Time-out

No, Brennan didn't get in trouble. For a change, Brennan isn't the main character in this particular entry.

Time-out is what I'm taking tonight. Time out from watching baseball or a movie, stressing about which wide receiver to start on Sunday, fretting about the economy, or contemplating my to-do list.

I was planning to find a bar to watch the ALCS game in, but I decided to stay in tonight. I tried to get the game on the radio, but the local ESPN affiliate goes out of tune at about sundown ever day. My car radio got a different ESPN station, but I decided I didn't want to sit in the car listening to the game. That was just a bit too desperate. So I pulled up iTunes, to listen to music while doing some random things in the computer (and occasionally checking the score of the game).

I haven't listened to music like this since early June. I listen to the radio once in a while on my way to and from work, but I favor talk radio to music stations. Naomi puts a CD on at home sometimes. This morning she had Rich Mullins' "Songs" on. It made me nostalgic, just because I listened to that CD so many times while in college. It kind of awakened something in me ... a realization that certain songs are very evocative. They might bring back a specific memory, a time in my life or just put me in a contemplative mood.

Tonight the music seems to have let me stop and evaluate my life a bit. Where am I? Where am I going? My life doesn't look anything like I thought it would a year ago. Some of that comes with the territory -- the territory being "parenthood". I'm sure having a 9 month old at home has a similar effect on all guys. But I sense there's more to it than that. I feel like I made a wrong turn somewhere, and I feel like other guys with small children haven't been thrown for a loop quite the way I have. Of course I don't really know any of these "other guys". I know of them, and I see how they look on the outside, and they look more put together on the outside than I feel on the inside. (But I should know better than to be fooled by that).

In truth, there has been so much transition in the past 9 months ... parenthood, leaving missions, moving back to Virginia ... new job, new house, new city (it may as well be since so much has changed), new hours, new church.... I feel like I have a new suit on, and it doesn't fit quite right, but I can't tell exactly where it needs to be let out or taken in. I just know it's not right.

Maybe, in the end, the suit I've tried on is a suit meant for a younger man -- the man I was before kids or marriage. But maybe also I've changed in ways that aren't healthy, and maybe it's not a new suit I need, but new habits, disciplines and routines.

Probably it's a little of both. I need to get back some of the ways of my youth -- some of my zeal, enthusiasm and curiosity. But I need to adapt all of that to the stage of life that I'm in and the responsibilities I have now and didn't have then. I just don't know exactly how to do that. And there's the rub.