Time for a Break

It's time to get out of New Orleans. After the incident on Sunday with the guy yelling at me for stopping where there was no stop sign, I was starting to feel the city close in on me. All week I've been honked at for driving too slow, too fast or not moving fast enough when the light turns green. Today as I was walking through the Quarter people were blaring on their horns right and left. I made my way back over to my secret parking spot (secret because it's free) and pulled out to leave. Because the street dead ends, you have to make a left onto a one way street. I did that and started to drive down it only to have the car in front of me fly into reverse and come at me very quickly. I laid on the horn thinking that I was seconds away from getting hit. Rather than going forward down the one way street, the car stopped until I backed up so they could go through and then the lady leaned out the window and started yelling at me for going the RIGHT way on a one way street.

I'm ready for a break - I'm ready to go to a place where people don't regularly yell at you for legally driving - I'm ready to not worry about potholes and crime for a few days. I'm lucky, I get to leave. As frustrated as I am with the crazy lady today, I can't help but wonder what her life has been like in the last 3 years. Did she lose everything? Has she fought back only to find her Road Home money fall through? Do her kids go to the terrible public schools? Does she live in a neighborhood where she fears being shot on a daily basis?

Some days it seems like the whole city is just pissed off, but I guess that people do have a lot to be pissed off about. I asked my friend David English for some advice on living in the middle of this craziness. Here's a little portion of the email he sent me:

There are things that cause us to be emotionally sad or feel something
like that. Sadness is an emotion we feel when there seems to be no
control we can exercise. It also happens when our expectations are not
fulfilled. Sadness can control us and sometimes for a lifetime. It can
be the predominant emotion that characterizes some people's lives.
Sadness is not bad. Jesus was referred to as "a man of many sorrows."

Here is a process to deal with sadness:

Low entitlement
High gratitude
Don't take failure personally
Rest

I see in this city (and in myself more often than not) a high sense of entitlement, a lack of gratitude, a feeling of personal failure and a lack of rest. No wonder we have such a hard time recovering - no wonder we're yelling at each other in our cars.

So, the challenge for those who claim to follow Christ is to deal with the sadness in a way that would honor the one we follow, not the way we see modeled around us all the time. I hope that we would be people that would live seeing Christ in the midst or our circumstances - taking a break from the city to rest when we need to, but having grateful hearts to live and serve here.

Oh and I think I'm going to take the Street Car next time I go to the Quarter - no need for anyone else to yell at me about my driving!