The Day I Ate the Mayor's Good Eye

Me, the Cookie, and the Mayor

A couple of radio people showed up at City Hall for a short interview with the mayor this week, and they brought with them a delicious token of appreciation: a custom-made smile cookie from Tim Horton’s. This one had a thick mustache and was supposed to be a likeness of his worship himself. Guess they knew the guy’s a good sport.

 

I also guess he’d never had a cookie with his face on it before, because after the media left, he asked my coworker to take a picture. Since he hates being the only person in a photo and since I was the only other one around in our back offices—it being lunch hour—he decided he should pose with me and the cookie while my coworker snapped the photo.

I didn’t mind. But I didn’t really get it either. And, as is my way, I started harping even as we grinned for the camera.

“Why am I in this picture?” I said. “I did not make this cookie. I didn’t buy this cookie. I didn’t give this cookie to the mayor. And I’m probably not going to get to eat this cookie.”

That’s where I was wrong.

Probably just to shut me up, the mayor broke the cookie into thirds –although I think mine was by far the most generous “third”—and said, “Here. You can have half my mustache and my good eye.”

I didn’t argue. By this time I’d gotten close enough to the cookie to realize it was still warm and had chocolate chips in it. And did I mention it was lunch time?

I enjoyed every last crumb of the mayor’s good eye.

This made me think of two things. First, the mayor is far more generous than I. If I’d been given a cookie with MY face on it—no matter how bad the likeness—I probably wouldn’t have shared it with anyone. Well, maybe with Jesus. 

Which brings me to the second thing.

Somehow this cookie with the face on it reminded me of when the Pharisees tried to trap Jesus by asking him whether the law required them to pay taxes to the corrupt Roman government. Jesus picked up a coin and asked them whose image was on it.

“Caesar’s,” they answered.

"Well, then," Jesus said, "give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and give to God what belongs to God." His reply completely amazed them. 

(You DO know what was made in God’s image, right?)

Jesus is one smart cookie.

"God spoke: 'Let us make human beings in our image, make them reflecting our nature...'"  Genesis 1:26

Jobs that Taught Me about Life: The Finale

It’s Labour Day and time to be wrapping up my series on jobs. I could write about my ten years at Portage Alliance Church that followed the college job, where I went from being the senior pastor's administrative assistant to a communications coordinator, to the director of creative arts. How I led the drama team and put together newsletters and PowerPoint shows and Sunday programs and schedules for the music and tech teams. How I wrote drama scripts and articles and produced Christmas banquets. How I got burned out.

Or I could write about how I traded all that for a part-time job at City Hall where I could simply do my job and go home. No evening meetings or Sunday mornings or putting in extra time. No people to lead. Knowing everything I did would be double-checked by a superior, so I could relax. How I studied through the required courses to obtain a Certificate in Manitoba Municipal Administration and got to attend a graduation ceremony for the first time since high school. How I would learn to conduct municipal elections and prepare agendas and minutes for city council meetings and so much more. How I would get to write speeches for the mayor sometimes. How hard it is to believe I’ve already been there over seven years.

Or I could tell about how the city hall job freed up time to pursue writing. How by the second year I would see two of the plays and several of the short sketches we’d done at church published, as well as some Chicken Soup for the Soul stories. How I’d ask for and get a weekly newspaper column. How I’d keep working on my novel, take writing courses, attend conferences, and make it to the finals in a contest that would attract the attention of an agent who would eventually sell my book and I’d see it published in 2016. How I’d sign a contract on my second novel just five months later.

Each of those paragraphs could easily be a story for another day. Each could tell of the lessons God taught me, the way he has been there leading and guiding even when I couldn’t feel his presence or see his hand. Even when health issues brought me to my knees in tears and defeat and I couldn’t understand how or why he heals some and not others. Even when I failed miserably to hear his voice.

Last week I was privileged to attend the American Christian Fiction Writers conference in Nashville where I learned from Allen Arnold about how we can choose to exist in one of two realms: the Orphan realm or the Freedom realm. When we exist in the orphan realm, we believe life is up to us. If anything good is going to happen, it’s because we work and strive to make it happen. It’s a place of fear, of hoarding, of control, of never having enough because we don’t know we have a loving Father who wants to invite us into something better.

The Freedom Realm is a land of “with.” In it, our Father invites us to do the things we love with him. It’s a place of fierce dependence on God, of peace and joy, of knowing that control is an illusion. It’s a place where “pro and con” lists are a toxic way to make decisions because they depend on my knowledge of the future. It’s a place of knowing I am a beloved daughter of God and I can enter into a new adventure with him every morning, every moment, and not need to have all the answers.

It’s where I want to live.

We closed the session with a look at a popular video, Derek Redmond’s famous run in the 1992 Olympics where a torn hamstring stopped him on the track but where he got back up and hobbled to the finish line. You’ve probably seen it. It’s a powerfully moving clip all by itself. The world has held it up as a story of courage and never giving up. 

But it’s so much more. As I watched it again, I saw myself as that runner. The injury became my most recent wound, the loss of my newspaper column which was still stinging my heart. My Father comes down out of the stands to be with me. He fiercely defends me against those who would remove me from the race. And he supports me to the finish line.

Naturally, I was a complete and blubbering wreck. But it got worse.

The next morning during our worship time as we sang “Good, good Father,” God asked me something. “What if it’s about more than the lost column? What if that torn muscle represents your deepest wound, the thing that trips you up and speaks lies to your heart no matter how earnestly and frequently you’ve forgiven the perpetrator?” As I attached those hurts to the Olympics scenario, the fierce protection of my heavenly father’s love became more powerful still.

And I knew that’s where I wanted to live. Every moment.

Watch the video again. You’re the runner, hurling yourself down that track with all you’ve got to give. You’re in the lead, you’re set to win. Then life throws pain at you. You know what it is. That thing that happened when you were little. That thing that happened last week. Either way, you had no control over it. It hurt. And it still hurts. You believe it’s taken you out of the running. You get up and try to hobble along on your own.

But your Father comes. He defends. He supports. He comforts. He loves. He finishes the race with you. You are not alone. You do not have to live in the orphan realm. 

Derek Redmond says, in spite of the millions of people who have been encouraged by his story, he would still prefer to have won the gold medal in Barcelona that day. But God knows that the areas where we are scarred and wounded are a gateway to our greatest strength. 

Let him lead you there.

(To order Allen Arnold's book, The Story of WITH, click HERE.)

Jobs That Taught Me About Life, Part 6: The Chemist

It was the oddest setup: a company that sold swimming pools but operated out of an office in Longview, Texas. When customers stopped by expecting to see a store with a display pool and shelves of chemicals and pool toys for sale, they often thought they’d walked into the wrong place. Although a display pool would be built later, for now they took prospective customers out to view residential pools they’d built. They needed someone who could handle their calls and a certain amount of paperwork, as well as direct visitors to the other businesses in the building. I felt thrilled when they offered the position to me since it seemed like a huge step up from McDonalds. Plus, there was a pretty red phone on my desk.

Still unaccustomed to the southern drawl, I took a message one day from someone named Montel Siggs. I asked him to repeat his name to make sure I got it right, but when my boss read the message he scratched his head, trying to recall anyone named Montel Siggs. When he dialed the number and they picked up, he burst out laughing. The person on the other end had answered with, “Motel 6, how may I help you?”

My boss decided he could get a better bang for his buck if he trained me in pool chemistry so I could help clients when he wasn’t around. He sent me to Dallas to take a two-day training course from our supplier. My husband came as my chauffeur, and it felt like a grand prize for us to enjoy an all-expenses paid trip. Hubby decided to sit in on the seminar too, which saved my hide in the end. The course assumed one had taken basic high school chemistry and I had not. (Hubby had not, either, but Hubby is a brainiac.) It also assumed the students paid attention and didn’t spend the day dozing and daydreaming.

That evening as I studied for a test I felt sure to fail, Hubby explained everything we’d covered in class. The next day, he aced the test and I managed to pass. I returned to my boss with a certificate proving my expertise in pool chemistry.

What a joke.

My first client’s pool looked like pea soup with a cloud of mosquitoes hovering three inches above. But with my expert help, they could soon enjoy clear sparkling water. What a fun challenge! How amazed would they be when I miraculously turned their green swamp into a glorious, shimmering oasis? I tested a sample and laid out the prescription. When I returned two days and hundreds of dollars later, the water had improved to the point where you could actually see your hand below the surface…provided you were brave enough to stick your hand in it. 

My customer was not impressed.

I suggested more chemicals, but he would have none of it. He took it up with my boss, who was kind enough to deal with it and not give me a hard time. After that, I stuck to selling chemicals to people who already kept a well maintained pool and left the fatal cases to others.

One of our building’s more eccentric tenants was a hypnotherapist. This guy specialized in helping people quit smoking or lose weight by hypnotizing them in private sessions. He freaked me out, but I refused to give him the satisfaction of knowing it. One day he asked if I was connected to Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin of President J.F. Kennedy 16 years earlier in Dallas. 

“No,” I said. “Why?” I didn’t tell him my maiden name was Oswald. 

He said he was receiving some kind of “vibe” about it whenever he came near me. Later, after I figured out that he’d seen letters addressed to my parents in my outgoing mail tray, I felt like vibing him right in the jaw.

I left that job looking forward to becoming a full-time mommy and finally getting enough sleep. But that’s a story for another day.

Jobs That Taught Me About Life, Part 5: McDonalds

It was 1978. I sat in the darkened basement of the McDonalds Restaurant on Marshall Avenue in Longview, Texas, watching the training film flicker on the collapsible screen. I learned the history of the company, how to smile and take orders and—gulp—upsell by suggesting an order of fries and a drink to folks who ordered only a burger.

Working in a fast food joint seemed like a good solution for a starving student’s wife until I learned we had to pay full price for anything we ate. I began packing my own bologna sandwiches and learned to work with a rumbling tummy. “Free Meal” cards were sparingly handed out for special rewards. Just once, I earned one for having the perfect amount of change in my drawer at the end of my nine-and-a-half hour shift.

One day we received a call that a bus-load of football players was on its way. The crew in the back scrambled to assemble dozens of Big Macs and fill the fry bin, while out front we began pre-filling large cups of soda to the brim. When the burgers remained in the bin after their expiry time passed and we still hadn’t seen the bus, I thought my heart might break as we filled garbage bags with the unsold food, counting every Styrofoam box and recording it on the waste form. We learned later that the bus had shown up at the McDonalds across town—which had not received a call and was not prepared.

Me in my polyester uniform.

The polyester uniform seemed like a good solution for a starving student’s wife, too, until I learned I’d need to buy my own navy or black shoes. I stopped at a department store and bought the cheapest pair I could find. They were comfy, but made of nylon that allowed no breathing room. By the end of my first week, the shoes stunk so bad I left them out overnight to fend off burglars. And since my weekly trips to the laundromat were not frequent enough to keep the uniform fresh, I learned to swish it around in the bathtub each night and hang it up to dry.

I was to punch my time card and be at the counter, smiling and ready to take orders before 6:30 each morning. I learned to keep the coffee pots going continually and fill any momentary lull with counter-wiping and cup dispenser restocking. No standing idle, no drinking water in sight of the customers, no chit chat. And never, ever stop smiling.

I got two fifteen-minute breaks for which I needed to punch in and out, neither of them over the noon rush of course. By the end of the first day, I thought I’d die. I complained of sore feet to my parents over the phone. After a month, Dad asked me if I’d grown used to being on my feet.

“Well, put it this way,” I said. “I’m used to sore feet.”

The neatest learning experience coming out of that job came from the mostly African American staff. It was an education to be a minority for the first time in my life, to discover that the others could easily communicate without my knowing what was going on if they wanted to, and that they possessed a sense of humour I could only hope to emulate. I was the dumb white Canadian to be taken under wing, and I could not take myself too seriously if I wanted to get along.

I earned $3.10 an hour. When evaluation time came, Management gave us grades for our work. An ‘A’ grade meant a ten-cent raise. ‘B’ meant room for improvement while you continued at your same pay rate. ‘C’ meant a cut in pay (yes, they could actually do that) and ‘D’ meant you were fired.

Confident I’d soon be taking home an extra 95 cents a day, I went to my appointment smiling. But left in tears.

My manager had given me a ‘B’ and told me I needed to do more upselling. I’d been on the job nine months, and this news was all the incentive I needed. I spent my days off applying for secretarial positions until I was hired by a guy who sold swimming pools.

But that’s a story for another day.