Day 3877 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

2 Timothy 2:21 NIV

Goodbye normal

For I’ve elsewhere to see, elsewise to know, somewhere else to go, someone else to be. I’ve for too long now been this normal me trying to be the normal I see and yet anymore I see only no reason to know such a normal anymore. Because there are so many cancers and confusions, disasters and their delusions that have become common that to stay common only means that I too would continue to do as cancer and chaos does. And it destroys. It divides. It seeks to ostracize and downsize and supersize and criticize and draw the lines that all mankind is supposed to stay inside.

I’ve just been inside too long.

Simply want to know what of life is still out there to find down here.

And that’s not to say that I’ve not lived a life along the way. I have. I’ve in fact had a good life, a great life somedays. But you see, that’s the thing. I don’t want anymore that kind of life in which good is 50-50 and great is an ’87 Chevy that I got rid of years ago. For indeed, I’m sick to death of the deaths I’ve lived since I was that kid who didn’t know to check the oil so as to hopefully not ruin the engine. And yet here I sit still so often failing to worry of the engine and thus never checking to make sure the oil’s looking good.

No, rather I just know to look at what the world says is good. I know to look for what the world says I should. I look for only what the world claims we can as is mostly held in hand rather than heart and yet even that again tends only to restart every morning as we wake up only to break up nothing of the unplowed grounds that we’ve never gone to in search of the things we’ve thus never found.

Indeed, we just keep looking where we’ve already been to what’s then considered normal, common, sensible and understood.

But friends, anymore I’m exhausted from trying to care as to what the world claims we can be or could or should or would would we had or have the ability to do as the worlds does or insists we don’t. Life here has become such the debilitation that we’re all in increasing need of rehabilitation due to our having cohabitated with what remains a collaboration aimed to remain in contention against our Creator. And despite the scenes we see play in this search for something that seems to make some sense, you’d think all the senselessness would inspire in us a willingness to look elsewhere for once.

For what?

Something other than whatever normal’s become.

Anything other!

Because, and to be as brutally honest as I always try to be, how can we truly like what we see? What of all we see or seem thus to assume as being good enough to be enough is truly enough to be good? Do we even still want good in life, from life? Do we wish to do good in life, for life? Is good even a measure we use anymore? Or in fact have we all but given up most such efforts altogether?

Sadly I think it safe to assume we have. And how can I say such a thing as that? Again my friend, just look around! For the reality is that reality is what most would call normal. The things being done are being done because someone thinks them normal things to do. Everything that someone does is likely done because someone else has done it too. And thus we’ve come to exist as but replicas of what remains the same rebellion it’s always been.

For normal and always go hand-in-hand as they seem to seek for always the same path paved by the same plan to never again endure the grinding of finding something new.

No, new is so hated that anymore we’re only ever elated at what is merely an updated version of the same something we all have already that’s already more than we need and still working quite well for what we needed it for. (I’m looking at you iphone)

But it’s true. Our biggest joys in life anymore are just some new device hitting the store to which we flood in search of hoping to have what everyone else is wanting to get as well. We are so much the herd that all we hear is all about how awesome our normal is and how, as such, we shouldn’t try too much to find too much beyond it.

After all, what can ever be bested about what’s so commonly seen as being so much better than the old treasure in which we trusted until it rusted or ruined or simply ran out of clout and left us striving again for the clouds in which we scream aloud that we’re looking for life but willing to find just more of what we’ve already known?

For that’s all that normal is and can ever be. It’s just more of whatever already is, more of whatever already knows, more of whatever already knows is or as good enough to measure up to meaning more than whatever already isn’t.

And there’s a twisted hubris to that that seems to sing this song of our swallowing still shallow souls as they’re daily sold on the blackest of all markets for what is less than pennies on the dollars we spend only on the things that we can show all the people we didn’t beat them to having. It’s this story of our thinking so highly of all we have and hope to soon that we never hope beyond what we see. We never know beyond what little we think. We never grow past the past as we’re busy still combing the confusions we had seeking to find the best of what we’re still convinced is better than what’s coming.

But friends, what’s coming is both forever better and yet us apart.

All because our everyday continues to start down the same paths we’ve always taken. Because there’s a safety in such doing of nothing. Now that’s not to say that everyone is doing nothing as it’s clear that most here are up to something. But is that something something new? Or is the something we’re up to often only something tried enough to seem true enough to trust enough to mean enough that we mean still to never know what lies beyond the lies we’ve believed?

Oops, forgot I’m not supposed to mention that part.

Oh well, cat’s out the bag and the horse done left the stable. Guess it’s all on the table!

Problem is the table’s been set not in a place that has a buffet but indeed at the buffet from which we come daily to crave this way of life lived a slave to everything that everyone all around is still telling us is normal enough that it can mean enough that it’s able to overcome the more we’ll likely never know we’ve never known. Guess when you’ve got the entire world at your fingertips, alongside a bunch of “friends” telling you where to look to find what they’ve already found or felt, well, why waste the work or worry of wanting something more?

For indeed, all the world seems plenty enough, right?

Yeah, for most it is. For most care only to apparently stay where they already are. But as for me I just can’t help but look around and seem to see that both hope is pretty hard to find, let alone try to hold once found, and that because there’s just not much to hope in within what’s normal. For again, normal and already are kind of just slightly different ways of saying what basically amounts to the very same thing. And well, who hopes for normal? Who hopes for what they have already?

Who so wishes to so limit hope or even happiness or purpose or potential to whatever already is?

Doesn’t that seem kind of dumb?

And yet that’s exactly what we do. And that almost every day. Why? Because it’s the normal way. It’s the life we know. It’s the simplicity of what is simply living only to continue continuing what we’ve continuously continued already. Wake up, want stuff, find stuff, forget stuff, eat something, watch something, go to sleep. That’s it. That’s life. It’s a 9-5 that we likely hate but endure so as to afford the treasures we store that we know will tarnish but are at least fun to look at for a moment that we likewise devalue because time is money and we thus think money will buy us more time.

It won’t.

In fact, time is literally only existent in this place at the present. Once we run out of it, it’s both gone forever and yet so are we. And yet we spend so much time doing so little to seek for anything better than whatever already is that we thus haven’t in us any recollection as to the collection of every soul before the Savior who will then separate those who lived the special kind of life He gave His for us to live from the more who only wanted more of only what was normal.

You’ll notice I said was.

And that’s because, as with time, normal too is something that’s saying goodbye. Why? Because normal is only here in this place in which our fear of anything bigger, anything better as felt because bigger and better is always harder has left us holding out hope of never having to go through such growths and hopes as imagining that what is isn’t all there is and thus we could have more, be more had we in store a soul not sold to our continuing to do only that which everyone else is too.

For again, we look to the world to help us understand how to live.

But friends, this is a big problem that will soon prove a monumentally massive mistake.

Why?

Because this world only knows how to die.

And indeed, I feel as though you can trust me in this because it seems that such is what I’ve been doing for years. Like I said, I’ve not known great since I was that kid driving around in that truck that felt like four wheels of such freedom that I could do anything and I felt I had the responsibility to at least try for some of it. But, like you, I parked it. I turned off the engine and closed that door one final time as I said goodbye to the person I sold it to.

I never knew until today that that truck was my childhood hope as had in something better that could take me anywhere.

Nor that it had nothing to do with the metal but rather the memories.

That’s the problem with normal. It doesn’t make anything. Normal knows nothing of meaning enough to become memories we’ll one day look back on fondly. Normal knows nothing of the audacity to imagine that should we keep going and continue trying that we might even find a day so amazing that we needn’t look back on anything. Normal just stays where it is, what it is and never then dares to ask why it isn’t what it will never be.

Because normal will always be whatever normal already is, and mostly okay with it.

But the sadness will come to be seen when we’re finally shown both who we could have been and thus what we could have done had we been more willing to break beyond normal and seek for the special.

A choice made only because the special is considered strange to those we don’t consider strange despite their willingness to only ever stay wherever they already are.

But friends, as I’ve been asking of late so I ask again:

Look around.

What we see is what normal is. But is what we see truly what we want our normal to be? Granted, for a long time, maybe even all our lives, we’ve looked around and seen more than enough to measure unto us what life is meant to mean. For indeed, this world again has and thus continues to give quite a lot of pretty cool stuff. But do you ever wonder about what this world doesn’t have and thus can’t offer? Ever wonder about what more there might be just beyond the lines we see?

Ever wonder what it might be like to not live in a line lined up behind everyone else who is thus going the same direction to what’s thus the same destination?

I do. Think about it all the time anymore as I see every day outside every door the same world that still seems only interested in at best settling still short of the more it could be, the better it could do if not all but setting itself on fire for what will ironically burn anyway. And I just can’t manage to convince myself to agree to it anymore. Because I don’t see anything special in everything that’s normal.

And that despite my having tried to be normal as defined by the place I’m in and the people around me who would like for me to be normal too so that they don’t feel bad about their being nothing but normal themselves.

That’s why I want to be weird now.

I want to be strange. I want to be seen as a stranger who is so awkward and foolish that he just doesn’t fit in anywhere anymore. Why? Because why try so hard to fit where we both don’t belong and thus won’t stay? After all, even without the promise of eternity in that place He’s prepared, what’s the point in staying where you already are? What is there to find? What is there to feel? Why is there this ongoing desire to all but fail in regard everything from hope to growth?

For that’s what normal’s become. Because almost everyone we see has just sort of stalled out. It’s as if life has come to a screeching halt. We’ve stopped. Now you can agree with those who would say that it’s come about to go this way because we’ve already all but achieved the best we could ever be. For indeed, I don’t really know what more improvements in such things as technology and accolade we could hope to accomplish for it seems we’ve all but run out of needs.

But I’m convinced that what we will always need is the ability to see that normal isn’t at all all it’s been made out to be. Why? Because better is always better than whatever normal is. Normal is always to be just a commonality that’s chosen in fealty as it finds for most the outermost expectations that they were probably all but barely willing to reach for anyway.

This world loves normal because we can’t fall short or mess it up all that much.

And that’s fine. And indeed, if you feel that way then by all means stay in line. Live that life. Give this life to wanting never anything more than whatever normal is or is allowed to become by those driving this train off the tracks and over the edge but always on the map.

I want to go where the map won’t. I want to see what most never will. I want to be what scares me. I want to live a life that means something, but I know that the only way to do that is to rid it of all that’s too normal to mean anything. After all, what can normal mean when it’s something that everyone else can have as well? What worth is there to find in our having or being only whatever most already do or are?

No, I’m pretty sure we were made for more than whatever everyone else has settled for. Could be wrong, been there before. But no, I know there’s a vast and growing difference between that which is common and that which isn’t. And I know this because we can see common. We can see normal. We can in fact be common and normal and in fact probably already are. Because again, you can’t really fail them or mess them up too much.

But if better isn’t worth the risk of finding it then why is it in the heart and head?

If there’s truly nothing more to find in life than whatever we’ve already found so much of and so well that everyone else can find and feel it too, then why are we even here? For if all we can be is but what normal is already, well then there’s no use in life and thus no use for us. And well, I just can’t manage to wrap my head around how He would go through such effort and mercy to at first create us and then die to save us if His grandest expectation was what’s mostly amounted to only a lengthy vacation from trying.

Why would Jesus die on that cross if all we could ever be was only what we were already?

No, I’m just sure that He did it to open blinded eyes so that we could see the better we were made and thus meant to be. And that’s indeed what I want to be, to see, to do, that better for which He made me and then saved me from all the many messes I’d made and then stayed with along the way to the nowhere other than normal that I’ve known more than enough of already.

Yeah, I’m over living for normal. I’m tired of the ordinary. I’m truly sick of seeing so many settle for what is basically just existing. He’s just put too much ability to hope inside the human heart. And well, seems that since normal isn’t really what anyone would ever, or at least should ever hope to be, I guess then that normal is just the only place we can start looking for both what and where hope really is and plans to go.

So goodbye normal, for indeed, it’s not you but it is me as I’m the one who wants to see what you just don’t have to offer.

Because I just feel that I’ve plenty left to give unto the better that I believe to exist beyond what’s normal.

But better’s something we just can’t know for sure unless and until we try.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold