In eighth grade I learned the word conundrum. It was part of a junior high vocabulary list and I delighted in its unearthing. It crackled in my head. I liked rolling around on the slopes of the Ns, slapping the beat of the drum. I gargled the shape of it in my voice. Co-nun-drum. Much like Buddy the Elf and the word Francisco, I thought it was fun to say.
As the new vocab kid was hanging out at the lockers, all cool in my brain, I snapped to attention when the national newscaster used conundrum to describe a melee in Chicago. I had learned something on the very day that I needed it. Real-time shipping, dictionary style.
Some versions of Biblical history might relate this type of experience to the delivery of manna to the Israelites as they wandered around the desert for forty years. (Are we there yet?) Arriving like frost or dew on the grass as pita points from heaven, it’s believed by scholars that if stockpiled, manna would spoil. I suspect that the planner and Hoarder ‘Lites had to reconcile their faith and trust around that all-you-need buffet.
The thought of getting what you need when you need it smacks around the adage of “God doesn’t give you more than you can handle.” That vintage cliché tongued out of habit along with other jackass phrases that involve our higher power suggest that the universe doesn’t have the capacity or chutzpah to communicate through lots of channels. Maybe you get what you need in order to handle what you get. As I consider this conundrum and the tale of manna, many of my needs have been met in perfect measure.
I trace my early learning of numbers back to playing cards with my family of origin. My natural competition strength weighed in hard over my less than enthusiastic bend towards mathematics. I endured math for the joy of playing, okay, winning, card games.
I remember being dealt the Old Maid card and crumpling it in my five-year-old hand. Darn it! I don’t want that old-lady-staring-at-me-card. My dad straightened out the wrinkles I had inflicted upon the maiden as he ironed into me the education that you can’t control what hand you’re dealt, but you can control how you win or lose. I got that card because it was what I needed in that moment. Winning that hand paled in comparison to learning that lesson. There are many times that I didn’t realize what I was getting was what I needed.
I have long marveled at stories of people lifting cars or tractors or baby elephants from loved ones, their Herculean power dormant until the moment of truth. Did they have the strength all along or was it gifted to them in those seconds when it most mattered? This could be a chicken or egg debate. Do I always have what I need and just don’t know it, or does what I need appear in the moment of necessity? Chicken. Wait. Egg. It’s a loop.
As a certified control freak who loves to plan and measure every excruciating detail of life, the idea of getting what I need when I need it makes me twitchy. I can’t pre-order or make a to-do list. My sole assignment is to release the illusion of the Gorilla glue grip and participate in the belief that what I need will arrive. I trust Amazon Prime in this way proving that I’m capable of some level of confidence when money exchanges hands and I have membership numbers and passwords. It’s the intangible and deeper meaning that presents the rub.
I’m not suggesting sitting at my kitchen table wringing my hands with the mantra that the “good Lord will provide.” Most lottery winners bought a ticket and participated in the game, some at a most basic level. I am interrogating personal self-awareness and living in a moment of divine gratitude, be it ten dollars found on the ground to buy lunch when I was broke, or FDA drug approval only months before the diagnosis of a terminal illness. Both have happened to me, cable on demand.
The year my mother died I thrust my sadness and anger into my sneakers and ran it out. It was a ridiculous number of miles and my body endured the torment. I didn’t listen to music. I ran, pissed off, mostly at God. I ran the same five-mile loop around my neighborhood and because I’m a measurer (see above control freak,) I always turned around at the same stop sign. One evening around dusk, I ran those paces and made my turn and there in the grass, under the stop sign was a piece of sheet music. The song, “I Am Loved,” waited like a paper lighthouse. It looked as though it had dropped from a hymnal onto my route as a beacon, illuminating the path of my darkness, just when I needed it.
Conundrum. Wait. Manna.
Needed this today ..: thank you
This could be my favorite story so far! Just what you needed!!! Go God!