Lunch & Laughter
The digital nomad that I am, my weekday lunch hour either involves music or choosing something among the plethora of video streaming services to enjoy. On this particular Tuesday, I found myself on Amazon, watching one episode of a television series called I Survived...Beyond and Back; on this show, people worldwide share their after-death experiences before returning to their bodies.
In this episode, a gentleman suffered a string of heart attacks and died in a hospital; within moments, he found himself on a mountaintop and a few feet away from a man he identified as Moses. With stone tablets nearby, Moses articulated to him the horrid state of the world resulted in humanity not following the ten commandments.
As far back as I remember, I either heard or read the ten commandments, but in naming them, I’d always forget a few; prompted to remind myself, I searched. One of the commandments I could never retain over the years was the tenth: ‘thou shalt not covet.’ It tells us we should expel any desire for whatever doesn’t belong to us.
When I read this, I immediately put my phone down and started laughing; before I knew it, I couldn’t stop. Anyone who knows me knows that I don’t just laugh; instead, I’m the type of person who slaps their knee, bends to the point of falling, runs, or staggers like a bacchanalian, although sober. While akin to those kinds of reactions, this was something different.
I laughed for so long and so hard that after a while, it began to scare me; there was something Jokeresque about it, but minus evil intent. The feeling was more a knowing one, like something profound hitting you over your head, i.e., when you know God is speaking directly to you; amidst guffawing, my eyes welled with tears, which doesn’t happen often, and eventually, the laughing ceased. Before you think I’m a psycho, allow me to explain myself.
Depending on how long you’ve been on this blogging journey with me, you might recollect To Be Or Not To Be Me, wherein I gave insight into the origins of my bouts with low self-esteem, depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts. I described how much of my relief stemmed from wanting to be who I wasn’t, constantly searching beyond myself to fill voids I thought I had. It was how I coped and when imagining wasn’t enough, I sank into deep and dark places where I sat for years before finding the light.
Coexisting on a planet with others, we often get glimpses into their lives and often do something we shouldn’t: compare ourselves to the people around us. If I had a dollar for every time I said, ‘I wish I looked like her,’ or ‘I wish I had or could do that,’ I’d be a billionaire by now. I clung to life by a thread and narrowly resisted urges to check out. While in a better place than I had been as a younger girl, there are times when those kinds of thoughts reappear.
After identifying the issue, I prayed for weeks to receive help seeing myself in the only way that mattered: how God sees me and not forgetting who or why I am. Several prayers later, HE answered me in one line of text I had seen many times before physically, yet not spiritually until that moment. What’s funnier is that I found what I needed when I wasn’t searching for it; isn’t that often life?
After composing myself, I could only thank the Holy Trinity through the lump in my throat. It was unlike any experience I had before, but I was grateful. Grateful for the nudge that influenced my choice to watch that series episode, grateful to reread the Ten Commandments afterward, grateful to seek the meaning of what I neglected to understand, and more grateful that I got it.
To covet is to tell I AM that He made an error in my design when the only issue was in my thinking. In retrospect, I regret nothing because I can see clearly now.
Essentially, all of me is alright with me!
