has seen us through…”.  And I got home and unloaded with pen and paper and then loaded the scribbled baggage, the presumed attained wisdom on my blog page. By sundown on Sunday, I had found the why.

Over Friday, Saturday, and the fourth Sunday in September, 20 people in 12 countries subscribed over Thursday’s post. Twenty people I’ve never met and likely never will. Twenty people battling fear, faith, hope and their less than desirable counterparts. Twenty straddling requiem and renaissance, twenty in twelve countries in the crucible of ashes or beauty.

Twenty people aren’t in the category of Alexander the Great weeping because he’d conquered the world and there was nothing left to conquer. But now, twenty people know some vain educator with a goatee feels like they do. Maybe one of ‘em is a guy who’s glad another guy wishes all he knew about the term dribble involves basketball or soccer.

Twenty one days ago, September’s first Sunday, my family gathered around my bed in room 410 of a local hospital. Today, September’s fourth Sunday, my family gathered around a table at a Mexican restaurant. I ordered large quesos for the granddaughters and the rest because three weeks ago, I wasn’t sure, for a couple of terrifying hours, I’d ever see them again. The aftershocks of tingling limbs, the frustration and joy of not being able to tie or tying shoes, of not being able to button or buttoning a shirt, the pure irritation and aggravation of twice a day having to open one of those 7 day AM/PM pill dispensers that only old people have. All that frustration, joy and vexation remains and likely will for some time. What else remains, is why….